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Slayer or Layer 37

For Lorvianne

By Draconicon

For all that he knew that they were coming, Lorkos was not ready for the sudden swell of sound and fury that announced his children coming down the tunnel towards his chambers. He lifted his head from the ground, feeling the earth shaking, and for a moment, the urge to flee almost overcame him.

Then, there was a shout down the hall. The voice was familiar, and whatever hopes and doubts that he had that this might not be his children disappeared.

"Hang on, hang on. You're not going to scare our Lithia away."

Lithia. Egg-mother. The same term that had been in his dreams so long ago, the same terms that his little ones had called him when he had finally seen them during the evacuation of the village. The same term that he had never been able to escape.

The thundering stopped, but he knew that was only because the oldest of the children had taken charge. The sound of footsteps still echoed down the tunnel, and the urge to flee was still there. He could find a way to wiggle down a side tunnel, maybe waddle his way to the surface. He might not be able to fly the long distance to Ashin, but he might be able to fly around the mountain until his kids gave up.

But it was too late. She was too close now, and he knew that this was going to happen, whether he liked it or not.

Sighing, he lifted himself to all fours, being wary of his new belly from the pregnancy as the half-dragon, half-lizardman rounded the corner. She smiled as she looked up at him, and not one of those polite smiles that he had seen so often. There was genuine joy in her face, and she bowed her head once to him.

"Lithia...oh, Lithia..."

"It's Lorkos," he muttered, looking down.

"That is your name, but you are our Lithia," she said. "Do you remember me?"

"I...I remember," he admitted. "I didn't know if I wanted to, but I remember you. I remember you."

"Do you remember my name?"

"Lia."

"Yes..."

She smiled as she approached, kneeling down at his forelegs and looking up at him. As she got comfortable, crossing her legs like someone in meditation, he looked past her. There were no others, yet, but he knew that the moment was coming. He would need to meet them, to understand them, to learn from them. They were going to want to see their egg-mother, and he didn't know what in the world he was going to be able to give them.

He was no parent, that was for sure. Never had been, and he doubted that he ever would, no matter what he did.

He looked back at Lia, saw that she was still smiling. Sighing, he lowered himself down to the ground once more, spreading his legs out.

"Come here," he said, giving in to the inevitable.

She joined him, sitting in the crook of his forelegs, rubbing her hands against his chest. Her fingers rolled down along the many scales there, eventually finding the only scale that was hidden among them that wasn't blue.

"You still have it..."

He nodded, almost shamefacedly, at the reminder of her scale among his. A gift from a time that might as well have been ancient history at this point, but one that he still remembered. A single scale of red among all the blue, hidden in the clusters of them since his shift over to this feral state.

As Lia stroked her fingers around that one red spot, he tried to think of something to say. What, though? That he wanted her to leave? He did, didn't he?

Or was that just terror because of the fact that he'd have to take responsibility for the young that he'd sired and then left to their own devices?

He shivered, and she took her fingers away.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

Obviously, she wanted to ask if he was lying, if he was really okay, but she didn't say anything. He almost wished that she had, because that would have made his life so much easier. No reason to feel guilty about not talking when someone else was pushing you to do it. When they pushed, he could claim a right to privacy. When he was just left in silence, he felt like he was being a bad person.

She allowed the silence to linger, and he groaned under his breath. Slowly, he brought one of his forepaws to his face.

"How many?" he asked.

"How many what?"

"How many of them are there?"

"Thirty, Lithia."

Thirty. Thirty different creatures that he had birthed over the time that he had spent with the lizard tribe, and perhaps that wasn't even all of them. Perhaps others had died, or had gone to different places in the world since they had been released. He didn't know. He didn't know how they worked, or what they had done, or what they wanted.

All he knew was that he hadn't been there.

With Lia in his forelegs, he could feel the connection between them, the reminder that they were related, that they were bound by blood, and more, by Pack.

She is mine, he thought, and there was no pain of association. No. There was only guilt that he had fought it for as long as he had.

"Lithia. May they come and see you?" Lia asked.

"They..."

He wanted to say no. He almost forced himself to say it, but he knew that there was nothing that he could do to stop this now. All chance of resistance had ended as soon as his daughter had entered the room and touched him. Pack had been established, and no wolf, not even one that had been bound to dragon form, could turn their back on Pack. Lorkos sighed, lowering his foreleg.

"They can come. One at a time, but they can come."

Lorkos had not realized that he could care as much as he did. For every child that came into his cave, he felt a surge of connection, a burst of protectiveness, and more. Every little scaled being, from the oldest to the youngest, in every color of the rainbow that dragons could become, evoked something new for him.They made him feel loved, and made him feel love for them. They made him protective, and they made him feel cherished.

Most of all, they reminded him that he was not alone.

