Ben returns and pauses for a moment. Probably at the sight of me cradling the thief in my lap. He shakes the blanket out and wraps it around the side of her body not pressed against me.
“Do you want me to call someone to test the paternity?” Ben asks carefully.
“There’s no need.” My throat feels tight, raw. “I can sense it.”
I should have just extended my senses instead of antagonizing her. The dragon part of me has been a horror to deal with since that night. Snarling and moody and distracting me at every turn with the memory of our thief. And when Ben had said she was here, my frustration had boiled over.
I shouldn’t have taken out the beast’s reaction on her. Especially since she’s telling the truth.
It is impossible, but she’s pregnant and the spawn is mine. I can hardly breathe through the pain of it.
They’d made themselves known as soon as I’d stoked her anger. A prodding, hungry curiosity poking at my senses that had almost derailed me entirely. I’d blocked that mental channel of communication to keep myself focused.
“So we had a thief…” Ben starts, waiting for me to fill in the rest.
“Last week, during my heat.”
Ben’s brows shoot up. I send him and Maggie away during my yearly heats. They usually last a couple of days, and it’s hellish. This last one had been shorter. Apparently because it had been successful.
“What do you want to do?” Ben asks. “If anyone finds out, she’s going to be a target.”
That’s inevitable. The thief in my arms may already be entangled with unsavory individuals, but with this, she’s been forced into a world of different players. I have many enemies lying in wait. All it takes is for one to find out, and our whole world will know of my new weakness.
Acting as if I want nothing to do with the child or their mother won’t work either. Enough people are aware of my history. They know I’d never abandon my blood.
They will assume this woman’s place in my life based on the fact that dragons can only breed with their mate. I narrow my eyes at the white scar I’d left from my bite. The mark would pass for a mating mark if anyone else were to look for it.
But there is no bond tickling my senses.
“She’ll need to move in here,” I say, thinking quickly. It’s easier to think about specifics than to think about what she’s carrying. “There are side effects that only my presence will help with.”
The circles under her eyes are dark with exhaustion. The effect of the spawn draining her heat energy may be only one of many issues to deal with. I won’t know more until she wakes.
“I’ll tell Maggie to prepare a room for…” Ben trails off, waiting for me to name the woman in my arms.
I press my lips together before confessing. “I don’t know her name.”
Ben whistles. “I’ll start on that then.”
He picks up her jacket and pulls her wallet from the pocket. “If this ID is correct, her name is Katarina Smith.”
Katarina. It’s a nice name.
“Of course it’s Smith,” Ben mutters, and my lips twitch.
“Find out what you can.” I straighten as a memory surfaces. “But first, can you get an order from Maria’s? She’ll need food when she wakes up.”
Ben raises a brow. “Sure thing, boss. Are you sure you don’t want me for anything else?”
I press my lips together. “I should be able to handle one woman, pregnant or not.”
“She seemed a little angry with you.”
I shrug as if I don’t know why she’d possibly be angry with me. My heat has caused a pregnancy, and I had not been kind to her when we parted. There’d been a hopeful look in her eyes that I’d wanted to snuff out. I hadn’t wanted her to have any hope because there is none when it comes to me.
She will not find someone who can care for her heart here.
That she, a criminal who no doubt regularly risks her life, would end up pregnant with the only dragon conceived in the last century against all odds sounds like a joke meant to torture me.
The Fates must be laughing.
8
KATARINA
THE WARMTH IS the first thing I notice when I wake. I want to moan and press my face into the sensation. The cold plaguing me for the past week has been relentless. I can only fill the tub with so much hot water before running out, and when it goes cold within minutes of me submerging myself, it feels like a Sisyphean task.
The heated blankets that Stella brought had been smart, but really only warmed me enough to make me shiver only every few minutes instead of constantly. I can’t walk around for the rest of this pregnancy swathed in blankets needing outlets.
Continuing like this without answers is untenable. I need help, so I went back to the dragon and now I’m warm.
“Are you awake?” a delicious voice asks.
I sigh. My eyes blink open and I freeze. I’m pressing my face into the fabric of Kalos’s dress shirt. Kalos the dick. Kalos the dragon who accused me of lying about being pregnant with his child.
I push away, but he doesn’t let me fall out of his lap where I’m curled.
“Take a minute to reorient yourself. How do you feel?” The sneering man from before is gone, but I know this game now. This concern he’s showing me won’t last.
“I feel fine,” I say, and he lets me pull away completely. We’re on a couch in his office. I’m in my tank top, but have a blanket wrapped around me. Kalos’s jacket rests on the couch arm, the snow white of his crisp shirt pulls across his powerful-looking body and contrasts with the black scales that frame his face. It’s odd to see him in clothing.
I’ll blame my newfound warmth for why my cheeks are hot.
“Better than before?” Kalos asks.
“The cold is gone. Wait, does that mean—” My hand drops to my stomach.
“They are fine.”
“They?” My face drains of blood at the thought of there being more than one in there.
“The dragon you carry. I don’t know the sex yet.”
The dragon I carry. As if he doesn’t want to call it a baby.
“You believe me then?” I ask, annoyed.
Kalos looks away. If a man on top of the world could look embarrassed, it would be what his face looks like now. “I was rash in accusing you of lying. I can sense the truth.”
I wait, expectant.
Kalos frowns and grits his teeth before giving me what I want. “I’m sorry.”
I want to ask him what exactly he’s apologizing for, but I don’t really want to dwell on the way his accusation burned me or how the words the morning after our night together still have the power to make my heart twinge. This isn’t about me.
This is going to be awkward for both of us.
“The baby is okay?” I ask.
“Yes, and healthy.”
I blow out a breath in relief. “And I don’t have to turn into a popsicle?”
“That is an unusual reaction, but it makes sense. Dragons are usually hatched in eggs. Their development depends on how much heat energy they are fed—”
“Am I’m going to lay an egg?” I ask without thinking, my eyes wide.