>>5713338That night, as with almost every night, you take your dinner and your wine with the Baron and Baroness of Blackpine, and with your Human Queen. The wine is enjoyed sparingly in your case, which the Baron chides you for and seems to take curious umbrage with. Ekaterine, too, can only enjoy herself to a certain extent—her pregnancy is beginning to show, expanding her stomach in a curious way. You take a moment to trail your fingers over that same swelling that evening, as she abashedly turns her reddened face from the sight.
“Queen Glowie’s stomach didn’t do this, then?” she’d asked, a touch jealously.
“She laid eggsss,” you note. “And I wass away.”
“Ah.”
She shivers a little under your fascinated caress, and squeaks cutely as your hands find the other location which ahs swelled: the part of her for which her whole clade of life is named, her bosom, engorged with hormones and readying to produce food-secretions.
“I think I’ll take a tasste firssst,” you tease with a grin.
“I’m not making milk y—Ah!” she whines, even as her back arches at your mouth’s interruption. “Careful! They’re—nn!—sensitive, too!”
As with virtually every night these past few months, sometimes as ‘Long Wnag’ and sometimes in yoru own natural shape, you end it explosively, deep inside your Beloved One. You are no less attracted to her for her pregnancy—perhaps moreso, in fact, for how it reminds you of the bond of family which now entwined your two fates and futures. For all the diplomatic delicacy that fills your days, the subterfuge which fills your nights, it is this brief window of time when you are coiled like mated serpents—rutting, then resting—that you treasure most of all.
“I think we’re making real progress with Baron Brunus,” she tells you, for such is the common pillow-talk of your human mate. “The cultural barriers are still there, but he sees the economic opportunities and—more importantly—I think he’s really starting to see your folk as, ah, well… As PEOPLE, you understand?”
“Good,” you say, and you hope she is right. “Winter isss coming ssoon. The Thief tellsss me he… Overheard talk of thiss from ssome humansss.”
Best to seal the deal before then, you reason. Snow will fall shortly, and—from what you hear—that will make a return to Bloodrise most difficult… ESPECIALLY for your largely cold-blooded retinue. They could easily fall into a torpor in such cold, unable to generate sufficient body heat of their own, and fall ill or die.
…
