My heart stutters in my chest.
The talon is small compared to mine, but larger than I expected—longer and thicker than my brother's talons were when they hatched weeks ago. It pushes at the edge of the opening, widening it from the inside while I work from the outside. A team effort. Mother and daughter, working together before they’ve even properly met.
I purr louder—a deep, resonant sound that rolls across the field like distant thunder. And from within the egg, I hear it. An answering purr, muffled by shell but unmistakable. Stronger than any newborn’s should be. She hears me. She knows I’m here.
Carefully, I raise my other taloned hand and use the very tip of my smallest talon to pop the cap off the egg. The top third of the shell comes away in one piece, revealing the creature curled within.
The face that looks up at me makes my heart stop.
She’s beautiful.
She looks like a calico with the way our scales blend—patches of deep obsidian black swirled with a vibrant orange in patterns I’ve never seen before. Her snout is delicate but strong; her eyes still closed; her nostrils flaring as she takes her first breaths of open air. Wet membrane clings to her scales, glistening in the sunlight.
I carefully break more of the shell away, creating an opening large enough for her to climb through. My talons work with surgical precision, cracking, and peeling, removing every obstacle between my daughter and the world.
I make the welcome tone—a specific vocalization that black dragons have used for millennia, a sound that meanssafeandhomeandmotherall at once. I call for her to come out.
She responds.
Talons grip the edge of the broken shell—talons that seem far too large for a newborn. Wings twitch against her body, still wet and folded tight, but already showing impressive span. She pulls herself up, her muscles straining, her whole body trembling with exertion. And then she’s out, tumbling onto my palm in a heap of scales and limbs and a flailing tail.
I get my first real look at my daughter, and the breath leaves my lungs in a rush.
She’s massive.
Over six feet long from snout to tail tip—a length that should be impossible for a newborn hatchling. Maur and Balterion, who hatched weeks ago and still cling to my haunches watching withwide sapphire eyes, are barely half her size. My brothers chirp in surprise at their new cousin, their tiny bodies shifting against my scales as they crane their necks for a better view. A hatchling born today shouldn’t be this big. Shouldn’t be this strong. But she is her father’s daughter, and Solaris’s ancient bloodline runs through her veins alongside my own.
Her curved horns are the exact color of Solaris’s scales—that distinctive burnt orange that I’ve traced with my fingers a thousand times, that I’ve watched gleam in firelight and catch the sun. They curve like scythes, like mine sharp and lethal, already hardening into the weapons they’ll become. Even her horns are larger than my brother's—more developed, more defined, as if she’s been growing for months instead of weeks.
His orange scales are mixed with my black in a pattern that reminds me of a rattlesnake—diamonds and zigzags running down her spine in perfect symmetry. Most of her body is onyx-like mine. The contrast is striking, beautiful, a visible declaration of her parentage written in scale and pigment.
She has a pattern of diamonds down her back, each one outlined in black and filled with orange, creating a chain of fire that runs from the base of her skull to the tip of her tail—all six feet of her. The bone fingers of her wings are as black as mine—pure obsidian, strong and sharp—but the leather stretched between them is orange. Sunset orange. Ember orange. The color of her father’s flames. When she stretches those wings experimentally, they span wider than any newborn’s should; the membranes are already strong and supple.
I drop the remains of the shell immediately as she begins to climb.
Her talons find purchase on my scales, and she pulls herself up my forearm with determined strength. She’s wobbly, uncertain—her muscles still learning how to work, her eyes still adjusting to the brightness of the world—but she doesn’t stop. Six feet of hatchling scaling my arm like it’s a mountain she was born to conquer. She climbs up my forearm, across my wrist, and onto my dragon’s neck.
She settles there, in the hollow where my skull meets my spine, and lets out a chirp of satisfaction. Her wet scales press against mine, cool and damp, already beginning to dry in the warm afternoon air. I feel her heartbeat—rapid and strong—pulsing against my neck. The weight of her is substantial, far heavier than my brothers are.
My daughter.
My precious, perfect, impossible daughter. I lift my head slowly, carefully, and turn to look at my mates gathered on the field. At the family standing in stunned silence. At the one male whose entire world has just shifted on its axis.
The look on Solaris’s face says everything. His amber eyes are fixed on the hatchling clinging to my neck, tracing the orange scales, the curved horns, the sunset-colored wing membranes. His lips part, but no sound emerges. His hands hang limp at his sides, trembling.
He knows.
He knows he’s the father.
I watch him fall to his knees.
The most powerful dragon besides my dad’s I’ve ever known—an ancient being who has survived wars and betrayals and centuriesof loneliness—crumples onto the grass as if his legs have simply stopped working. His amber eyes overflow with tears, the wetness tracking down his cheeks, disappearing into the collar of his shirt.
I can’t tell if it’s joy or shock, or if I’ve just completely shattered his understanding of what his life could be. Maybe all three. After centuries of existence, after believing he would never have children, after watching his bondmates hope and dream and yearn—he is a father.
A sob tore from his throat—raw and broken and beautiful. “A daughter.” His voice is barely a whisper, thick with his Scottish brogue, cracking on the word. “I have... I have a daughter.”
He doesn’t approach. He doesn’t move. He just kneels there in the grass, tears streaming down his face, his amber eyes locked on the six feet of hatchling nuzzling against my scales.
