Page 112 of Alpha Dragon's Mating Contract
Over the past four weeks, Raptor had worked hard on the nest. He had spent all his free time hammering and nailing, sometimes sneaking out after Walren had fallen asleep to squeeze in an extra hour of building. He had sawed and hammered the lumber in front of Walren, but kept the nest itself hidden under heavy tarps.
Twice, Walren had asked if Raptor ended up using all the strange building materials he had ordered. Raptor would not tell him. It only added to Walren’s growing curiosity.
Walren scooped Zebbie out of Go Cart’s cargo basket now, following Raptor out of the mansion.
The nest was nothing like Walren had expected. It was the top half of a sailboat rising up from the ground, with two sturdy masts holding up a pair of majestic white sails. With each breeze, the boat seemed to inhale, the interlocking logs of its walls sliding back and forth against each other.
“Just like a woody orgy,” Raptor explained, puffing out his chest. “Don’t worry about the moving gaps between the logs. They have been spelled to repel any and all little fingers, so no babies will be hurt.”
“What about wings and tails?”
“Those too. In fact, you can’t even stick a pencil into the gaps; it would be repelled.”
“Phew,” Walren said, stepping closer. “That’s a load off my mind.”
“The loads belong elsewhere,” Raptor said slyly.
Walren blushed and nudged Raptor’s arm self-consciously. He approached the gentle ramp leading through the side of the boat, admiring how wide it was—both Raptor and Go Cart could enter the boat easily.
On the inside, pool noodles had been strung up between the boat’s masts, wrapped in fairy lights. Rubber ducks were nestled into little niches in the logs, and cans of sweet corn had been tucked into cubby-holes along the length of the boat. Raptor had stuffed other kinds of food into the cubby-holes too, like little bags of cookies and uncooked rice.
“You wrote their names on the ice cream sticks!” Walren stopped in front of a rubber duck with an ice cream stick labeled ‘Sir Quacks-A-Lot’.
Raptor grinned. “I did lots of things!”
The grandfather clock had been installed on its back in the middle of the boat, its glass surface flush with the rest of the deck. Walren stared curiously at it.
“It’s not for telling time,” Raptor said, crouching next to it. “And the glass is spelled so you can’t shatter it.” He flipped some latches and swung open the front of the clock, to reveal a secret compartment inside. “This is a space for anything you want to hide. Like a treasure.”
“I’m really enjoying this,” Walren admitted, awestruck. “There’s so much going on in here. Like the rosemary on the walls, and the rice and corn in the cubby-holes...”
“Since you snack on uncooked rice,” Raptor said, following his gaze. “I thought that would be handy to have out here.”
“Thank you.”
Raptor grinned. “You haven’t seen the best parts yet.”
He led Walren to the front of the boat, where there was an alpha-sized pile of cushions and towels. Walren let himself fall onto the pile with Zebbie, both of them bouncing and giggling.
“There’s something similar on the other end of the boat,” Raptor said, helping Walren to his feet. “Come look!”
On the other end of the deck was a colorful ball pit, with a short section of a huge pipe acting as a doorway—even Raptor could walk through without ducking his head.
“Where did you get this pipe from?” Walren asked, amazed.
“I have connections in the pipe industry,” Raptor said vaguely.
Above the ball pit, a heavy steel rope connected the nearest mast to a tree outside the boat.
“A short zip line,” Raptor explained. “I should mention that the nest is protected from lightning, too.”
Walren wandered from one end of the boat to the other, eyeing the seemingly empty middle of the deck. “Is there something I missed?”
“Oh!” Raptor tugged on a thick rope hanging from one of the masts. The floor around the cushion pile opened up to reveal an even larger cushion pit, with huge, soft pillows that Walren wanted to dive into. “And if you tug on this other rope—” Raptor reached for a rope with a tiny bell “—you get some weather protection.”
A canvas awning unfolded over the front of the boat, sheltering the entire length of the cushion pit.
“If it rains, you can watch it fall from the comfort of your cushions,” Raptor said.
