“Would you like a Cajun crisp?” René said, offering her a package of potato chips. “Or I have a chocolate orange if you’d like something sweet.”

“No . . . orange . . . just . . . Baltic . . . ,” Aisling panted as she worked through the contraction. At last it was over and she waved a feeble hand at me. “Someone tell me what’s happening.”

I obliged her. “Baltic is gone. He disappeared into the shadow world again. For someone who bears the title dread wyvern, he sure runs away fast enough when a battle doesn’t go his way.”

“We felt the heart re-forming,” Aisling said, still panting a little, taking a sip of water from a glass Nora held for her. “You got it sharded all right?”

“Yes.” I glanced at Drake as he held the strongbox clamped under one arm. “They’re all there, all five. Gabriel would like you to keep them safe until they can be distributed to their proper owners.”

Drake released Aisling’s hand, nodded, and put the strongbox onto a shelf. I did look around then, amazed at the objets d’art that Drake had gathered over the centuries. “This is an impressive collection. But not so much gold as I expected to see.”

Aisling laughed, twitching at the sheet that covered her. She was lying on some sort of a raised platform, a mattress from a bed having been laid on top of it. “You haven’t seen what I’m giving birth on, have you? René, would you?”

I was a bit surprised to find René in the inner room with Aisling while she labored, but evidently Aisling was comfortable with him there. He grinned and pulled up the corner bottom of the mattress so I could see what was underneath.

It wasn’t a table, like I’d thought. It was a long wooden case with a glass top, lit from within with soft lights that caressed the surfaces of the gold coins that filled it almost to the rim.

“I just hope that Gabriel doesn’t make you give birth on top of his hoard of gold,” Aisling said with another laugh that trailed away into a shriek of pain.

Kaawa bustled over as Drake helped Aisling into a sitting position, allowing her to press back against him as she strained.

“This is looking good,” Kaawa said from her position between Aisling’s legs. “Another couple of good pushes, and I think the head will crown.”

“Time for me to leave,” I murmured, averting my eyes from the sight. There were some things I was quite happy to leave as a mystery until such time as I needed to know. “Good luck, Aisling. We’re all outside thinking of you.”

Her eyes screwed up as she continued to scream, but she managed to wave a hand at me to let me know she’d heard.

I left the inner room, passing through to the outer one, where István stood guard at the lair entrance. He opened the door for me, asking how it was going.

“Head’s about to crown, so it probably won’t be much longer. Drake looks exhausted.”

István smiled as Gabriel, outside the lair waiting for me, stood up. “I hope it is fast. Drake told me he was never going to go through this again.”

I laughed and allowed Gabriel to gather me into his arms, breathing deeply of the scent of him. Kostya sat on a bench leaning against the wall as Tipene tended to the damage on his torso, Cyrene clinging to his hand as she wept over him.

“Did you tell Drake that I would be happy to offer my assistance with Aisling? Did you tell him that I have more experience with dragon births than my mother?” Gabriel asked, nuzzling my ear in a way that sent shivers down my arms and back.

“Yes,” I lied.

He nipped my earlobe. “You do not lie well, little bird. How do you feel?”

I looked up at him in surprise.

“You no longer bear the shard. Do you miss it, or is it a relief to have it gone?”

I remembered the sensation of seeing the first dragon, of having him see me, acknowledge me, judge my heart and soul, and find them not wanting. I remembered the wisdom in those eyes, the history that they had seen, and continued to see, and I smiled. “I am a dragon now. The dragon heart is a part of me just as it is a part of you, so no, I don’t miss the shard. It will remain with us forever.”

“I give that about a three point two on the profound-o-meter,” a male voice said.

I stopped nuzzling Gabriel’s neck to look behind me. Jim stood there, its hands on its hips, an extremely disgruntled look on its face.

“Can I have my magnificent form back now? Or is there something else you’d like me to do? Tote a barge? Haul a bale? Or just stand around and be a laughingstock to amuse everyone?”

“Oh, Jim, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to forget about you. But you’re not a laughingstock, I’m sure. You’re actually a very handsome man in that form. Isn’t he handsome, Gabriel?”

“Eh.”

I poked him in the ribs.

“I suppose as human forms go, it’s not outright repulsive,” Gabriel allowed, his dimples dimpling.

“Ignore him. You’re very handsome. I particularly like the cleft chin.”

“He lacks a certain something,” Savian said from where he was flaked out inside the sauna, recovering, he said, from the various traumas his body had gone through in the last few hours. “He looks like the sort of man who would drool on another man when he was lying in a pool of his own brains and blood.”

Jim narrowed its eyes at the towel-clad Savian. “Drake’s going to be all pissy if he knows you’ve been keeping the door to the sauna open while you have it running.”

Savian pursed his lips for a moment, and considered whether he wanted Drake pissed.

“Don’t listen to Savian—he’s feeling challenged because he doesn’t have the corner anymore on the unattached-handsome-man market,” I told him.

Gabriel pinched my behind. “You think I’m handsome!”

I grabbed two handfuls of his hair and pulled him down for a quick kiss. “More than any other man on the planet, but I did, in fact, say unattached handsome man.”

“Yeah, yeah, handsome, riiight,” Jim answered, making a rude face. “That’s why Aisling almost had a heart attack when I went up to help her, like you ordered me to do.”

“You probably just took her by surprise,” I said, licking Gabriel’s lower lip.

He growled at me, his eyes bright with interest, then gave me what I wanted and kissed me with all his fire, all his passion, and all his love.