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.
Kalos has the grace not to laugh at me, but I catch his lips twitching before he answers.
“I don’t believe so. I have never heard of a witch carrying a dragon’s young. I would have assumed that you’d produce a witch, but with the way the whelp is sucking heat away from you, they will be a dragon. It will just take a form compatible with you during gestation.”
“Okay, so a live birth and a baby?”
Kalos nods. I’m caught on that detail for a moment. I haven’t really thought any further than handling this day by day, and the hellish effect of always being cold hasn’t left much time to consider other things.
I nod after absorbing the information. I’m having a baby. A baby that will turn into a dragon.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You were saying something about dragon eggs needing heat?”
“The parents will usually blow fire on their egg.” Kalos’s mouth twists in discomfort but continues. “The more fire, the shorter the incubation.”
“But I won’t survive under fire,” I squeak, and it breaks Kalos out of whatever thoughts are bothering him.
He shrugs. “You may, you may not. Your body will change to fit the needs of the whelp. At this moment, it would seem that you’ll be able to get by on the heat needs with my assistance.”
“How are you better than a heated blanket?”
His brows raise.
I shake my head. “I mean, how can you holding me satisfy that need… more than a heated blanket?” There’s really no polite way to ask that.
Kalos’s lips curve, and I’m grateful he doesn’t take offense. “I can manipulate heat energy since fire is my element. The heat draw of your child doesn’t deplete me in the same way it does to everything or anyone else.”
Like me. The baby is depleting my heat. I’ve only been at this for a week and am already lacking in something that they need.
“It’s your child too,” I whisper.
A flash of pain in Kalos’s eyes has me snapping my mouth shut.
“Yes.” His voice is like rocks grinding together, and he shakes his head. He stands, walking to the window as if to take a moment before responding. “You will move in here of course—”
“Of course? Why would I move in here?” Sometimes I open my mouth before thinking. Kalos turns back and exasperation already edges his mood, but he answers my interruption.
“Because we don’t know how often you’ll need my assistance,” he says patiently.
“Why wouldn’t you just be able to come over to my place for a cuddle?” I ask, even though the idea of this polished man hanging out in my tiny apartment makes me cringe.
Kalos’s jaw tenses. “I wouldn’t be able to protect you as well if you reside elsewhere.”
Technically if I need protection, he could hire a bodyguard, but that statement is hinting at other undercurrents. Dread pools in my belly.
“And are we going to need protection?” I ask.
“Yes.” Kalos pauses before continuing. “I have many enemies, Katarina.”
I blink. “You know my name?”
He looks away as if uncomfortable. “Ben checked your ID.”
So he hadn’t known my name. He didn’t want to. He hadn’t been tempted to find me after I left here that morning. I close my eyes and mentally shove that annoying, needy part of myself away. There are more important things to worry about.
Like, safety.
“These enemies… wouldn’t it be better if I left here and never contact you again?” I ask.
Kalos taps his fingers on his folded arm.