Life on the island was perfect. It took me a while to get used to the light being green but other than that, it was a beautiful place. It was like Hawaii only it was as if someone had jazzed it up. The trees moved when you moved so you’d always be in shade. The birds sang beautifully from each branch. Every aspect was perfect.

The birdsong was my favorite part of the place. It moved me, it touched my soul with pure sounds that resonated within me, and it made me glad to be alive. Sometimes it made me cry, and I began to realize that the birdsong wasn’t for me. The birds were singing their emotions. As my pregnancy progressed, even the sweet songs could make me cry.

I was close to my time, I suspected that by my size, but I wasn’t completely sure. It was hard to tell when time passed differently in all of the worlds. I started to think of them as tears in the space-time continuum. Some places time passed quickly, in others it crawled by. You weren’t aware of it when you were in the world because time seemed to move at a normal pace, but it wasn’t in sync with everywhere else.

We went back many times to my world, to visit my parents and to see my family. My cousin never talked about Henry when I was with her, but I knew something was happening because she was getting better. Willow did not improve as quickly as I did, so I suspected they were not actually seeing each other, but something was happening. She was even able to get back to playing the piano a couple of weeks after Henry first saw her.

She had color back in her skin, and she didn’t look as old as she used to. She looked normal and beautiful all over again. Even her hair came back to life and fell in silky waves down her back. I hadn’t told her I thought Henry was her mate, but I think she suspected.

I’m part of the magical world now, even though I have no magical skills of my own. The birds have magic, and the trees have magic, a magic that Malcolm can share with them. He makes fire with his hands and talks to the trees and birds to bring us food. It really is a magical world.

I’d stopped wearing clothes because we were the only ones doing so on the island, and I had nothing to be ashamed of. Malcolm sometimes wore a loincloth made of leaves to protect his delicate parts from the sun, but I didn’t bother. I enjoyed being naked in my pregnancy. When we went back to my world and I had to wear clothes I felt like I was smothered, and I was tense until we returned to our island where I could take them off again.

The island was an old place in an older world and we explored every inch. We didn’t know how long it had been uninhabited, so we explored it like two children hoping to find pirate treasure. We didn't need money, but if we needed it we could always get it from Malcolm's father. He hadn’t seen his father since he was released, and I couldn’t blame him. I understood his father's reasoning but that didn’t mean I accepted it. Especially since we were the ones he’d imprisoned.

I was walking through the forest, my hands trailing along glossy leaves of banana trees, when I felt the first pain. It felt like cramps, something I hadn't felt in a while but was all too familiar with. I’d heard your first labor could take hours or even days so I didn't rush back to the area we’d set up as our home. I breathed through the pain until it disappeared and kept walking. I didn't go so far that I couldn't hear the waves crashing on the beach anymore, but I was a good distance from the treehouse Malcolm had built for us.

Another pain had me on my knees within minutes, and I screamed for Malcolm. He came tearing through the jungle to find my back arched as I screamed out in my pain. I felt like my bones were breaking apart in my pelvis, as though my muscles were tearing strand by strand.

“Fuck me, this hurts!” I groaned as a wave of pain passed.

“What did you do?” he almost wailed, and I laughed.

“Well, a few months ago, I met this dragon and he was super-hot so I fu—”

“The baby’s coming?” He looked excited but terrified at the same time.

“Yes,” I panted as another wave started. “Fuck, Malcolm!”

I screeched through that one too, but he still picked me up and flew us back to camp in his dragon form.

“No, no, no, take me to my mother, Malcolm, we promised!” I managed through waves of pain.

“What if he shoots out of you while we’re over the water and he drowns? I’ll go and get her.” He started to turn, but I stopped him.

“Have you never seen a birth?” I asked, looking at him with disbelief.

“No,” he said, looking sheepish.

“Not even when you could watch it online?” I really couldn’t believe this.

“No, I was afraid to watch it.”

I’d have shouted at him if I wasn’t on my knees screaming in pain in the next instant. “Take me to my mother!”

