Page 31 of Reindeer Flames
Gold grinned. "We should invite him to our next meeting."
"Can I come?" Silver asked. "Or is this for you, Laurie, and Santa only?"
Gold tousled his hair. He tried to grab her hat, but she darted around the workstation. What followed was a chase and a lot of laughter. Finally, Gold darted behind me, shoving me into Silver's arms.
The jingle bells on the main door rang, and Gold sailed out the kitchen's double doors, smoothing the hair back from her forehead like she hadn't been running like a child a moment before.
"I'll see you Sunday?" Silver asked.
"You could stay with me Saturday night." My apartment was closer to the open house, only one stop from the hub.
"I'd like that." Silver's smile was quickly becoming one of my favorite things in the world, especially when it held the same awe I felt whenever I looked at him. He was my mate, and I was the luckiest reindeer in the world.
We wereboth so tired on Saturday night, we fell asleep watching animated holiday specials on the floor of my living room, the only space large enough for both of us to sleep. I woke with a sharp pain in my neck and stiff hips. After I stripped to take a shower, I popped into my reindeer form in the bathroom to ease some of the aches and pains.
The cramped space wasn't big enough for a dragon to shift, though. My back twinged in sympathy when Silver groaned and dug his knuckle between his vertebrae. "Want to shift on the roof?" I asked.
"That sounds wonderful." He took my offered arm, and we walked to the door at the end of the hall.
"It won't be bad for the eggs, will it?"
He laughed and shook his head. "We lay our eggs in dragon form."
"Outside?" I shivered.
"We have birthing caves back home. Here, I would need to find a safe place. Santa 30's hangar would be big enough."
"But cold," I reminded him.
He laughed. "Dragon eggs protect against the harshest elements. Many birthing caves are in active volcanoes, or deep in cold mountain passes."
"I suppose that makes sense," I said. "There aren't many places large enough to hide a dragon."
"No." He sighed. "We won't have much privacy at the hangar, either. There aren't many dragons here, but I'll ask the griffins where they lay their eggs."
Silver stripped his clothes off and jumped into the air. I almost laughed at how silly he looked until his magnificent wings sprang open and carried him several feet up. Then, his dragon form spread out above the rooftop, and I understood his need to be airborne. Over the large mountain lake, his size had seemed proportional to our surroundings, but here, in the city, on top of my apartment building with four small units to a floor, setting his full weight on the roof would likely crumble the building to the ground.
He flew in a circle around the building and shot a gout of blue flames into the sky before hovering vertically in the air and landing with the same grace as he'd taken off. His wings were the last to fold into his sides and become arms.
He wrapped them around his core and shivered. "It didn't seem that cold up here before."
I draped his parka over his shoulders, and he wrapped it around his body like a robe. I carried his clothes back to my apartment and showed him how to work the shower fixtures, and then I let him be while I searched my fridge for lunch.
The knock at the door was so quiet, I thought I'd imagined it. A few moments later, three hard knocks echoed off my bare kitchen walls. I checked the spy window and almost fell over with shock. My parents were outside my door with all the fixings for Sunday dinner.
"Hi!" I opened the door wide for Papa, who had his extra-large slow cooker balanced in both hands. Dad shuffled his grocery bag handles to one hand and grabbed me around the shoulders for a side hug.
"What are you doing here?" It was almost noon, time for the big family gathering at Uncle Arend's house.
"We wanted to eat family brunch with our son. What's wrong with that?" Dad flashed one of his brilliant smiles, but Papa shook his head.
"Tell him the truth," Papa said.
"We arrived at your uncle's place, Bopp started talking shit about you, and we left. We won't be going back to another family dinner until he apologizes."
"Never, in other words." Papa rolled his eyes. "That boy never apologizes for anything, and when he does, he's got his fingers crossed behind his back like a two-year-old."
"It's great to see you." Since we'd seen Bopp at the hangar, and I'd told him off, I'd been dreading the fallout with my parents. Having them show up at my door was an even better outcome than the best-case scenario I'd imagined.
