Dad Bod Dragon

  DAD BOD DRAGON

  ZOE CHANT

  Copyright © 2022 by Zoe Chant

  www.zoechant.com

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  A note from Zoe Chant

  Also by Zoe Chant

  Preview: Bodyguard Shifters Collection 1

  CHAPTER 1

  "Daddy, when will my wings come in?"

  Gideon looked down at the little girl he was bathing, with her hair scruffed up in masses of shampoo bubbles. "Keep your eyes shut, Addy, or you'll get soap in them," he said, and she obediently squinched them shut. "They'll happen when your body is ready for them, just like with your big sister."

  "But what if they don't?" the six-year-old wailed.

  "Then you'll be like your other big sister, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that."

  "But I want wiiiings."

  "Lay your head back so I can rinse. You're still going to be perfect with or without wings," Gideon said. He felt around for the plastic cup he had been using to dip water over her head, which had vanished beneath the bubble bath. "Maya, do you see your sister's cup down there?"

  The cup bobbed to the surface. He scooped up some of the water.

  "Eyes shut. With wings or not, you'll still be my perfect little baby girl, just like Maya is my perfect little middle girl and Polly is my perfect big oldest girl. And Maya, come up for air once in a while; you're not a submarine."

  There was no response for a moment, and then the small, scaly head of a dragonette, long and narrow with a tiny horn over each eye, surfaced out of the bubble bath in the big, recessed tub. She did look slightly periscope-like as she raised first one scaly eyebrow, then the other, and blew out a long stream of bubbles before sinking gradually again. The last things to vanish were the little horns.

  Then she got soap in her eyes and surfaced with a loud snort, coughing and squawking, splashing with her wings.

  "Eeeeee!" Addy squealed, splashing too. "Submarine fight!"

  The bathroom, and Gideon, were now hopelessly wet. There were soap suds on the walls.

  Someone pounded on the door. "Are you guys done yet?" Polly's voice demanded through the door.

  "Five minutes, sweetie," Gideon called, trying to bundle a flapping Maya into a towel so he could wipe the soap off her face with a washcloth. "I'm helping your little sister wash her hair."

  "I have to use the bathroom, Dad!"

  "Two minutes! Maya, hold still."

  Instead of holding still, Maya squirmed free and flew to the ceiling, where she sank her claws into the fan outlet and pawed at her face, making little wheezing noises.

  "Is Maya okay?" Addy asked as Gideon stood up to get a dry towel for his youngest, if there was anything dry in this entire bathroom at this point.

  "She's fine, she just got soap in her eyes."

  "Dad!" Polly called through the door. "One and a half minutes!"

  "I'm getting there, just hold it!" Gideon called back.

  Twisting around to answer her, he happened to get a good look at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

  It wasn't like he never looked in mirrors anymore. But it was mostly a hasty check to fix his hair before a teleconference, or repeated glances while trying to shave with one or more small girls tugging on his leg demanding a snack and another one knocking on the door and wailing about how he'd been in there for hours.

  When he had bought this luxury condo before the girls were born, it had seemed spacious and beautiful, enough to make his inner dragon stretch out in bliss. Back then, he had been interested in features like the high, vaulted ceilings, marble countertops, and eastern exposure providing lovely morning light in the kitchen. These days, he found himself wishing for features such as a playroom for the girls and enough bedrooms so they wouldn't have to share, and he would have traded the big, lovely bathroom with its sunken tub and recessed lighting in a hot minute for two small bathrooms so that he could have five minutes to go to the bathroom without six different instances of kids knocking on the door and trying to come in.

  Today, as it happened, when he caught a full-length glimpse of himself in the door mirror, he was wearing a white T-shirt that had become thoroughly soaked during the kids' bath, turning it halfway translucent and leaving little to the imagination.

  And everything that wasn't left to the imagination looked ... different ... than it used to.

  Gideon had spent his life comfortably relying on his shifter metabolism to keep him thin, fit, and (why be modest) completely ripped no matter what he ate or what his lifestyle was like. Now he stared at himself in the mirror and it hit him all at once, like a truck made of midlife crisis, that he was looking at a middle-aged man and father of three.

  When had his flat washboard abs turned soft? Where were the ripped shoulders that had always looked like they were straining to burst out of his high-end business suits?

  The silver hair wasn't too bad, at least it was distinguished, and he had started cultivating a light beard because it saved him having to shave every morning. He didn't expect to still look the way he had looked when he was a mature dragon in the first flush of his youthful health and vigor.

  But it appeared that when he wasn't looking, his body had ... melted.

  It wasn't too bad. He flexed a little, experimentally. He didn't think of himself as a vain man. The muscles were still there; they just weren't as obvious as they used to be, and were now lightly obscured with a soft layer of what he decided to think of as padding.

  "Daddy!" Addy said impatiently. He looked down and saw her holding her arms up.

  "One minute!" Polly chimed in from behind the door.