He flew us faster than he’d ever flown before and ran into Mom’s house with me bouncing in his arms. She had my bedroom ready for the event and went into mid-wife mode. As a woman in the mountains, she’d helped women give birth when roads were too bad to get to hospitals or during other emergencies. She could handle this, as long as it wasn’t too complicated.

I began to panic as the waves started to come faster. What if the baby was a monster? What if was human but had green skin? Malcolm knew my thoughts and tried to assure me our baby wasn’t going to come out green, but this was a birth unlike any before, how did he know?

“You’re right, I don’t know, Arista, but we’ll love this baby no matter what.” He cringed a little as I thought about a little green, horned monster coming out of me.

It felt like the baby was covered in razors as it moved through my birth canal, and I screamed my pain and panic again.

“It’s okay, my love, it’s okay.” He soothed me with a song and placed a cold wet washcloth on my forehead.

I gritted my teeth through the hours when Mom told me not to push and paced in between the contractions. They were coming constantly now, so I was standing in front of the bed, crouched down with my hands braced above my head on a bar Mom had installed.

“I don’t know why they make women give birth lying down on their backs now, that’s just silly. Stand up, Arista, come on baby, don’t sink down like that, you’ll squish the top of the baby’s head when it comes out.” Mom wasn’t trying to be comical, just matter of fact, but she made me laugh anyway.

When the pains became too much for me to endure Malcolm wanted to get a magical midwife.

“By the time you get there and back Malcolm, I think this will be over with,” my mother told him, eyeing my not-so-private parts clinically. “Go in the kitchen and pace with Ted. Go on now, you're getting on my nerves, boy.”

My mother did have a way with words, I thought, as I laughed again. To me, she only whispered love and encouragement. She periodically checked to see if the baby was crowning, and I was happy it was my mother sharing such an intimate moment with me.

“I'm glad we decided against the hospital, Mom.” I gritted my teeth. “Not just because if the baby is born a dragon they’ll ask questions, but because I get to share this with you. We missed so much of each other's lives, I don't want you to miss anything of this baby's life.”

“Oh, I'll miss parts just because we live so far away from each other, but that's the only reason. Now concentrate on birthing this baby, Arista, and let's meet your son.”

I grinned a grin that was probably macabre because it was mixed with pain, and finally began the exhausting part of birthing my child. I pushed when Mom told me to and rested in between. My fists knotted on the bar over the bed and she rubbed my back. It took hours, days, weeks it felt like, but it was only minutes before I heard my child screaming his entry into the world.

Malcolm came running into the room just as our boy slipped from my body, and he caught him. Mom did the necessary cleaning up and cutting of the umbilical cord as my mate stared into the eyes of the child we had created.

“Is he okay?” I begged to know.

“He has ten perfect little fingers and ten perfect little toes. He has a tiny button nose that looks just like yours, and my mother’s green eyes,” Malcolm said with awe.

Mom moved me to the bed once everything was done and Malcolm came to sit beside me with our son wrapped in a white blanket. She peered down at him with pure joy on her face.

“He’s perfect, Arista. You should be proud of that beautiful baby. I’ll go tell your father.”

I only had eyes for my son after that. His skin was perfectly pink, and every part of him appeared human. I knew Malcolm had a human form and the dragon form, but would our child?

“Is he…” I let my words trail off, glancing up at Malcolm.

“I think so, you see that gleam that keeps dancing through his eyes? I think he’s a shifter.”

“He must be if you two have been able to talk all of this time.”

“I suppose you’re right. Do you think we should give him a name now?” We’d wanted to wait until we met him before we named him.

“I think he’s an Edward, don’t you?”

“Hell no!” He’d picked that up from human television and it made me snort. “Edward? No, that won’t do at all. What about Aelfric?”

“What the fu—no! Whatever that is, no!”

“George?” he offered, instead.

“No, that’s not—” But then the world went dark and I didn’t even know what my son’s name was.