“I require fresh garments. But not like yours.”

  I didn’t smirk, but I came close. Kat glowered, bat wings fluttering to hold her in place, as she cocked back a leather-gloved fist. Eleanor shied away and raised her hand. We were in a private room on the accommodation level, not as fancy as the suite I’d rented to Luckdire, but nice enough. The door could also be locked from the outside.

  “Ladies, let’s keep this civil.” Typically, Kat’s… combative nature was an asset as far as I was concerned, but right now, it felt a bit wrong to me. Eleanor had been disarmed, literally in one case, and was my prisoner. Kat’s preferred form of correctional instruction would be tantamount ot a war crime.

  “I need new clothes!” Eleanor snapped. Pulling at the blood-soaked tunic she was wearing, the dried crimson snapped as she broke it away from her skin. I spun round and found Esme glaring at me.

  “Hi, love.”

  “What exactly is going on here?”

  “Esme, I’d like to introduce you to Eleanor de Fallade. Miss de Fallade is the daughter of the guy who just laid siege to Baginton.”

  “And now he’s running, and his special little princess is being a pain in the ass,” Kat muttered from behind me. “I’m getting powerful young master vibes, and I hate young masters.”

  “I’m a young mistress.”

  “That isn’t helping you in my eyes. How much is the ransom?” I met Esme’s cool gaze and winced.

  “I got him to agree to leave my towns alone. And to withdraw his army from Baginton.”

  “No gold?” she asked in shock.

  Greed went into a frenzy. The little guy was pulling at his hair, wailing and weeping. He punched Regret, but that little monster was on the rise, and it absorbed the blow before enveloping the goblin-like apparition in a tight hug.

  “No.” It physically hurt me to say.

  Esme moved close and gave me a hug, pressing herself against me. She was only wearing a simple shift that hung down to her knees. She pulled back for a moment to lock eyes with me, then leaned up and kissed me.

  “When does she go back?”

  “Tomorrow. Bob broke their army, but we took some losses. The orlics… will recover rapidly. They’ll be dividing like slimes with infinite food for a week or so,” Kat said.

  “The orlic threat is going to cause you problems.” Eleanor tried to cross her arms in front of her chest, then frowned as only one responded.

  “Not as much as it’s going to cause anyone who pisses me off.” I turned back around, and Esme pressed herself against my side.

  “You can’t control them. It’s why we exterminate them whenever possible. They breed like mice if you leave even a handful alive.”

  Kat flew in close and waved a leather-clad fist under Eleanor's nose. “They’ll be our mice!”

  There was a cough behind us, and I fought Wrath to maintain my self-control. This wasn’t meant to be a family gathering.

  “Bob, I released the zombies.”

  “Thanks, Tim.” I didn’t look back. “Anything else?”

  “Erm, any chance…”

  “No, you can’t resume the sleep programming of the unibunnies.” I was a monster, but not that much of a monster.

  “Oh. Ok.” He sounded so forlorn, I had to glance over my shoulder. He was fidgeting and tapping at his wristpad.

  “Get some numbers for Kat. If you can prove it isn’t just evil, I’ll let you continue to brainwash sleeping monsters using my voice.” That sentence had not been on my bingo card for this year.

  He looked up and gave me a broad smile before spinning, his lab coat swirling, and hurrying away.

  “What about me?” Eleanor stamped a foot. “I need to go home and get my arm regrown.”

  “You’ve still got your left,” Kat chuckled. “You only really need one.”

  “I’m a goddamn paladin! I need a shield arm and weapon arm!”

  “And you’ll get it back.” Kat sounded like a tired aunt dealing with a spoiled niece. “Just not today.”

  “Bob.”

  I looked down at Esme and smiled, but my heart wasn’t in it. “Ok. Let’s go. Kat, keep an eye on her, and if Tim gets you that review of the brainwashing, just say no?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The pixie glanced back and scowled. “Fine. You just go galavanting off on another adventure.”

  “Well, I do need to go fight in the arena, and there is a war on…”

  “Don’t even think about it!” Esme slapped my arm. “We’ve got a little one to think about.”

  Ah, shit. This was going to get old really fast, but I couldn’t say it. Esme had latched on to the idea that the egg was our baby, not something the system forcibly inserted into me, and that I’d had to push out like a nightmarish kidney stone—failure to bond suddenly made so much sense to me.

  “I’m going to have to do the arena soon. Contracts suck.”

  “Don’t you shrug at me. Let’s go see this Dagrun and get our baby back.”

  “It’s an egg, love.”

  “Not for long!”

  I sighed and fished a portal stone out of my possum pouch. As the blue oval appeared next to me, I cautiously stepped through, closely followed by my lady-love. The heap of gold, no longer quite so impressive as it had been the first time I’d seen it, gleamed. I spotted a pink eyelid hidden among the shinies and coughed loudly.

  “That’s a big pile of OHMYGOD!”

  Dagrun waking up and sliding her head out of her hoard caused Esme to screech in shock. She clutched at my arm as Dagrun blinked sleepily at me.

  “Who’s dead?” rumbled the pink dragon, following up with a lazy yawn that made Esme’s fingers bite into my arm.

  “Lots of humans.”

  Pink iris’s narrowed as the much larger dragon glared down at me. “What have you done?” The voice was soft, but still shook the walls with echoes.

  “There’s a war on out there, Dagrun. We got caught up in a battle between light and dark, and well… the kids came out of their shells.”

  “I’m aware of the war. How is Lille holding up?”

