Chapter 249: Episode 247: She is also your child.

“What do you mean?”

Roxy asked, but Zarek didn’t answer. He simply shifted his massive frame, pulling the heavy furs up to her chin and pressing a firm, silencing kiss to her temple.

“Sleep,” Zarek rumbled. “The night is for resting, Roxann.”

Roxy wanted to push. She wanted to demand answers about territorial disputes and whatever “long week” meant, but the exhaustion of coming back and the sheer, overwhelming relief of being surrounded by her mates dragged her down.

As long as she was home, tucked in the center of her pack, nothing else mattered. She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.

The next morning, however, she truly understood what Zarek meant.

She was awakened not by a gentle kiss, but by a sound that resembled a small meteor striking the front yard.

Roxy shot up in bed, the furs pooling around her waist. The men were already gone from the bed, likely doing their morning chores. She scrambled out, throwing on a fresh linen tunic Ren had left on the chair, and sprinted out of the bedroom, down the hall, and burst onto the front porch.

“What is happening?!” she yelled.

“No one is attacking, Mama.”

Roxy froze.

Standing in the center of the yard, wiping blood from a massive hunting spear, was a teenage boy. He was tall, lean, with messy dark hair that fell into his eyes.

He wore a leather tunic and dark trousers, and a pair of leathery, crimson dragon wings were folded neatly against his back.

He looked like a formidable warrior. He looked like a heartbreaker.

But he was only two years old.

“Drax?” Roxy breathed, her hands flying to her mouth.

Dragon biology was a terrifying, beautiful thing. They aged rapidly to reach fighting maturity, and the boy standing before her had completely skipped his awkward childhood phase and landed squarely in late adolescence.

Drax’s tough, stoic expression instantly melted. He dropped the spear.

“Mama,” his voice cracked,a deep baritone mixed with a teenage squeak.

Roxy threw herself at him.

Drax caught her perfectly, burying his face in her shoulder as her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. He was so big now, but he held onto her with the desperate, clinging strength of the little boy she had left behind.

“I missed you,” Drax whispered gruffly, trying to hide the wetness in his voice. “You smell weird, but I missed you.”

“I missed you too, my beautiful boy,” Roxy sobbed, kissing his cheek, his jaw, his forehead. “Look at you! You’re a man! When did you get so tall? Stop growing immediately!”

Drax chuckled. He pulled back just enough to gesture to the massive carcass lying in the dirt behind him. It was a Saber-Horned Elk, a beast twice the size of Torian’s boar.

“I heard you were back,” Drax said, puffing his chest out proudly. “I finished the border dispute early. And I hunted this on the way. Specially for you. You like the tender cuts, right?”

“I love them,” Roxy beamed, wiping her eyes. “Oh, Drax, it’s amazing. We can cook it right now! Ren! Get the knives!”

Drax grinned, leaning down to rest his chin on Roxy’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. He was incredibly clingy, sticking to her space like glue, unwilling to let even an inch of air separate them.

“Big brother!”

Iris came tumbling out of the Manor, her wolf tail wagging so hard her entire lower body shook. She ran up to them, holding out the pink, shimmering necklace Roxy had given her the night before.

“Look!” Iris beamed. “Mama gave me Singing Pearls! From the bottom of the water! Listen!”

Drax unhooked one arm from Roxy to gently pat his little sister’s head. He leaned down, pretending to listen to the pearl. “It sounds like magic, Iris. Very fitting for a fierce warrior like you.”

Iris giggled, throwing her arms in the air reaching for him, and Drax obeyed picking her up.

It was a perfect, idyllic family moment.

“That is close enough, boy.”

Zarek strode down the porch steps, his expression dark and stormy. He glared at the way Drax was plastered against Roxy’s back, his arms wrapped around her waist.

“Step back,” Zarek commanded.

Roxy frowned, patting Drax’s arm to keep him in place. “Zarek, stop it. He just got here. He’s my son, let him hug me!”

“He is a grown drake,” Zarek growled, crossing his arms. “It does not matter. He is too close to my mate.”

Drax stiffened. He didn’t cower like the wolf twins did when Zarek growled. His own dragon blood flared, his eyes flashing a dangerous green.

“I was her favorite before you even knew how to share, old man,” Drax shot back, his tone dripping with fearless sarcasm. “Don’t be mad just because she smiles bigger for me.”

