Page 102 of Dead Drop

Just his name. But the way I say it surprises me. Not the way I've been saying it in conversation, in the tactical arguments, in the quiet mornings over the fire.

Not the way I say it when he's inside me and the pleasure crests and his name is the only word left. Something underneath those. The same depth he used when he said Ada for the first time—after the edging, after I broke, the name pulled from my mouth by a pleasure so sharp it stripped every other word away.

Like I've been holding it. Like I just now decided to mean it.

His whole body goes still. The bone stops moving. His tail freezes mid-sweep.

His wings shift—a micro-adjustment, the membrane rustling, the equivalent of catching his breath. The fire flickers against his ribs. For a moment he's just stone and muscle and the wings folded against his back, every line of him suspended.

He turns.

I'm standing in the doorway of the room he built for our child. One hand still on the frame. My belly round beneath the jacket, the curve visible now even through the fur.

The afternoon light falling through the canopy behind me catches the pale furs inside the chamber, makes them glow.

He crosses the aerie in two strides. His hands find me—one behind my head, fingers threading into my hair with the care that's become his default when he's touching me, the claws careful against my scalp. The other hand on my hip, pulling me against him.

He's warm, fever-warm, the heat of him radiating from the muscle beneath the scaled skin.

I'm laughing. The sound is unexpected—bright, real, spilling out of me because the absurdity of it hit me all at once: the nine-foot monster crossing the aerie like the floor is on fire because I said his name in a new way. The motion of his movement, that deliberate stride, the way his whole body responds to the sound of my voice saying his name like I mean it.

He lifts me. My arms around his neck. My face in the hollow of his throat, the place where the scaled skin softens into something almost tender.

His heartbeat hammering against my cheek, the rhythm different from anything I've encountered—faster, wilder, the beat of something that wanted to hear that sound and wasn't sure it would.

His tail wraps my thighs. Not tight. Comfortable.

The scaled tip warm against the back of my knee. His wings fold around us both, the membrane warm, the cocoon enclosing the laugh and the heartbeat and the name still hanging in the air between us.

He carries me to the furs. The main nest. The layers that have become my understanding of comfort.

He takes his time settling my back against the pale furs, arranging the blankets with deliberate care. My jacket comes off slowly, peeled away like he's unwrapping something precious.

His mouth finds my throat. His breath against my skin, the claws careful as they trace my collarbone. He traces the mark from the first bite, the scar pale now, barely visible unless he's the one touching it.

His tongue there. It pulls low in my belly.

He curves his spine down—the effort of folding nine feet into the space above my body visible in every line of his shoulders—to reach my breasts. The nipples are sensitive now, the pregnancy reshaping them in small ways that I feel every morning. His mouth on one, gentle.

His hand on the other. The warmth of his tongue and the coolness of the furs beneath me and the weight of his body arranged with exquisite care around mine.

The curve of my belly gets his attention. He shifts lower, his massive shoulders hunched nearly in half. His lips pressed against the swell.

His breath warm through my skin. He stays there for a long moment. His mouth on our child. His hands framing the curve like it's something precious. Something he built with me. Something that's becoming real every time his hands touch that swell.

"She?" I ask.

"She," he confirms. Not a question. Not a hope.

A certainty. His mouth against my skin.

A girl.

In this world, a girl is something that has to be armored before she can be soft. I know this. I've been this—four years on the wall, sleeping with my blade, learning to take up less space so I could hold more of it. A girl in the settlements is a target before she's a person.

But she won't grow up in a settlement. She'll grow up here, above the canopy, in the territory of the most dangerous thingin the grid. She'll know his tail and his amber eyes before she knows what the white robes mean.

My mother's face, fading at the edges. Going soft. I wonder if she had any idea what I'd become.