Page 57 of The Dragon's Perfect Omega
"Okay." I kissed his hair, breathing in his scent. If my mate wanted this baby, he would have this baby. I would do the best I could to provide. I would do my best to keep him and the child happy and healthy. For me, it was as simple as that. We were in this together, from now until the end of time. "You should come back to the island with me," I suggested. "Now that you're carrying my child, we can probably fast track you for a traveling permit."
Zim laughed a little, which was good to hear. "You sound like you can't wait to get out of here."
I shook my head. "We need to see a doctor, I think."
"Because of the baby?" Zim closed his eyes as he spoke. I rubbed his back, hoping to comfort him.
"Yeah. I think it would be better if we saw a dragon doctor. They'll know what they're dealing with. What we have to expect." My eyes traveled over Zim's body. After I had my vision, I did some research into the subject of human omegas carrying dragon babies. It took a toll on their bodies.
In the back of my mind, I heard the beeping of the heart monitor from my dream.
"I guess your vision is coming true, huh?" Zim asked as if he could read my mind. I was reminded that I'd never told him how that vision ended—and I wasn't going to now. He had enough to worry about. I was going to solve this problem by myself. When we were back on the island, I was going to talk to the one person Iknewcould help me; the high priestess. Now that Zim was pregnant and my dream threatened to become reality, saving him was more important than my reluctance to visit the shrine again. And there had to be a way to save him. What was the point of getting these visions if their outcome couldn’t be changed?
"You need to rest," I told Zim. "I don't know if you've heard, but this pregnancy isn't going to be nine months, it's going to be half that."
"Half?" Zim's eyes snapped open. I couldn't blame him. He probably wasn't ready to become a parent in just about four months. Neither was I, but that was the reality we had to live with now.
"Dragon babies grow twice as fast as human babies," I informed him. "Sorry to say. This is going to be a high-risk pregnancy and it's going to exhaust you. It might even be dangerous." Taking his hand in mine, I caught his gaze. "Do you still want to go through with it? It's not too late to back out. I won't judge you."
For a moment or two, Zim was quiet. That was how I knew he was actually giving this some thought. Then he said, "I guess we should talk to a doctor, but... I don't think I want to abort. I would never judge anyone else for making that choice, but..." He shook his head. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry," I repeated.
"Do you even want to be a dad?" Zim asked. "Am I being selfish?"
"Don’t even worry about it." I would love Zim’s child—our child—as much as my inner dragon loved a pile of gold. And I would guard it just as fiercely.
"But what about your dream to tour the world? That’s going to be harder when—"
"Harder, but not impossible." I gave him a short kiss, feeling the need to reassure him. "You know why I wanted to travel the world? Because I always felt there was some piece of me missing and I needed to find it. But now I have. It's always been you, even when I didn't know what I was looking for. As long as I have you, I don't need anything else." It was true. I didn't care that we were sitting in a garish hotel room that smelled faintly of mothballs, simply because we weretogetherfor the first time in three weeks. I had Zim by my side. Even with all the problems staring us in the face, I felt at peace, holding him close.
Together, we could stand up to our families and their plans for us. We would live our own lives, and we would be okay. Both of us.
I was going to make sure of it.
29
Zim
Gettinganother visa to Dragon Island for me took about two weeks after Lowen informed his father about our reasons for needing it. That phone call had been a little painful to watch. Lowen cringed a lot, listening to his father on the other end of the line. I could only imagine how the man was reacting to the news that his son had knocked up a random human and needed passage for him now. Lowen told me not to worry, though. His parents weren't super pleased by the turn of events, but they weren't going to let us down.
The whole time we spent waiting for the visa, we stayed at the hotel together. It wasn't the worst time of my life, really. It didn't matter that the furniture wasn't super tasteful or that the service was sub-par when we hardly left the bed. We had a lot of lost time to make up for, after all. My sickness started to recede a bit too, which I was thankful for. It never fully went away, but now I only experienced it for a small chunk of the day rather than needing to be in close vicinity of a toilet or bucket at all times.
Back on the island, we stayed with Lowen's family to start with. To my surprise, his mother wasn't giving me the cold shoulder. Not at all. Even though I knew she wanted something different for her son, the moment I set foot into her house again, she greeted me like a long lost son. With all the strength of a dragon woman, she pulled me into her arms and congratulated me on the baby.
"I'm so happy to know I'm going to be a grandparent!" she claimed as she let go of me.
Lowen and I exchanged glances, and then both of us released a breath. We'd decided that we didn't need his mother's approval—oranyone'sapproval—but it still felt good to have it.
"Your mother's amazing," I told Lowen later, when we were alone in his room and I set down my luggage—just a small bag of things Lowen and I had shopped for before coming here. Mostly clothes for me.
"Yours might still come around," he said, running his fingers through the hair in the back of my neck. I sighed. We hadn't talked about my parents ever since we stormed out of their house that day two weeks ago.
"I don't know." My relationship with my parents felt irreparably broken to me. "I don't know that I want things to be fixed between us. I don't know how they could be." It hurt to even think about the way I'd been lied to. The way I'd suffered all my life because I didn't know who I was,whatI was. "If they can't accept me as an omega, I don't care about their acceptance at all. You're not doing what your mom wanted you to, and she's not shunning us."
"No, she's not." Lowen halted in his movements as if contemplating something that was troubling him. "My biological mother is a different matter."
"Your biological mother?"
