Movement catches my eye, and I turn my head to see Raven slowly raising her skull. Her sapphire eyes blink open, hazy with sleep, and she looks around the interior of the cavern with the disoriented confusion of someone waking from a deep dream. Her gaze sweeps past Orpheus, past the hot spring, past the scattered remnants of her violent entrance—and locks on me.
On me, sitting on our egg.
Something shifts in those sapphire depths. Something soft and warm and achingly vulnerable.
Keir notices her waking before anyone else. His stormy gray eyes flick to her rising head, and in the next heartbeat, he blinks out of existence. The air rushes into the space where he stood with a soft pop, and I stare at the empty spot for several moments, waiting.
He reappears with a live deer clamped in his jaws.
The animal thrashes and kicks, its hooves scrabbling against the stone floor, its terrified bleating echoing off the cavern walls. The scent of its fear floods the chamber—sharp and acrid, cutting through the mineral tang of the hot spring. Keir releases it, and the deer staggers, legs splaying on the unfamiliar terrain.
Raven lunges.
The movement is so fast I barely track it—one moment she’s lying on the sand, the next she’s airborne, her massive body uncoiling like a striking snake. Her jaws gape wide, revealing rows of razor teeth, and she snatches the deer from the ground in a single fluid motion. Two bites. That’s all it takes. The deer disappears down her throat whole, barely a bulge visible as it slides down her serpentine neck.
She’s still hungry. I can see it in the way her nostrils flare, the way her tail lashes against the sand, the predatory gleam that hasn’t left her sapphire eyes.
Ziggy’s displacer beast arrives next, blinking into existence with a deer wrapped in its tentacles. The creature releases its prey with a wet slap against the stone, and Raven is on it before the deer can even register its new surroundings. Another two bites. Another swallow.
Between the two of them—Keir blinking in and out of existence like a ghost, Ziggy’s beast appearing and disappearing with its eldritch grace—they bring six deer for Raven to devour. She eats them all with a ferocity that borders on desperation, her body demanding fuel to replace everything she expended during the labor.
Once full, she settles back down with a heavy sigh that stirs the sand around her snout. Her massive body curls close tothe nest, her scales warm against the woven branches, and she drapes one enormous wing over me and the egg. The membrane is thin enough to let the bioluminescent glow filter through, casting everything in soft blue-green shadows. The weight of it is comforting. Protective. A shelter within a shelter.
I hear the change in her breathing when she falls asleep—the deep, even rhythm of true rest. Her dragoness trusts me to guard our egg. Trusts me completely.
I’ve never felt more honored in my entire existence.
When the chaos of her feeding is over and the chamber has settled into peaceful quiet, I shift back to human form. The transformation is gentle this time, almost reluctant—my phoenix doesn’t want to leave the nest, doesn’t want to abandon its post. But I need to use my voice. Need to express gratitude that chirps and trills can’t convey.
I slip out from under Raven’s wing carefully, moving slowly so as not to disturb her sleep. The air outside her shelter feels cool against my bare skin, and I realize I’m covered in a fine layer of down—remnants of my plucked feathers clinging to my human form. I brush them away as I approach the others gathered in the egg chamber.
Ziggy stands near the water’s edge in his human form, tall and lean with the same predatory grace he carries in his displacer beast shape. His dark hair is disheveled, and exhaustion lines his face, clear in the shadows beneath his eyes and the slight slump of his shoulders. He’s been hunting for hours. For his daughter.
“Thank you for your help, Zigmander.” I extend my hand, and he takes it. His grip is firm, warm, slightly sticky in the way of hiskind. We shake, and I pour every ounce of genuine gratitude I possess into the gesture.
“Anytime!” His voice is bright and enthusiastic, but then his expression shifts. The reality of the situation seems to hit him all at once. “My nest daughter is having her first baby.” His face pales, the color draining from his cheeks. “I’m a grandpa.”
The word hangs in the air between us, heavy with meaning.
“Thankfully yer aging has slowed because of yer mate.” Solaris’s brogue cuts through the moment, warm and teasing. He claps Ziggy on the shoulder with one massive hand, his amber eyes crinkling at the corners. “Ye barely look older than she does.”
I smile at the exchange and pull my phone from... somewhere. I’ve never quite figured out where my possessions go when I shift, only that they’re always there when I return to human form. The screen illuminates my face as I open the family chat and upload the images I took of the egg nestled in my nest. The black shell gleams in the photos, the scale pattern clearly visible, the iridescent swirls catching the bioluminescent light like captured galaxies.
I hit send and wait.
The responses come almost immediately; the chat exploding with notifications.
Mina:Her egg looks like the one she was born in.
Thauglor:My baby’s first egg.
Klauth:Do we know who the father is?
Corvus:Raven hasn’t told us.
Lily:Can we do a daddy and gender reveal party?
Thorne:Yes! Can we?