  Gideon wrenched himself away from horrified contemplation of his melting physique and scooped Addy out of the bath, bundling her into the towel. He stood her on the toilet lid, wrapped in her towel, while he pulled the stopper out of the bath and swept the bath toys out of the way. Up by the ceiling, Maya was still spluttering and squalling.

  "Maya, honey, stick your head under the shower. I'll turn it on for a minute and get the soap off you."

  "Thirty seconds!" Polly yelled.

  "What is this, the launch of the Space Shuttle?" Gideon reached up to pluck Maya off the ceiling, held her under the shower, and turned it on.

  He hadn't thought this through. The water came out cold at first. Maya shrieked and flapped wildly. So much for any part of the bathroom that wasn't wet yet.

  "It's like sprinklers!" Addy said. She dropped her towel and spread out her arms to catch the flying droplets.

  "Honey, put your towel back on. Maya, sweetie, I'm sorry, that was Daddy's fault. How's this?" He jiggled the taps. As usual, the left-hand one was loose and hard to adjust. The water turned hotter, then colder, then settled on warm.

  To his mental to-do list, he added Fix shower taps. Even a luxury condo was starting to show some wear around the edges after having three energetic girls bouncing around in it.

  Maya had now settled down under the shower, relaxing and spreading out her wings with her pointy snout tilted up in bliss. She was a very adorable teal-and-peach color combination, not that Gideon was even remotely objective where his girls were concerned.

  "Daddy, I'm cold," Addy said.

 
"Put your towel back on."

  "Are you all seriously not done yet?" Polly said, opening the door. "Aargh!" She had stepped in water.

  "Help me with your sisters and I'll be done faster," Gideon said. He turned off the shower. Maya squawked indignantly and snapped her jaws over the tap, trying to turn it back on with her mouth.

  "I just put these socks on," Polly complained, hopping on one foot while she tried to peel it off.

  "Daddy, I don't want my towel," Addy said. "It's on the underpotty."

  Gideon looked around. Her towel had fallen down on the floor around the toilet pedestal. It was the last dry one in the bathroom, too.

  "Polly, go get a towel for your sister from the hall closet," Gideon said. He used his foot to push Addy's discarded towel around into the puddles while trying to detach Maya from the taps.

  "If I ever want to use the bathroom again in this lifetime, I guess I have to," Polly said sullenly, and hopped off with her wet sock still partly adhered to her foot.

  Maya managed to turn the shower back on, drenching Gideon's head.

  "Daddy, can I get in the shower too?" Addy said. "I think I also have soap."

  "No. You're getting dry now." He turned it off. Maya attached herself with teeth and claws. "Maya—honey—Maya Anastasia Dragomir, let go of that faucet!"

  By the time Polly came back with the towel, Maya had turned girl-shaped again and was crying over being yelled at, while Addy was crying over not being allowed to get in the shower (but probably mostly because her sister was crying). Gideon wrapped them both up in the same towel, since Polly had only brought one and was now hopping from sock to bare foot and back again with a pointed look, and carried them out into the open-plan living room/kitchen.

  It was, as usual, a disaster. There were toys all over the floor and Polly's drawing supplies spread out on the kitchen island along with homework papers, books, and Maya's partly assembled science project. The nice marble had been drawn on with crayons and markers that had never quite come off, and the white carpet he had once found pleasingly stylish had turned into an absolute magnet for every spilled liquid or semi-liquid substance that a three-child household could produce. The TV was blaring a cartoon that no one seemed to be watching.

  Gideon wondered, in the back of his mind, when the last time was that he had picked up something heavier than the girls. At one point in his life, he would have been able to lift the front end of a truck without breaking a sweat, but that was a skill with very little application to parenthood most of the time.

  "You girls can stay up for an hour of TV and eat a snack while you watch it. What do you want?"

  That stopped the crying. Maya shifted back and decided to fly over and watch TV while clinging to the side of it with her head twisted upside-down, which Gideon was convinced was bad for her eyes but had given up on trying to stop her from doing. Meanwhile, Addy decided that she wanted the horse pajamas, which were in the laundry, not the pink ones or the dinosaur ones. He finally managed to get her into the dinosaur ones by promising to let her watch The Land Before Time in its entirety tomorrow night.

  In the living room, the TV was once again blaring with no one watching it. Polly was drawing at the kitchen island.

  "Is anyone watching this?"

  "Maya's watching it," Polly said.

  "Where is she?"

  "Ceiling."

  Maya was, indeed, up on the chandelier in the middle of the high, vaulted ceiling that Gideon had once admired but now found more annoying as a dragonette-hiding place than anything else. She had her head dangling and twisted around upside down, watching the movie. Gideon eyed her nervously. He had climbed up himself to make sure the chandelier was hung from a sturdy hook once it became clear that Maya enjoyed spending time up there, and then had added three more hooks that jutted from the ceiling with guy wires attached to them. At this point it could probably have taken the weight of an elephant, but he still didn't trust it wasn't going to collapse under her and send her crashing to the ground in an avalanche of glass splinters.

