Page 35 of Marked By His Alpha Dragon's Desire

“Was that...?”

Raphael nodded. “They hear you.”

I gasped. “Oh, my babies. I love you so.”

Raphael’s hand covered mine. “I love you, mate.”

Chapter 19

Raphael

It had been four days since my mate’s accident. Four days since our two perfect eggs entered this world, and still, I could not bear to be away from him or them for very long. Tyler granted us time off, though I knew that Luca was determined to get back to work.

We planned to have an egg sitter at the house, talking and interacting with the eggs while we were away. Technically, they would be fine on their own, but they did best developmentallyif there were people around—especially pack members. And it turned out there were plenty of people in the pack willing to hang out at our house and talk to the eggs.

In the days that followed the laying of the eggs, we had many visitors dropping off casseroles, bouquets of flowers, and little trinkets for the nest, including a few very nice handmade quilts and pillows.

“Is it weird that we can stay in here all day like this?” Luca asked.

He sat in the nest, his body curved around both eggs as he lazily stroked their shells. He wore a soft robe, open at the front so that he could have skin-to-shell contact with the eggs. Meanwhile, I lay in my dragon form, my head resting on the edge of the nest, my tail curved around the entire thing, my beautiful heat lamp on and warming my body.

I rumbled in response.

Luca laughed. “I’m going to take that as a no, it’s not weird. It’s perfectly normal, right?”

He laid his cheek against one of the eggs. “I miss carrying them,” he said. “I thought I’d have a longer time carrying them. And their birth was so chaotic. I miss it.”

I chuffed out a response. It wasn’t the first time he had mentioned missing carrying them. His birth experience hadn’t been the one that we had planned, but it was over now, and wecouldn’t do anything about it. We still grieved the loss of the experience.

I shifted back to my human form, then pulled a quilt over my body. “I know it is disappointing that things didn’t work out the way you planned.”

We both had to process the complicated emotions that came with our birth plan being totally upended by an accident.

He sighed, his cheek rubbing against one shell while he stroked the other. “I am grateful it all worked out. It’s hard to complain when they are unharmed. We were lucky.”

“We were. We can acknowledge our luck and also grief for the experience we missed.”

“This is true.”

“We can always have more.” I grinned.

He shot me a glare. “Let’s get through these two first, please.”

I crawled into the nest with him and wrapped my arms around him and the eggs. I kissed his shoulder.

“Are you sure that you’re ready to return to work tomorrow?”

He sighed. “Yes. For the last time, yes, I can work. You can work, and Theo’s mom plans on coming over to spend time with the eggs. Theo will be here as well throughout the day.”

“Great,” I scoffed. “He’ll teach them swear words.”

“Oh, he most certainly will. He is going to be a terrible influence on them, but he is going to love them to bits. I know it.”

“I know he will too, mate.”

I held him close, rubbing my hand up and down his arm.

“You don’t need to worry about me while I’m working,” he said. “It was a freak accident. It’s not going to happen again.”

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