Life as a Royal’s Breeding Partner

Chapter 490 – Breaking a Few Eggs

*** Alzi, Third Body ***

The crack scared me. I jumped and even slapped Zarzi with my tail, and Tharzi got one of my wings to her back. My apologizing while trying to find the egg that cracked in lava was probably very funny for the Priestess to watch. She just had to slip in to watch. Dragon probably told her to show up to get revenge.

The High Priestess does show us how to drain the lava faster. I'll let her off for that help.

"Alzi, I'm scared," Zarzi says. "It really isn't fair that my first pregnancy basically has two different births. I was going crazy pushing them all out, and now I have to wait for them to force themselves out of eggs! Can I have a small pregnancy before you give me a large number again?"

"Well, small compared to your first one is easy for me," I say. "I can aim for one or two. I'm not doing well with the waiting either, as you felt. Sorry."

"It's fine," Zarzi says. "I probably needed that to make sure this is actually happening. Oh, a second has started. Why is it on the other side? These kids are trying to kill their Mother again!"

"I'm not doing much better," I say, my eyes flicking between the two eggs. What is going to happen when three, five, or twenty are cracking? "I need to get another body here. We need more breasts!"

"The priestesses can handle that," The High Priestess says. "Normally, the Mother is dead, and the father is unable to feed the kids. But we will need help lactating."

Well, that is a question. Do I do it, or do I have a Goddess do it? Maybe if I have the silly little Goddess do it, she won't be clamoring for our breasts all the time. But I still need to bring a second body over to get her here. "I'll bring the goddess of Lactation over," I say.

"That is more than we expected, Empress," the High Priestess says with a bow. "It'll be our honor."

"The honor will be mine if you get her to stop asking for milk all the time," I say. "She's getting a little big to be doing that. Oh, another is starting! The first threw out a chunk. Can you see into the egg?"

"Not yet, dear," Zarzi says. "I think we have a while to wait still."

"Ok," I say.

...

"How has one not come out yet!" I scream. At least Lactation is having a bunch of fun. I decided to bring my main body over just in case the little Goddess chose to do something strange. Which, of course, the little girl does. She demanded to test her work. Every. Single. Time. Both breasts of every Priestess who was getting the treatment.

They, of course, didn't mind, but it was still slightly uncomfortable watching the little stinker abuse her power. It could be worse; none of them are overflowing or anything, and if a Goddess approves of the milk, then it'll be good for my kids.

"Most of them are hatching," Zarzi says. "Just a few minutes and they'll break free, and we can start picking them up and feeding them and caring for them. And it isn't too bad that they haven't come out yet."

I'm starting to think that there is more than one reason the Queens normally die after giving birth to their brood. The priestesses are a lot calmer watching this all go down. Tharzi, Zarzi, Cisu, and I are constantly coming up with some silly scenarios as we wait for the babies to pop out of their shells. I'm happy my main body is off chasing down Lactation rather than standing here waiting. I don't need to be responding to my own fears out loud. That circle would be hard to break.

"Why don't we just help the first one out?" Cisu asks. "We can see her already. Having her force her out isn't going to hurt her."

"Can we do that?" I ask. "Are we ready to be parents?"

"We're already parents," Zarzi says. "I guess we can start helping them out. The kids don't need to eat the shell or anything for food. We should only help the ones that have mostly broken out, so we don't accidentally hurt them. That makes sense, right?"

"Yes," I say. "I think that is safe. Priestess?"

"Dragon is still grumpy, and having a Goddess messing with her priestess is not doing us favors, but yes, Empress Alzi, it should be safe," the High Priestess says. "The babies are ready to come out. Just be gentle with them."

I give Zarzi a little push. "You did the work," I say. A wonderful excuse. "You should be the first to hold one of the kids."

"You're the empress," Zarzi whispers, but steps over to the mostly finished baby that started this all off.

Ok, so maybe we're being a little dramatic. I did wake us up in a terrible way. I step forward and go after the second little girl. The boys are a little shy, it seems. Want their sisters to make sure the world is safe first.

I hook my finger around the egg shell and slowly apply some pressure till the egg shell starts to crack. The baby goes for my finger instead of helping to break out of the shell, but I can't blame her. The shell requires more force to split than I would've thought. "Tharzi, Cisu, you should probably start helping as well," I say. "The shells are a lot sturdier than they should be for babbies to crack out of."

"That explains the speed," Tharzi says as they join us at the trench.

"Here you go," I say, pulling the baby free. Zarzi is handing off the firstborn to the High Priestess; another one is coming over to grab mine from me. "You're cute, but I have to help your brothers and sisters."

Most of the eggs are cracked now. Just waiting for their silly parents to help them out now. I'm blaming Dragon for being too proud to warn us how to do this.

