Page 44 of Reindeer Flames
I laughed and knocked my shoulder against his. "That's all you. I don't carry them up the stairs, remember?"
He picked up the basket with both hands. I held my breath when he stepped onto the third stair, but, same as every other time, he stayed upright and didn't snag his toes on the underside of the lip the way I did at least once a day.
When he reached the top, I followed behind him. Before I knew I was falling, my hands slapped against the sixth stair up, and my toe throbbed. "I'm gonna rebuild these stairs next spring," I said. "The kids will help."
"You'll be too tired from keeping them out of trouble to build anything," Silver countered. "Would you get up here and open the door for me?"
I flexed my hands a few times before turning the crank and opening the vault door. Silver fitted the basket into its place, and I ran back downstairs to grab the cooler I'd prepared for this moment.
"What was that bang?" Silver asked when I returned. "Please tell me you didn't?—"
"I fell up the stairs again. I wouldn't drink anything carbonated for a few minutes."
He sighed. "I read that book about the guy who fought windmills, but I never thought my mate would have a tiff with a stairway."
"Not the whole stairway," I said. "Only the third one up. The lip's too big, or something."
"It can't be. There are regulations and inspections for that."
"We didn't have an inspection," I reminded him. "We had a Santa intervention." I glanced up at the spotlight shining down on our eggs, which were both rocking in their basket. "Hey Santa? That third step can't be good for the babies."
Silver shook his head. "If only I'd known you were this much of a dork when you first walked into my bakery."
"You'd have avoided me?" The ache of rejection made me clutch my chest.
"I would have asked you out sooner." His eyes glittered the way they did when his dragon was near. He tugged me from my beanbag chair, so I was sitting in his lap with my legs over the top of the cooler. "Look. There's a crack." The mother-of-pearl shell had split open between the scallops, leaving a jagged fault line down the side of it. The inner lining was all that held it together.
"Dragons have an egg tooth," I said. "What if it's not a dragon?"
Silver gripped me tighter. "We'll have to wait and see."
We didn't have to wait long. A felt-covered nub poked through the lining, and then another. With a shake, the nubs forced the shell apart, and it cracked all the way open, splitting into two halves. Inside sat an adorable human baby with tiny antler nubs sticking from the flaxen hair covering her crown.
"A little reindeer girl," Silver cooed.
"She's already sitting up?" I knew egg babies were further developed than human births, but I wasn't expecting a child who not only could hold up her own head, but could sit on her own and even reached for me to pick her up.
"Hi, baby!" I kissed her forehead and pulled her in close while Silver dug through the nest for a soft blanket to wrap around her.
"Biela," Silver said. "Her name is Biela."
She could already focus her deep gray eyes on Silver's face. She turned her head to look up at me, and I fell in love. "Biela Comet. You're going to be the next Comet on Santa 30's team." I touched her little antler stub, and it popped out of place. I caught it before it hit the floor, and the other one went sliding toward Silver.
"See?" Silver whispered as he stared at the little nub. "Nature finds a way." He held out his hand, and I dropped the other antler nub into it. Then, he reached above his head and placedthem on the vault shelf. "You're part of my hoard now," he said, lifting her so he could kiss her forehead. "Baby teeth. First haircuts. It's all going in here."
I balanced Biela on my knee as we waited for our little dragon to hatch. Her gray eyes took in everything around her, and she wrapped her fingers around Silver's thumb when he offered it.
"I just can't believe how big you are," I told her. "You're practically a toddler!"
"Didn't you notice how heavy the basket was?" Silver frowned at me.
I shrugged. "I assumed the shells were heavy."
Her shell was almost paper thin. Silver collected every little scalloped piece and placed it on the shelf beside her antlers. "I'll reconstruct it later," he said. "It'll be a cute little keepsake for her when she's older."
Biela turned her head toward the nest, and I turned her body so she faced the egg in the basket. It was also splitting down the middle, with only the thin inner membrane holding the two sides together. Something pointy and black like a rhino's horn rose up through the crack, splitting it open.
"There he is," Silver whispered as our little dragon emerged. He was a beautiful purple, though the egg tooth jutting beneath his upper lip was ebony. Silver wrapped him in another soft blanket, and he shifted into his human form, the egg tooth falling from his mouth. Silver plucked it from his chest and set it beside Biela's keepsakes on the shelf.
