Hoarded by the Dragon (Monstrous Matches, #4)

I’d always expected that when I had kids, it would be with a man who loved me. Who was excited to be a father and we’d be every bit of the family that I never had. It’s not fair to hold Kalos to that expectation, but releasing my desire for that is hard.

It clings to me with skeletal hands. It has the power to make me miserable if I’m constantly thinking of what I don’t and can’t have. It’s not my fault Kalos is the definition of emotionally unavailable. I can’t expect that to change. I can only expect to adapt to the situation.

I’m having a baby. They will be my family. Stella will be my family. Maybe with time, Maggie and Ben will be too. I can mourn the moment of losing something I never had, but I won’t let that take me down in a spiral.

I don’t realize that I’ve fallen asleep until I wake in the dark with a start, shivering.

Cinnamon and the scent of campfire.

He’s here.

I’m on my side, and the blankets behind me lift.

My throat swells closed. The chill has returned.

The bed dips like he’s pressed his knee on the edge.

“I am sorry for hurting you,” he says softly. There’s a warmth near my cheek as if his hand hovers there, but it disappears without touching me.

I swallow and don’t respond. The emotions I thought I’d tamped down are too close to the surface. I don’t want to say something stupid like Why don’t you want me?

When really, why would he want me?

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks.

“No.” The word is barely a rasp on my lips, but he hears it anyway. His body slides behind mine, his arm wrapping around my waist.

I gasp at the contact of his hot body against mine. The cold flees immediately. The pajamas I wear are flannel and act as a buffer, covering every bit of skin between us.

The instant relief almost brings tears to my eyes.

“Sleep, Rina,” he says. The words brush over the exposed skin of my neck and ear.

I don’t fight the command. I don’t snap at him not to call me a nickname if he’s the one putting boundaries in place. I don’t get mad at him for making it too easy to soften for him.

I give in.





14





KATARINA





BREATHE IN. Breathe out.

I move with my breath, enjoying the burn and stretch of muscles. I follow the directive from the instructor on the tablet to keep one knee bent and dig into the knife edge of my back foot for Warrior II. This is nice. Calming. I can almost forget the worries that try to flurry around in my brain and focus on the moment.

Stella’s gasping breaths beside me are distracting, but I don’t hold it against her. There are a lot of distracting things. Things like the grit of the yoga mat on the stone patio, the sun beating down pleasantly on my back, that it’s been a whole month since my world was turned on its head, or that my hair smells like campfire.

I shy away from that train of thought and the dragon it’s going to revolve around, focusing hard on the cheerful instructor’s words as she tells us to bring our feet together at the top of the mat before moving from our core to raise our right foot. Oh, a balancing move!

Stella topples with a shriek.

“Are you okay?” I pause the video and Stella stays spread on the mat, trying to catch her breath.

“I’m fine. Everything is fine… this was a terrible idea,” she says.

My lips twitch. “It was your idea.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t be a bad one. All the research says that yoga is great for birth.”

I skip over the thought of birth and laugh. “That’s great to know, but you don’t have to do it with me.”

“I’m being supportive.” Stella’s face is bright red with exertion. “I thought this was supposed to be relaxing, not pushups and planks.”

“I’m sure it gets easier with practice,” I muse, hiding my secret smile that Stella is willing to go out of her comfort zone for me just to be supportive.

She glares at me, no doubt noticing that I’m not gasping or sweaty. “Why are you good at this?”

I raise a brow and point at myself. “Cat burglar, remember? Being able to balance is kind of important.”

“But you stopped doing that ages ago.”

I smile and shrug, unwilling to admit that I’d kept up my physical routines. The compulsion not to lose strength tastes like that life-and-death decision still. Sometimes moving my body lets me relax when the world and my conscience yells at me, and other times… it’s because I’m afraid of needing those skills again and not having them.

“Some things just stay with you,” I say.

“How did you get into that anyway?”

“I’ve just always had an aptitude for it.” It’s too embarrassing to admit the real reason I started trying to balance on everything I could and perfecting my cartwheels since I can remember.

Stella raises a brow at me. “Sure you have.” She takes a deep breath and blows a strand of hair out of her face. “I think I’m ready to finish it.”

I glance at the practice. There’s twenty minutes left. “We don’t need to do a whole practice today. I hardly think I need to be ready to give birth soon.”

“Okay!” Stella accepts my offer readily. “Do you know how long you’re going to be pregnant for? You still don’t look like it, and I figured with how quickly you were experiencing side effects that pregnancy would be quicker for dragons.”

I purse my lips. “I don’t know.”

I’m the same size as when I’d shown up a month ago. Maybe I’ll ask Kalos how long gestation is if I ever see him. He makes himself scarce, only sliding into bed to act as my personal heater after I’ve fallen asleep. Sometimes I wake to his presence before going back to sleep, and sometimes I don’t, only catching whiffs of campfire on my sheets in the morning and waking comfortably cozy.

He's good at being a heater. The chill hasn’t returned, but I’ve been so tired that I haven’t been able to talk to him other than to mumble something nonsensical before he tells me to sleep with his authoritative voice that I want to curl up in.

During daylight hours, he avoids me. At first, I didn’t think he was. I figured he always ate his meals in his office and was never in the same parts of the house I was. But the passing comments from Maggie and Ben clued me in that this is unusual.

I don’t want to chase the man from his own home, but I have to be here for my and the baby’s safety. So I try to make it easier on everyone. I set up my workplace in a beautiful room on the other side of the house than his study and try not to utilize Ben’s time too much.

It helps that Ben never makes me feel like an inconvenience. He goes out of his way to make sure I have everything I need before I even think to ask for it. He and Maggie have made this whole experience a little more bearable.

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