As Lia leaned against one of his forelegs for the entire time, he couldn't help but wonder what she was thinking as the children came forth and presented themselves. Was she a big smug? If she was, she had every reason to be. Or was she feeling something different, like satisfaction? Or was she wondering if he would judge the other children to be less than worthy, send them all alway?

There was no chance of that, but he always wondered if she felt something different, if she was judging him on how he welcomed the fruit of his womb.

He didn't know how he could have treated them any differently, though. The minute they came before him, he felt the connection of Pack with them. He felt his blood, his ties to them, and he knew that he would need to protect them until time ended and the world stopped turning. They were his, and he was theirs.

Every time one of them came before him, they brought something with them. A scale, always, and according to them, it was their first. It must have been a ritual, a thing that was similar to what Lia had done all that time ago, because they would not stop holding it out until he took it from them and placed it against his chest.

By the end of the greeting, his torso had become a sparkling mess of different colors, different scales sprinkled across it and giving it the appearance of a true treasure hoard of gems. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to feel, for that matter.

When the last of his children disappeared, going back down the tunnel to join the rest, Lorkos couldn't help but get up and pace. It had always helped his thinking before, and he hoped that it would do the same now. It was different having someone watch him doing it, considering that Lia did not leave with the rest of his children, but it did help to know that she cared enough to keep an eye on him.

As he paced back and forth, he felt the slight grinding that came with so many new scales along his chest. He bit his lip ever so often as one tried to grind a bit deeper than it should have, but he mostly ignored it, forcing himself to focus on what he was going to do.

I have all these kids now, and they need to be kept safe, he thought. Dragons...what do dragons do?

He didn't know, and he didn't trust the yellow one up above to give him a clear and unbiased answer. That male wanted to keep him around for breeding, and he would do just about anything to be able to have those privileges. If he even showed a hint of wanting to leave, there could be any number of lies that would keep him here.

Lia, on the other hand, had every bit as much reason to keep him around - though obviously for reasons that didn't involve breeding - but he felt like he might be able to trust her. After all, she had been willing to let him go the first time, to allow him to pursue something without locking him down to caring about them. That was...that was enough to make him feel quite a bit of guilt, honestly, but he knew that she would be honest with him if he had questions. The question was, could he be honest with her?

As he looked at the red-scaled half-breed, he couldn't help but think that he could. It might be a weaker sort of honesty, something more hesitant, but he would do whatever he could for her.

She was Pack. You did everything for Pack.

Slowly, he lowered himself back to his belly, then onto his side when lying down proved more uncomfortable than he had expected. His daughter watched, sitting with her legs folded in front of her, and he sighed.

"Come."

Lia joined him in a flash, leaning against his stomach, rubbing the bulge of his pregnant womb. He groaned under his breath at the reminder of what he was carrying, but quickly pushed that out of his head. He had something to say.

"Lia...do you...Do you know what 'Pack' is?" he asked.

"It's how wolves run, how they hunt. Right?"

"That's the main thing. But...there's more to it than that."

"Do you want to tell me about it, Lithia?"

"I do..."

And I want you to know the truth, too, to know and see me for what I am...but not yet. he thought. Maybe later, but not yet. Not until I'm sure.

Lorkos leaned his head down, resting it against his daughter's legs. She rubbed his head gently, obviously feeling that there was something that he wasn't saying, but not pushing him for it. She understood that this wasn't easy for him, and seemed to know that he needed time to put it to words.

He did, but not for the reason she thought. Lorkos sighed, and began to speak.

"I want you to understand what 'Pack' is, because that is something more than just what we have. For me, it's an idea..."

Oh, it was so much more than that, so much more than a simple idea. Pack informed everything that wolves did. It was the core concept of their lives. But how did you say that without giving away what you were?

"For me, it's just about the most important idea in the world."

"Tell me why, Lithia."

"Pack is the idea that family binds you together. The family that you breed, and the family that you find. There is nothing more important in your life than that group, nothing more sacred than that. The idea of 'Pack' is that you live and die by those that are bound together under that name, that together, you are more than just a group. You are a single, whole being that fits together, that will do everything in its power to make the world safe for all the different pieces."

He worried that he was starting to sound sentimental, but Lia never took her eyes off of him. For all that his head was the one in her lap, she didn't look at him in any teasing way, nor condescending, nor hurtful. She only looked at him with interest, as if what he was saying was the most important thing in the world to her.

And that, he found, made all the difference in the world.

"Keep going, Lithia. I want to understand."

And so, he did. He told her everything that he remembered from his time at home. He told her everything that he could think of that could be broken down and understood from unspoken culture.

He gave her everything, and she returned it with more interest than he could have ever hoped for.

The End

Summary: Lorkos meets his children again, and finds himself rather enamored of them, to the point of wanting to teach them the way that a wolf would teach his own children.

Tags: No sex, touching, greeting, ritual, teaching, series, dragon, feral, anthro,