Page 58 of The Dragon's Perfect Omega
"The high priestess." Lowen let go of me to rub his temples. "You know, the lady who went against her faith to give birth to me, but who is now adamant that I follow the teachings."
"Screw her," I said with a shrug. "She's got no power over you."
"I need to figure out how my powers work, and I got the feeling she's the only one who can tell me."
"Why is that so important?" I rubbed his arm, wondering why he suddenly needed to know more about his abilities.
He gave me a long hard look, as if he didn't quite know what to say. "All my life, I've seen so many scary futures. I want to learn what to do about them. How to prevent them from happening. I'm tired of having to see some horrible scene play out twice because I'm powerless to do anything to alter the future after I've seen it."
I squinted at him. What was that all about? "I'm sorry that's happening to you, but..."
"But what?"
"I'm wondering if you've seen anything horrible lately that's making you say that," I admitted.
"I've just been thinking. What if I see something that affects our child and I won't know what to do when the time comes? I need to be prepared."
I didn't like to think about anything happening to our child, but what he said made sense. "I'm sure you can learn what you need." I kissed the side of his mouth. "I trust you."
"Thank you." He closed his arms around my waist. "I'm not going to let any harm come to you or the baby."
I believed him.
* * *
Just a few daysafter we arrived at the island, my dragon got me a doctor's appointment. It was a hot day at the end of July, and I was glad I didn't actually have to walk anywhere because my dragon had wings.
"My friend Zed recommended this place," Lowen said when we stood in front of the clinic. "The doctor just delivered his son a few months ago, and before that, he helped Finn and Ryan with their pregnancy."
"And Roger and Ryan are omega too, right? So maybe he knows what he's doing."
Lowen nodded. "I hope so. Especially because Ryan's pregnancy was pretty delicate. We don't have a huge selection of specialists on the island, but I'll check out every one of them if you're not happy with this guy."
"I'm sure it'll be fine," I said, entering the clinic. Sadly, the inside of the building was almost as warm as the outside. Dragons didn't need air conditioning, the lucky bastards. Standing next to me, Lowen wasn't even sweating.
That moment, I almost understood why people hated dragons.
After a minute, we were led into a waiting room by a friendly young staff member, and fortunately we didn't spend long there before being called into the doctor's office.
The man greeted me with a firm handshake. "How are you doing today?"
"Fine," I said. It wasn't even a lie. These past few days on the island had been good—aside from the heat. I noticed that I got tired a little more easily than usual, but other than that, everything was good.
"Good to hear! If you could please push down your pants and take a seat here," he said, pointing at the examination chair. "You've known about your pregnancy for a few weeks now?"
"We, uh... think it happened around the solstice," I said while fiddling with my belt in front of the middle-aged doctor with the receding hairline.Awkward. To a part of me, all of this still seemed unreal. That I'd broken contact with my parents, that I was basically living with Lowen now, that I was about to get an ultrasound to check up on mypregnancy.I had to stop myself from thinking about it too much to keep from freaking out.
"Good to know. That would put you at... right about six weeks?"
"Yeah, I guess." So it was basically twelve weeks, considering that dragons grew twice as fast. The end of the first trimester. Wow. This baby was going to be here before I knew it.
I wasn't prepared for that at all.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed my pants down and walked to the examination chair. Lowen was already standing to the side of it, waiting for me. I wondered if any of this felt as unreal to him as it did to me. At least I was a little bit cooler without my pants on as I climbed into the chair.
"Ready?" Lowen asked, taking my hand.
"Yeah," I said, breathing in the sterile scent of disinfectant that hung in the air.