  "Maya?" he said. "Come down here. Dragons don't get snacks, little girls do."

  Maya huffed and swooped down to the floor, where she shifted back. She had taken her PJs with her into the tub; they were rumpled but not, as far as he could tell, actually wet.

  As he dug the girls' treats out of the cabinets and fridge, Gideon couldn't seem to un-notice the slight softening that bulged around the waistband of his casual slacks when he bent over. It wasn't that he was concerned, exactly, but he was starting to worry how much worse this middle-aged melting was likely to get.

  "Girls," he said. "Do you think your dad is out of shape?"

  "What shape are you supposed to be?" Addy asked anxiously.

  "I'm trying to listen!" Maya called from the living room.

  What could he do about it? Gideon wondered. Maybe, he thought, when a dragon reached a certain age and spent a lot more time sitting around in an office chair rather than chasing down screaming prey—aside from squealing girls at bedtime—it was necessary to find other ways to exercise.

  He knew there was some human accommodation for this sort of thing, since humans were soft like this all the time and had to exercise constantly, from what he understood. He just couldn't remember what it was called or have the first idea how to use it.

  "Polly," he said. At thirteen, she was a generally reliable source of information on all things human-world related. "Can I ask you something?"

  Polly sighed deeply and looked up from the anime-style artwork she was hunched over, with her hand bent in the cramped and knotted fistlike grip that she used when she was drawing. "Yes, Dad?"

  "Where would someone go to exercise?"

  Polly looked blank. "You mean like ... a gym?"

  "Yeah, a gym," Maya contributed. She was now stretched out on the living room carpet in a physically impossible position, her legs casually bent with her heels touching her head, watching cartoons on TV. Then she flipped over and kept watching with her head hanging upside down and her hands and feet flat on the floor.

  "I've heard of them," Gideon said warily. The clients of his financial-consulting business talked about them sometimes, but they made gyms sound like places where humans went to bulk themselves up to attract mates. He had no need for false mate-attraction strategies—if he ever was to find a mate, it would happen regardless of anything else he did—and, anyway, he had no time for a courtship right now. The girls consumed his days in the best possible way.

  "Are you going to join a gym, Dad?" Polly asked. She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

  "Why is that funny?"

  "I don't know! It just is!" Polly waved her hands, trying to express herself. "You can probably pick up all the weight machines with just one hand. You'll break things."

  "I'm going to try not to," he said, disgruntled.

  Maya collapsed on the carpet and rolled onto her back. "Pick me up, Daddy!"

  "Sure." He went over to scoop her up off the floor and hauled her up, dangling and giggling.

  "Me!" Addy cried, and suddenly he had two girls hanging off him.

  As Gideon tried not to drop either of them, he felt an unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation: a twinge in his back.

  "So you have a little bit of a dad bod," Polly said from her seat at the counter. "You're a dad. You're supposed to."

  Addy nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck. "You're a good shape, Daddy. It's soft and huggy."

  Right. Definitely going to one of these human gyms, pronto.

  CHAPTER 2

  Lara's horoscope said: "You will start an auspicious new venture today. Look for opportunities!"

  She didn't generally believe in horoscopes, but she always read them for tradition's sake while she sipped her morning coffee. Her mom used to plan her whole day based on the horoscope page.

  If she ever needed evidence that horoscopes were made up, it was supplied by the day that followed, which started with a missed bus and conti
nued with two cancelled clients and an escalating series of hot flashes that got so bad she went and stood outside in the cool fall weather, hoping her body would resume some sort of normal thermoregulation.

  And then, while she was waiting until she no longer felt like she was standing in a sauna on a cool, breezy spring day, she checked her email and found that the email she had been waiting for had come in.

  Don't be bad news don't be bad news please please please—

  She tapped it.

  Dear Lara, the email began.

  I'm sorry, but after reviewing the results of your home study and financial assessment, we don't think you would be a good fit for our adoption or fostering program. Please see the attached—

  She couldn't read any more through the tears swimming in her eyes. Fiercely she closed the email and put the phone down against her leg, swallowing back the hurt until she was sure that she wasn't going to have a total breakdown right here next to the gym door.

  She had been so hopeful this time. She knew it could sometimes be hard to be approved as an adoptive mother as an older single woman, and it didn't help that her hours at the gym had been erratic lately. But she knew she would be a good mother, she just knew it.

  She could never remember a time when she hadn't wanted that. And in particular, unlike many of the other young women she had been friends with, it wasn't a baby she craved. She liked babies fine, but what she really wanted was a child who was old enough to talk to, play with, and share her life with.

  She had watched the years slide past, with her dating life foundering on a series of failed relationships. She had been turned down as a poor candidate for IVF because of a past history of PCOS and her age, and besides, it was hard to afford and her insurance didn't cover it.