To Love a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,39

done? Leyloni…”

Her cheeks flushed. She kept her face downturned as she pulled the blanket over her lap and said, “You have done nothing.”

Serek’s cries quieted as he sat up.

Arysteon’s fingers twitched, and his claws pressed against Leyloni’s flesh. He withdrew his hands abruptly. He could not allow himself to harm her any further. “You are bleeding, Leyloni. That…that is not nothing.”

“It is natural.”

Arysteon lifted a hand, sweeping back loose strands of his hair that had fallen into his face. He closed his fist on his hair and squeezed tight, producing a faint sting atop his head. “Natural? Bleeding from a wound is natural. This is not natural for any creature that has not suffered an injury!”

He leaned forward on hand and knees and reached for her, delicately catching her chin and lifting her face toward his. “Was I too forceful? Did I hurt you?”

Leyloni curled her fingers around his wrist and shook her head. “No, Arysteon. You did not harm me. What we shared was wonderful. It…was also my first time, so there was some…discomfort, and there was likely some blood after you breached me, but this…” She averted her eyes. “This is my bleeding. Females—human females—bleed once every moon cycle. It…is a sign of fertility. It means we can bear young. It is a good thing.”

She looked back at him, smiling shyly. “This is simply poor timing.”

Arysteon’s mind raced, concern and confusion warring with the implications of what she’d said. His feelings for her, this connection that had been formed between them, it was all so new, so raw, so unexplored. “So…you are unharmed?”

“I am unharmed.”

Serek’s hand settled on Arysteon’s braced arm, calling Arysteon’s attention down to the hatchling. Serek looked up with those dark eyes and smiled, speaking words in his nonsense language of which only he knew the meaning.

Leyloni reached out, picked Serek up, and sat him on her lap. He turned toward her, immediately seeking Leyloni’s naked breast and latching on with his mouth.

She started. Her gaze dropped to the hatchling, and she frowned as she caressed his hair. “He…misses his mother.”

The soft sorrow in Leyloni’s words produced an all too familiar ache in Arysteon’s heart. His brow creased, and he reached forward tentatively, smoothing the backs of his fingers down the hatchling’s arm. “Are you not his mother now by all but blood?”

Leyloni’s frown deepened, and her hand slowed in Serek’s dark locks. “I am. And he is so young that he will forget his birth mother before long. It will be my duty to tell him of her. To ensure he knows he is the son of Atalla, and that she was a proud huntress, a loving mother, the best of friends and sisters. To ensure he knows that he carries her strength and spirit.”

Arysteon’s eyes rose to Leyloni. There was determination in her expression, shining through the sadness in her eyes and the doubt in her voice. She was displaying a hint of that fierceness at her core that he’d glimpsed so often in his few short days with her. He had no doubt that Atalla had been a strong, capable female, but he could not imagine anyone matching his mate.

Did Leyloni not recognize her own strength, her own capabilities? Did she not understand what Arysteon saw when he looked upon her?

She was Serek’s mother, and if her bleeding meant she was fertile…she would also be mother to Arysteon’s hatchlings. What would it be like to see her belly grow with new life inside it? What would it be like to see her holding his son or daughter in her arms like this, feeding them, soothing them?

He’d known all along that hatchling was the wrong term for human young. They did not lay eggs like dragons, birds, and lizards. There were so many differences between Arysteon’s kind and Leyloni’s, so many things he might never have considered, but he found himself looking forward to experiencing those differences firsthand.

In claiming her, he had claimed Serek as his child. What would their little clan look like in a few years? How different would Leyloni and Arysteon’s offspring be from Serek? How similar would they be? He could almost imagine them laughing and playing, could almost imagine the chorus of little giggles as they splashed through puddles in the rain or raced through a springtime forest in bloom.

And Arysteon was eager to make it happen. Eager to touch her, to mate with her, to gift her his seed again and again so it would take root.