The yard went dead silent.

Ren, who had just stepped out of the kitchen with a butchering knife, dropped it in the dirt. Torian stopped chopping wood.

Roxy stared at her son, utterly startled. Then, a massive, brilliant grin broke out across her face.

She couldn’t help it. The sheer audacity, the quick wit, the absolute refusal to back down, it was exactly how she handled Zarek. He had inherited her sharp tongue.

Without thinking, Roxy turned and gave Drax a solid thumbs-up. “Good one.”

Zarek bared his teeth, shooting Roxy a look of absolute betrayal. “Do not encourage his behavior!”

“Oh, calm down, you overgrown lizard,” Roxy laughed, stepping out of Drax’s embrace to walk over and grab Zarek’s tense forearms. “He is still a child, Zarek. Look at him. He missed his mother. Understand his needs. He’s not challenging you for the pack, he just wants his mom.”

Zarek huffed, but the tension in his shoulders dropped slightly under her soothing touch.

Roxy turned quickly, launching herself back into Drax’s arms and hugging him tight. “Now, come sit with me! Tell me everything that happened all those months I was away! Did you use the techniques Kaelen taught you? Did you make any friends?”

She pulled Drax toward the wooden benches, completely absorbed in her firstborn.

Zarek watched them go, his jaw clenching. He took a step forward, raising a hand to pull Roxy back to his side.

A strong hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Zarek turned to see Kaelen standing beside him. Kaelen’s face was calm, his grip firm.

“Let them be, Zarek,” Kaelen said softly. “She is here to stay. Why are you so anxious? You act as if a strong wind will blow her back into the ocean.”

Zarek didn’t answer immediately. He stared at Roxy’s bright, animated face as she laughed at something Drax said.

“I need to cleanse her,” Zarek finally muttered, his voice thick with a dark, primal insecurity. “The smell of the saltwater… the smell of him. Another male’s scent is baked into her skin. It drives my beast mad.”

Ren trotted over, picking up his dropped knife. He leaned against the porch railing, his green eyes surprisingly serious.

“You’re looking at it wrong, Lizard,” Ren said, pointing the handle of the knife at Zarek. “Think about it. She was treated like a Queen down there. She had a newborn son. She had a merman King literally worshipping her.”

Ren smiled, a proud, foxy grin.

“And she chose to leave all of it. She walked away from a crown and a newborn just to come back to us. We shouldn’t be jealous. We should feel proud. She wanted us.”

Syris slithered down from the branches of the oak tree, landing gracefully beside them.

“The fox speaks truth,” Syris hissed smoothly. “Roxy has always loved us equally, in her own strange, human way. But she is a creature above us and the sun. She must have suffered terribly, stranded in a place she did not want to be, playing a role just to survive.”

Zarek’s hands slowly uncurled from fists. The suffocating tightness in his chest, the raging jealousy that had been eating at him since she confessed her ocean marriage, began to recede.

He looked at his mate. She was throwing her head back, laughing joyously as Drax animatedly described a dragon fight using his hands. She looked radiant. She looked free.

A sudden, fierce urge washed over Zarek. He wanted to drag her back into the Manor. He wanted to press her into the furs, bury himself inside her, and put another baby in her belly, one that belonged to the sky and the mountains, not the sea.

But as he watched her smile, the urge tempered into something deeper. Just having her here, safe and whole, was enough. As long as she was in front of him, breathing the forest air, nothing else mattered.

Down by Zarek’s boots, a small figure was crawling through the grass.

Tanith had silently made her way over from the porch. She pulled herself up using Zarek’s leather pants, swaying slightly on her unsteady human legs.

She looked up at the massive Dragon Alpha. Her vertical pupils narrowed.

She stuck her tongue out at him, a long, forked thing that flicked the air.

“Dada,” Tanith babbled, her voice dripping with toddler-level sass. “Gwud fur wuu.”

Zarek’s eye twitched. The momentary peace he had found vanished instantly. He glared down at the child, then snapped his head toward the Snake Beastman.

“Syris,” Zarek snarled, utterly pissed. “Come and take your child away from my sight before I toss her into the lake.”

Syris didn’t flinch. He simply crossed his arms and shot back with a sharp, echoing hiss.

“She is also your child!”

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