Page 75 of The Ruby Dragon's Unconventional Mate

“I was worrying. Lachlan yelled at me.”

Lars chuckled. “About wha’?”

“Who would protect you and the baby if something happened. Not with Alban, but from outside.”

“You would. And if not, Bea and Logan and Jake would. Amber and Mari. Everyone…” Lars dozed right back off, his words kind of slurring together.

Bryant, though, was wide awake again, but for a totally different reason. Lars was right. They were a wing. That was what was different here. In their old wing, it hadn’t just been the fake Keeper. Everything had been about business. Politics. Advancement.

This wing was a family, and even though he’d been holding himself apart, they had accepted him as Lars’s mate. They’d accepted Lars as an omega. They’d taken in Lachlan, even though he would never be the kind of dragon their old wing insisted he had to be…

Gods, he was an idiot. Over and over again. And Lars and his brother still loved him. And the wing still took him in…

He kissed Lars on the back of the neck and slipped out of bed. Not because he was worried, but because he was suddenly craving warm milk and a ginger cookie.

He padded downstairs, the sounds of Slippy and Andine playing making him smile.

And there was Arthur in the kitchen, putting a pot on the stove. “Warm milk, Bryan?”

“Please. I’ve been such a fool, Arthur.”

He got a curious look from those changeable gold eyes, colors moving through like clouds in the sky. “About what?”

“I’ve been so worried about everything that I couldn’t see what was right under my nose.”

Arthur poured milk into the pot, then stirred, silent for long moments.

Then he chuckled. “You’ve had a lot of change, you know. In a short time. We dragons pride ourselves on magically knowing things, but we still have emotions. Thoughts. Deep feelings. We love hard. And we can take things we should be dealing with andinternalize them because we feel shame that we can’t just move on.” Arthur’s grin flashed bright. “Don’t knock yourself about, but definitely strive to remember what you learned tonight.”

“I will. Thank you.” He sat, watching the almost hypnotic motion of Arthur stirring. Now that he knew what a keeper was meant to feel like in his home, he knew that what Simon and Celeste said was true. Whatever it was he had killed, it had not been a keeper.

Not even close.

“Do you like a little sugar in it?” Arthur asked.

“Not tonight. I’ll just take it as it is.” He stood to get a ginger cookie, and he took the milk Arthur handed him. “Are you having the rest?”

“With a little for Slippy and Andine.” Arthur was clearly already in love with the weasels. “Good night, Bryant.”

“Good night, Arthur.” He sipped his milk, then dunked his cookie in it. So good.

He would still talk to the healers about ways to cope, but he did feel better. Willing to trust his instincts. It was all a matter of relativity.

And he was relatively sure that this wing and Lars was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Chapter

Twenty-Six

“Where you going?”

Lars stared at Bryant. “To work, you know, guardian stuff. It’s my shift.”

Bryant’s eyebrow lifted. “Is this where I point out that you are pregnant? In fact, you are pretty, significantly pregnant. I’m fairly sure we all decided that it’s time to stop doing your rounds…”

“No.” He had decided that wasn’t going to work for him. In fact, he had pretty much decided he had been pregnant quite long enough, at least today. He could be pregnant again tomorrow. But today?

Nope.

---