Page 30 of The Ruby Dragon Prince
“Yes, but I can’t leave them to fight my father and Lord Groswick’s horrible plan on their own,” I said.
Rufus’s expression went flat. “Why not? Let them defeat your father and save the farmers. You have eggs to nurture.”
I needed more information. “How long does it take for dragon eggs to hatch?” I asked. “Do I need to sit with them until that happens or is it possible to leave them for a time?”
Even as I asked that, my stomach turned at the thought of leaving them. If I did, I knew I would worry about them constantly until we were reunited.
“It takes six months for dragon eggs to hatch,” Rufus said. “That’s part of the reason why so many dragon families are so large. We don’t have to wait as long as humans before having more.”
The idea of having a large, happy, exuberant family of ruby dragons with Rufus made me unbelievably happy.
But the idea of never seeing my brothers again and not being there to help them foil Father and Lord Groswick’s plan made my heart hurt.
“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed to Rufus. “I need to be here with our children, even if they aren’t born yet. But I need to be with my brothers, too. Is there any way I can do both?”
Rufus sighed and rubbed a hand over his head. “I wish your loyalties weren’t split the way they are,” he said. I was about to get angry with him and defend my love and loyalty for my brothers, but he raised a hand and went on with, “But I do understand it. And I think it’s admirable. Your brothers are the luckiest omegas in all the worlds.” He smiled and added, “And I’m the luckiest alpha.”
He leaned in and kissed me. I wasn’t sure I was in a mood to be kissed, but I kissed him back anyhow.
I felt infinitely better when he said, “There are magical nursemaids who can mind dragon eggs while their papa is gone. I can make some inquiries and have the very best of them come to the lair to watch the eggs while we go and help your brothers.”
“We?” I asked, surprised that he would want to join me.
Rufus looked incredulous. “Of course,we. You don’t think I’m going to let you out of my sight for a moment, now that you’re the papa of my babies, do you?”
I almost argued, but instead I smiled. We were so new to each other, but I could feel that I would love the process of the two of us getting to know each other better and falling truly in love. Being fated was one thing, but time made love so much fuller.
“Thank you,” I told him, raising a hand to brush the side of his face. “This means so much to me. Thank you for understanding that I have to help my brothers.
“But once the farmers are safe from Father and Lord Groswick’s scheme, I want to give my attention and my life to you and our children,” I added.
“Good,” Rufus said, taking my hand and kissing it. “I understand how important the people of your kingdom are to you, really, I do. I’ll help you in every way I can, starting with finding out about a nursemaid.”
“I love you,” I said, blinking away the tears of affection that came to my eyes. “And I swear to you, I’ll figure out how to make things right in the other kingdom as fast as possible so that we can continue on with our life here.”
I loved my brothers, but every second I spent with Rufus, and now our babies, made me long for the time when I wouldn’t have to choose between worlds.
Chapter
Nine
Rufus
The only way I was going to keep Tovey by my side and happy was if I gave in to the demands he made about things that were important to him. I realized that as he was sleeping off the birth of our eggs. I wanted nothing more than to surround him with safety and comfort for the rest of our lives, but as my darker urges to claim and mate subsided, I understood that Tovey would never be happy, no matter what I gave him, as long as he thought his beloved brothers and the people of his father’s kingdom were in danger.
Which was why I found myself walking a few yards behind my mate and his brothers as they traversed the streets of the city outside the castle, enjoying the harvest festival. I was dressed as an ordinary townsperson and had a slight, magical cloak of disguise around me so that I could be seen and people could interact with me, but I appeared ordinary and mostly unnoticeable to them. Even the half dozen guards thatsurrounded the omega princes didn’t notice I’d been following them since the castle.
It was a shock to me that King Freslik had let the omegas out of their room at all. They’d been kept in their room and the garden through the week that had followed in the cruel world after I’d pretended to kidnap Tovey to finish breeding him. Argus hinted that he might have had something to do with the king’s change of mind, but I was too busy keeping an eye on my mate to delve into details.
Tovey had spent two weeks with me, off and on in combination with time in the cruel world, building his nest in my home. The difference in the way time passed between the two kingdoms made it possible for him to split his time between his brothers and me and the eggs, though there were limits to how far the passage of time between the two places could be stretched. His nesting meant he’d stripped my bed and remade it with the finest silks, piles of featherbeds, and, for some reason, a dozen musical instruments of all kinds.
“I can’t explain why,” he’d told me with a shrug when I questioned him. “I just feel like they need to have music around them.”
That did not, however, mean that he wanted any sort of actual musicians in the room to play for him or the eggs. Just the instruments themselves.
I’d brought Tovey several choices for nursemaids, and after agonizing over the decision to leave the eggs, he’d chosen a beautiful dryad named Phygalia, who had forest green skin and hair like autumn leaves, to mind the babies in our absence. She’d promised to sing to them, which was what won Tovey over.
“I hope we’re able to expose Father’s plot and bring things to a peaceful resolution as quickly as possible,” Tovey said as we all wandered the many stalls of the market that had been set up all along the streets of the city. “I don’t like being away from home.”
