Page 82 of Claimed by the Savage Dragons
‘Del isn’t a town medic. She used to be a human doctor. She’s the only person I’d trust to see you through this.’
‘He’s right. Yours won’t be the first baby I’ve delivered. You’re in good hands, Mari. Probably the best for five thousand miles, okay? All the tests I’ve already done have come back normal. You’re in pretty good health considering. You just need to put on some weight. That’s it. Nothing bad is going to happen. I won’t let it.’
I grip Drey’s tree-trunk-like biceps, trying to calm down, letting myself believe their words, and my chest begins to unclench.
‘There we go,’ he praises. ‘Good girl. Nice and calm.’
I rest my head on his chest. Being close to him like this makes it easier to not freak out. When I eventually look up, it’s to find Del watching us with a puzzled expression.
‘Can I ask you something?’
I nod.
‘When you met Tor and Brax, did you feel a kind of pull toward them? Like a need to be with them? To do…other things?’
‘Yeah!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s exactly what it felt like. It was weird. I’ve never felt like that before.’
‘And do you feel it with Drey?’
I glance at him a little shyly and nod.
‘And you feel it too, don’t you, Drey?’
‘Yeah,’ he says on a sigh. ‘ I feel it.’
Del walks the length of the room and then turns to face us. ‘But you haven’t felt that with any of the others here, Mari?’
I shake my head. ‘I mean I’ve only met a few, but I didn’t feel like that at all with them.’
‘What are you getting at, Del?’
Del sits down slowly on the couch next to me. ‘They’re mate bonds. They have to be.’
‘But we can’t bond with humans,’ Drey begins.
She cuts him off with a wave of her hand. ‘We couldn’t. Mate bonds and offspring are so rare, practically nonexistent in our faction. But life finds a way, Drey. Maybe things have changed. Maybe in order to save ourselves, we have to find human mates. It would make sense for it to start with the Tribute. A human meant to be chosen by Fate itself. A way of ensuring we survive.’
Drey doesn’t look convinced. ‘It’s a stretch, Del. Don’t you think?’
‘A theory,’ she amends. ‘A provable one given time.’
‘We don’t have time,’ Drey reminds her, his hands still resting on my arms while my fingers flex into his biceps.
‘If Aziel finds out about thistheoryof yours, what do you think he’s going to do? Invite me for tea to discuss it? He’s spent the past year moving against me, inciting human hatred within the faction, dividing us, and now I find out that he’s been poisoning and sabotaging me as well. He already wants Mari, but what will he do to her if he suspects she’s carrying a dragon baby? If he learns that Tor and Brax could be her true mates?
‘He’ll kill her,’ Del says, giving me an apologetic look for putting it so bluntly. ‘But if this is true, and if I can prove it, this is what we’ve been looking for, Dreythos. This is what will unite us.’
Drey comes to stand in front of me. He pulls me up to stand gently and puts his arms around me. ‘I’m so sorry for all this,Mari. You don’t deserve it. It’s not your burden to bear. If you ask it of me, I will order Del to terminate your pregnancy.’
He ignores Del’s shocked gasp. ‘You can’t mean to?—’
‘I can hide your scent from the others,’ he continues as if she hasn’t spoken, his eyes not leaving mine, ‘and I’ll personally fly you to a place where you will never be found. All you have to do is say that’s what you want, and all of this will be over.’
I stare at him. ‘You’d do that? You’d give up the chance for your kind to survive?’
‘For you? In a heartbeat.’
‘Why?’ I ask so quietly that I’m not sure how he hears me.
