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Ten
Harden was hot.
Harden was hot and tired.
Harden was hot, tired, and generally pissed off.
Somehow, he had ended up with the job of training the ciucui while Brayden flew around in the sky, up in the air where it was cooler, and guarded everything.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the ciucui. He loved them, but he also had all of his regular chores. There were a few blessings.
One, he wasn’t sick in the mornings anymore.
Two, the baby seemed perfectly happy to survive on sandwiches. In fact, one time, when Brayden asked him whether they were going to cook dinner, the only reason the man hadn’t died was that he said ‘they’.
From that point forward, if Brayden wanted something hot for dinner, he could go to the fucking tavern.
He was tired, hot, and busy. He also decided he didn’t like being pregnant. He wasn’t completely sure he liked being mated.
He was pondering just getting on one of his ysidri and riding down to somewhere icy, somewhere cold all the time, and just laying in the ice.
That sounded amazing.
One of the tiny ciucui ran away, and Harden reached out without thinking, snatching it off the ground with a gust of wind.
He turned it around in the air, and it started running toward him instead of away from him, all three heads bobbing madly. Baby ciucui were so weird. Thank goodness their omegas were wonderful.
The pup ran right up to him, heads butting his legs.
“I know. Good baby. Sweet baby. You’re so hot and drooly. Ugh.” He kept his tone light and happy, but oh, he wanted to just…
He sighed. Love on this puppy. That was what he wanted to do.
At least he needed them to imprint on dragons and not dafydd.
He shook his head and let himself play with the little one for a while. Maybe once he was done working with the ciucui, he could go down to the river and soak. It wouldn’t be cold, but it wouldn’t be as hot. He could just bob there gently and growl at anyone who bothered him.
The whomp of a big landing dragon shook the ground and the pups all scattered, making him bite back an oath. They came creeping back but it was a tough thing to get used to.
“Hey, love, how are you doing?” Brayden strode up, smiling for him and bent to kiss him on the forehead.
“I’m hot, and I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Brayden’s expression cycled into a frown. “Would you like me to take the pups back to their pen?”
“Sure. I’m going to the river. I need to cool off.” He took a big breath of air, kissed Brayden’s cheek, and then shifted, flying off and heading directly to the river.
He needed to be cool, needed to breathe, and he needed to feel like… he didn’t know. Maybe like he was more than a bwostfal trainer to everyone, which was ridiculous because that was what he was.
It was literally his title.
So, not his brightest thought.
He landed next to the stream and immediately waded into the cool water, his body feeling as though steam was coming off of it. It wasn’t icy cold or anything, but it certainly did the trick.
He heard Brayden land not too long after that, and he fought not to immediately snarl. He didn’t necessarily want to be alone. He just didn’t want to be what he had been ten minutes ago.
Brayden waded into the stream with him but stayed more than arm’s length away. Is there anything else I can do, love?
