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In moments of lucidity, Peregrine sought his dragon. More often than not, he’d find Sebastian at the bedside or slumped over with exhaustion in a nearby chair, but sometimes he was missing, and those times struck fear in Peregrine’s heart worse than the deep dark that waited for him when he closed his eyes.
“Sebastian?” he asked in a feeble voice upon waking to an eerily quiet room. “Sebastian, my lord? Where are you?”
There was no response. Not even the servants came to tend to him. Perhaps they’d pieced together what he already knew—that death was coming, and there was nothing to be done. It would be a small but sad mercy to die alone. At least then, no one would see what a terrible omega he’d turned out to be.
If only he’d thought to run away and sail the seas with Lus. It would be a lonely life, and one fraught with peril, but at least then he’d never have been given a taste of what he wanted only to have it snatched away so soon.
Peregrine blinked tears from his eyes. When they formed again, he did the same, then gave in and let himself quietly cry. Pain pulsed inside of him where he thought the eggs should be. Would they make it? If he could lay them and make Sebastian happy, at least he’d die knowing he’d served his purpose. It was more than most members of the Pedigree could say.
While he despaired, the door opened, and in stepped a familiar face. It was Everard, the doctor.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Everard said. “What an unexpected surprise. You’re a fighter, aren’t you, Parakeet?”
Parakeet? Peregrine blinked and tried to sit up, but the pain that ripped through him when he tried stopped him from moving at all. He hissed through his teeth to mitigate the worst of it and settled for shaking his head. “No, my lord. I am but an omega.”
“Nonsense.” Everard came to the bedside. “You are an omega, yes, but the fact that you live and draw breath proves your mettle. Although I do so hope we stop meeting like this. I’d much prefer to become acquainted at a time when you’re not covered in your own blood.”
Peregrine’s eyelids drooped of their own accord, and he had to fight to keep them open.
Was there that much blood?
It occurred to him that, apart from the pain churning inside of him, he couldn’t feel much of anything. The sheets could be soaked and he wouldn’t be any the wiser. If only that same numbness would dull the pain inside of him.
“Am I to die?” Peregrine lifted his head to look at Everard. “Please, I beg your honesty. I must know.”
Everard’s lips tightened. “Should I do nothing you surely will, but there’s hope for you yet, Partridge. Now, lie still. I’ll do my best to right the wrong inside of you.”
“The wrong inside of me?” Pain be damned, Peregrine propped himself up on his elbows to better look down his body. The pain was so intense he saw white, and when it receded, he’d fallen back onto the bed. Everard, eyes wide, leaned over him. Both of his hands clasped Peregrine’s shoulders, holding him down.
“Easy, now!” Everard smoothed a hand over Peregrine’s forehead to push back his sweat-soaked hair. “Struggling will only make it worse. You need rest.”
“But… but the eggs,” Peregrine panted. “The eggs are yet to be laid. I can’t rest. I have to push them out before what’s wrong with me makes wrong of them, too.”
A look of pity saddened Everard’s face. “There are no eggs, Peacock. There’s nothing in you at all.”
Peregrine’s heart stopped, and his breath caught in his throat. “That… that can’t be true.”
“It is.”
“But my lord dragon claimed my heat. It ended early. I conceived.”
“And I am not doubting you did.” Everard reached for the bedside table and from it, drew a damp rag he used to dab the sweat from Peregrine’s brow. “Nature is not always kind—not to dragon, and not to man.”
“No.” Peregrine squeezed his eyes shut, wanting—needing—to be anywhere but here, but the darkness wouldn’t take him. “No, you’re not making any sense. I conceived. Sebastian took my heat and I conceived! If not eggs, then there must be a child. Where is the child?”
The rag parted from his forehead and sloshed into the basin of water it had been plucked from. There was a long, terrible pause during which Peregrine opened his eyes in time to see Everard take his hand. “You’ve miscarried, Pigeon,” Everard confessed. “The babe is no more.”
It was a lie.
It had to be a lie.
Peregrine slid a hand down his stomach to feel where the tiny bump should be, but there was nothing, and when he pulled his hand back, it came back crimson with sticky blood.
No one in the Pedigree spoke of miscarriages.
No one had prepared him for this awful possibility.
This was worse than if he’d not conceived at all—a failure at the highest level—a sign from the divine that a Disgrace like him truly had no right to be at a dragon’s side. The future he’d envisioned—the one where Sebastian would keep him and somehow save him from egg madness—shattered like glass. He’d lost his child, and now he would lose his dragon’s love.