*** Main Body ***

Lactation runs out of priestesses to test rather quickly, even with her thorough quality check, which left us one place to go. This body is not able to help the kids out of their eggs. I'm not in the bending-over shape right now. But I can cheer them on while I feel the pain of bending over through my third body, a little backwards from how it is meant to be. Only a little, my main body is intended to do it all, and my third is supposed to be for my wives, not to help my kids.

The priestesses have set up a line to walk the newborns to the temple's version of a nursery. Dragon has her claws all over the brood. I'm surprised the next Queen doesn't come from the broods. Have the high priestess act as the transitioning Queen as one from the brood is raised to take the throne. Seems like it would solve the early death from the next Queen problem.

I guess the Queen could die from other methods before having her brood. Then the Queen would have a long time before she would be powerful enough, actually, to keep the idiots in line.

"How about we go see your sisters?" I ask Lactation. I don't think my cheering is doing much to ease the pain in everyone's back. Getting to hold the babies for a bit is infinitely better than an Empress telling you how well you did it. "And don't think about asking for milk. Your affinity is to help babies, and you are not one anymore, even if I'm willing to act like you still are sometimes. We have more babies than breasts around right now. You'll have to wait for your turn."

The Goddesses are a lot better behaved than I give them credit for. Lactation has clearly been giving me more control over my milk. I don't have accidental leaks as I could in the past. It only comes out when someone is sucking on them, or I will let it out. And her mouth soothes the little ache in my breasts when she breastfeeds on me. Destruction has only destroyed things that don't matter, like random balloons Nakuma just leaves around, or trash that's about to be thrown away.

It's harder to tell when Luck does something. I'm sure games will be interesting to play with her. She and some of her kitsune sisters could rob a casino. Use their mana to hide the fact that a Goddess just walked in, and then just stand back a laugh as she walks out with all the chips. But right now, she's just a baby that accidentally gets spoiled.

Ok, so she may actually be the worst out of the Goddesses in the lower realm. Maybe I can have Misfortune and have them balance each other out? Why do I think these strange things?

"Let's see what colors we have so far," I say. I've picked up mostly reds. I did have one silver, but I haven't seen what colors my wives have picked up. I know there are a few more silvers and at least one gold in the mix somewhere. "It's looking pretty so far—red, silver, some brown, even a green in the corner. We'll meet them all. If you want to mark one or make them your champion, please give me some sort of warning. And I don't bring that up to pressure you to do it. Just trying to limit my scares right now. It's hitting me that I have over a hundred kids now. Close to two hundred, if you include them all, maybe it is two hundred. It will be soon enough. I'll be hitting three hundred too fast. Kids. Meet the kids."

I should've brought Mommy and them along. Even Mai would be happy to be here, I think. Do I bring another body over with them?

"The babies are so cute," I say, pulling up to the first crib. "They are a bit bigger than normal. Glad to see the eggs let them grow a bit more. Their scales are so pretty."

"Empress, the first male has come in," a Priestess says.

"Ok," I say. "Can you just put him in the mix? They can all get to know each other from the beginning. Try to stop them from abusing their brothers when they're older."

"Of course," the Priestess says.

"Thanks," I say. We'll see how well my plan works. I need to see where we are in getting Fertility to stop her silly gender ratio issue. I know she's stopped the royal breeding issue. The other Queendoms sent some letters in thanks for that. Not that I did anything about it. I kind of forgot it was still happening and hurting other Queendoms. Looking at the cribs, it isn't hard to see that Fertility still hasn't stopped her preference from coming out into the world. "Plenty more to check on."

...

Down line I go. Getting more announcements about the royal dragons and male dragons that come in. Ten males, one is a royal, and three female royal dragons. So I have six royal dragon children. One from Mommy, one from Shimmer, and four from Zarzi. How many will Elo give me? Will more from Mommy be royal? The next from Shimmer should be phoenixes, so I'll have a few pregnancies to wait before she's likely to have that panic attack again. Hopefully, she handles the phoenixes better than she did the dragon. I don't want to go through that labor again.

"A lot of sisters for you," I say. "A lot of work to make sure they group up well." I wonder if the silver's my children are going to replace has been killed yet. It should be happening soon if it hasn't already. Already putting pressure on them. "We'll treat them well. With sisters like you, they'll do just fine."

"Hello Alzi," Zarzi says. "Last few coming in. No more royals or males. This was a rather blessed brood."

"Just in case the worst happened and the war killed all the royal dragons," I say. "Dragon was prepared. We'll see if she blesses the next ones like this."

"She wants us to be the strongest again."

"We kind of are," I say. "But we'll see what happens with the future generations. Phoenix won't want to fall behind, and Kitsune is going to pressure me into helping her next generation to grow stronger as well, I'm sure."

"It all flows from you," Zarzi says. "The next few generations won't have much use for all that power. But after that, it will be up to fate if the strong are nice or cause the same problems we've always had."

"I suppose." That is a little depressing.