“Weird bedside manner,” Cadence observed. “I’m nervous about this.”
“I am too, but I’m more nervous about the odds of our hatchlings’ survival without this. Phoebe is the last successful hatchling that my family has had; it’s been ten years. There’s nothing else like this clinic.”
“All right,” she said, worry twisting at her gut. The clinic’s success rates spoke for themselves, though, and the thought of losing her hatchlings was terrifying.
“Then he leaned over her to look right into her eyes. “Cadence, come back to my bed tonight. I know why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Do you?”
“I know what you’re planning.” He ran his thumb over her cheek. “You’ll run rather than let your children be taken from you. You’d fight to the death for them. So would I, and so would my family. If you give birth to a clutch of ice dragonlings, we will fight side by side to ensure that they stay with us. Dragonlings are sacred to us – you must know that.”
“But…you’d all be homeless. You’d lose everything.”
“I have all my lawyers working on this. I’m also an attorney. This is all months away anyway. And if it comes to that, what good is all my gold and my riches if I don’t have my children? And in the meantime, I need you with me, Cadence. In the short time that you’ve been with me, you have come to mean everything to me. I need you by my side. In my bed. In my arms. I’m stronger when you’re with me.”
Tears flooded her eyes, and the gnawing loneliness that had eaten at her for the past few days finally abated. “You? You’re the strongest dragon I’ve ever seen.”
He leaned down, holding her hand, and kissed her tears away. Then he kissed her lips, firmly yet tenderly. “That’s a different kind of strength,” he murmured.
She reached up and hugged him to her. “I’ve missed you too. So much,” she whispered in his ear.
Chapter Fourteen
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nikolai asked, glancing over the edge of the cliff.
“It’s necessary,” Cynthia said firmly, shooting her son an annoyed glance.
“If anything goes wrong…” Nikolai’s brow creased in worry.
“It won’t. You’re my backup plan.”
“No pressure there,” Nikolai muttered.
Cadence was pacing around in front of the stony hut on top of the mountain, clenching and unclenching her hands. Her eggs had been removed a week earlier, and she was still a nervous wreck. The operation had been a complete success. There was a video feed at the hatchery, with a camera pointed right at the incubation chamber, and she had access to it via her laptop. She and Orion kept checking it again and again throughout the day. She’d gone to several festival planning meetings over the last couple of days, but taken the laptop with her. She was always accompanied by guards these days when she left the Garrison lands, at Orion’s insistence; he didn’t know what Humphrey might try next.
Finally, as soon as Orion left for a mine inspection, Cynthia had made her move. She’d sent Nikolai to tell her that Cynthia wanted to see her and had urgent business to discuss. Still, Cadence had refused to leave until he’d told her that it involved her eggs – a lie that had made him unhappy, but Cynthia had insisted that he get Cadence on top of that mountain, and his mother was a hard woman to say no to.
As Nikolai shifted and flew off, Cadence walked over to Cynthia. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“I hear that you’re running into a wall with your training.”
“I’m getting better,” Cadence said. “But I still can’t completely change form when I want to. What does this have to do with my hatchlings?”
“If you’re going to be the mother of my grandlings, you need to do better. You need to be able to fight to the death to defend your children.”
“You think I wouldn’t do that?” Cadence said indignantly.
“I think you’d be willing to die for them, but not necessarily able to defend them,” Cynthia said. “You need to get to the point where you can change quickly and on command, like the rest of us. Otherwise, you are weak, and that is a danger not just to you, but to Orion, to your children, to our entire clan.”
“Cynthia.” Cadence looked at her with exasperation. “I’ve had my relatives whack me with hard sticks. I’ve meditated, I’ve visualized, I’ve jumped off hillsides, sprained my ankles, limped back to my room covered in scrapes and bruises. There’s only so much I can do. I mean, it’s not like I’ve made no progress at all. I’ve gotten to the point where I can create a blizzard that covers a hundred square feet, and my icicle spears are pretty damn impressive, if I do say so myself.”