  “Erm… I wouldn’t ever want to piss her off?”

  Dagrun leaned her head back and roared with laughter. “She’s a dangerous one. She’ll get it out of her system as she grows up. Who’s your friend?”

  “Dagrun, this is Esme, my uh, partner. “Esme, Dagrun, leaders of the TOTS.”

  Esme dropped a slight curtsy, earning a snort from the pink dragon. “A pleasure.” Esme was unusually formal, which gave me pause.

  “Likewise. If you haven’t gotten a TOTS killed, what can I do for you?”

  “Looking to pick up the egg and move it back to my dungeon.”

  Large, scaly pink eyelids descended ponderously and rose again. “Why?”

  Bugger. I glanced at Esme and made a “this one's for you” kind of face.

  “Well, your… dragon-ness—” I nudged her with an elbow, “—Dagrun. I want to raise the young one myself. With Bob.”

  Dagrun looked over at me. “And you think you can manage this?”

  “Yes! I mean, yeah, sure. Once the war is sorted, things will settle down. We’ve got the dungeon for biomass. A massive army of, er, loyal troops to guard my—our lair. I’m rich, Esme is lovely. I can’t think of a better home for a… is there a word for baby dragons?”

  “Draglets.”

  “Really?”

  Dagrun shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, Bob. So you’re rich, and she’s kind. And very pretty.” A pink neck stretched out as Dagrun came close, and a large, forked tongue flicked in and out a couple of times. “Hmm. You’re not scared, woman. Why not?” Lips curled back to reveal fangs the size of Esme’s torso. I needed to work on my smile; I wasn’t half as intimidating as that.

  Esme just nodded politely. “Bob would protect me if it came to it. And I don’t think he’d have brought me if he thought you were a threat.”

  “He’s protected you before?”

  “More than once. He saved my life.”

  I blushed. Bloody mammal suit betraying me. Dagrun didn’t miss my reaction.

  “Why, Bob?”

  “Boobs.” Esme punched my arm. “I mean… Part of it is the mammal, part of it is the lizard.” I prayed Dagrun would understand.

  “And what does that mean?” Shit. Esme wasn’t going to let that go.

  “The dragon in me thinks of you as… mine. Not in a weird way! As something that belongs to me, and I need to protect.” Judging from her face, I wasn’t making this any better. “The mammal part mmph mmph.”

  “Pardon?” Esme’s voice was icy and cool. Positively sub-zero.

  “I said I mmph you.”

  “He says he loves you.” I glared at Dagrun. “He is beginning to integrate both sides of himself. I was right to trust the young TOTS to him, I think.”

  Esme was looking at me with wide eyes. I called her love all the time, but I’d never said the magic words. Not even when she wore that outfit she’d had me pick up in Ankmapak… I shook myself to dispel the happy memories.

  Esme was still staring at me.

  “I do. I love you.” Why did it feel so awkward to say? Like I was exposing some part of myself. I waited for her to snigger or joke, but she didn’t. She leaned in and kissed me.

  Just a simple brushing of her lips against mine, nothing heavy or overtly passionate, but a shower of golden sparks exploded around me.

  “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

  I glared up at Dagrun, who was still smiling in a way that made me feel like a steak and ale pie. “Is there anything I need to know about moving the egg?”

  “It can’t be flown out; the cold at this altitude will hurt the draglet. Not to mention the wind chill. You can teleport?”

  “Yep.”

  She snorted. “Dragon-mages. You’ll lose out on some evolutions for the sake of your core. It makes you weak.”

  “I killed Umbraxis. Blew his guts out.” Pride in having detonated someone from the inside was perhaps unwarranted, but I felt it anyway. Vanity preened in my mind.

  “Umbraxis the Destroyer is dead? How did you do it?” She seemed very eager to hear all the details, so I gave her the rough outline, up to and including allowing myself to be eaten so I could give him terminal indigestion.

  Dagrun roared with laughter, but Esme gave me a disgusted look.

  “Was that what I was washing off you? When I got shot?”

  I nodded reluctantly.

  “That’s gross. Dagrun, I would like to see my egg. Thank you for taking care of it for us, but I’ll keep this delinquent in line and make sure he behaves himself.”

  “Follow.” Dagrun set off down the tunnel that led to the nesting room. “It won’t be a baby. It will be born like Bob and I were, with full memories of a previous life and draconic instincts.”

  “So it won’t call me mama?”

  “Possibly. Some of us inherit the memories of the very young, like poor Lille.”

  We emerged into the moist warmth of the egg cave, and I looked around. There it was. The dark shell looked less rubbery than before, and when we arrived, I brushed a hand against it and felt how it had dried and turned more brittle.

  “Kidney stone,” I muttered, remembering the pain in my poor cloaca.

  “We can’t call it that. How about Galvan?”

  I looked at Esme in confusion. “What sort of a name is that?”

  “My granddad. He was a good man.”

  “The draglet will already have a name, Esme. Like we all did when we hatched.” Dagrun’s tone was surprisingly gentle.

  “So I can’t pick a name?”

  “Probably not.”

  She sighed and stroked the shell. “You’ll be big and strong and kind, whatever your name is.”

  I remembered listening to Kat yelling at me through my shell to hurry the hell up and hatch, and resolved to watch what I said around the egg.

  “Righto. Let’s get junior back home.” I pulled a stone from my storage space, but before I could open the portal, Dagrun raised a clawed forepaw.

  “Just one more thing. I’m a traditional kind of lady. I insist that you two are married before you take the egg.”