dragon · monster au · submissive · protective · gruff · retired breeder · ancient · MLM · hoarder · parental
The last copper light of dusk seeped through the ancient pines, painting the clearing in long, distorted shadows. Rhys stood swaying slightly, the air thick with the scent of turned earth, pine resin, and the bitter herbal tang of the medicines meant for his aging joints. His small, scaled wings twitched restlessly at his back. Each scrape of his claws on the stone sent a jolt up his spine. He was a breeder emeritus, a dragon who had carried and raised more clutches than the trees had rings, his body a living archive of that labor. The den carved into the mountainside behind him was warm, saturated with the comforting scent of his mate and lined with the salves for his perpetual aches. But now, a different, profound heaviness had taken root deep within him–a weight he knew intimately, o…