Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Hatch Day
I ran down the hatchery stair with my hair loose and Cassius one step behind me.
Half the keep was already in the doorway.
The cooks in their aprons, the masons, the stable hands.
Jory, still holding his gate spear.
The griffin girl, perched on the new lintel under the carved dragon, with her wings finally grown back brown and full.
They parted for me without a word.
The first egg was rocking in its hollow.
A web of cracks ran over the top, just like Pip's had in the training ring.
Pip was already there, sitting on the rim of the hollow with her neck stretched out, chirping at it.
I knelt in the warm sand.
Cassius knelt across from me.
"Do I help it?" I whispered.
"No. Just be there."
So I was there.
A piece of shell popped off and fell into the sand.
Then another.
A small black snout pushed through, wet and shining, and sneezed.
Somebody in the doorway laughed and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
The shell split down the side.
He tumbled out into the sand, wet and crumpled, black as wet ink with a ridge of tiny gold scales down his back.
His wings were stuck flat.
His eyes were shut tight.
He lifted his head on his thin neck and swayed, the way Pip had.
Then he swayed toward me.
I held out my hands.
He crawled into them and opened his eyes, and they were gold.
The whole hatchery breathed out at once.
Cassius made the low humming sound in his chest, the one from the arena.
The hatchling turned his head toward it and answered, a thin high squeak.
Then he bit my thumb.
"Every time," Cassius said, and his voice wasn't steady at all.
Pip climbed down from the rim, marched across the sand, and sniffed the newcomer from nose to tail.
He squeaked at her.
She considered him.
Then she lay down and curled her body around him in a ring, and put her chin on top of his head.
The doorway made a sound.
"What's his name?" the griffin girl called from the lintel.
I looked at Cassius.
"In the Reach the hatcher names them," he said.
"Then I'll take my time." I touched one finger to the gold ridge on the hatchling's back. "He's got a hundred years."
The wedding was four days later, in the hatchery, because I wouldn't leave the eggs and the hatchling for a whole afternoon.
The cook came up the coast on the night boat with my roommate and a wedding cake in a crate.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Too Late for My Shifters' Regret are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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