Page 83 of Alpha Dragon's Mating Contract
Why am I not burning my tongue...?
Before Walren could contemplate that, he glimpsed a huge green chili pepper on a plate.
It looked oddly delicious. Walren frowned and studied the bowls of ramen being prepared, but nothing else called to him quite as loudly as the pepper did.
Then a server took the pepper away, delivering it to a patron.
Walren almost cried. “No!”
But why? I don’t even like spicy food!
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Raptor asked halfway across the kitchen.
“I want that big green pepper,” Walren mumbled. “I don’t know why.”
Raptor looked at him curiously. Then he went to the produce fridge and retrieved a green pepper, roasting it on the grill.
The spicy fumes tickled Walren’s nose; he sneezed. Zebbie giggled and stuck his fingers into Walren’s nostrils.
When Raptor came over with the green pepper on a plate, he was laughing. “Did Zebs find treasure in your nose?”
Walren groaned and pulled Zebbie’s questing fingers away. “No! But thank you for the pepper.”
“Anytime. It’s spicy,” Raptor warned. “And hot off the grill. Be careful.”
Walren nodded. He was stuffing the pepper into his mouth before he knew it, moaning at the tingles busting across his tongue. Had his body always reacted to spicy food like this?
He swallowed the bites of pepper, warmth growing in his stomach.
Then he burped, and orange flames shot out of his mouth.
21
STRANGE BODILY CHANGES
Walren yelped in surprise.I just breathed fire.
Across the kitchen, all the chefs turned to look at him.
Walren gulped.
“Walry-babe?” Raptor was approaching him, all wide-eyed. “Did you just...?”
Walren looked at the half-eaten pepper, then at Raptor.
Things were adding up quickly in his mind—because this had happened to him before. When he was pregnant with Zebbie.
Oh, gods. Am I really pregnant?
More importantly—dragonets were rare, and highly sought after on the black market. By breathing fire in front of people he didn’t know... Had Walren just endangered himself and his babies?
“Raptor,” Walren breathed, afraid of someone overhearing him. “Do your staff know about—”
Raptor’s gaze sharpened. “You’re safe here,” he whispered back. “You breathed fire! You...”
With his other hand, he trailed his knuckles over Walren’s belly, a soft, awed look in his eyes.
Reality crashed into Walren then.
