Three egg beds moved at once.
Their parents moved faster.
Wings struck walls. Claws tore nesting grass from the floor. The rescued hatchling vanished beneath its rust-throated mother's chest while the hanging beds slid toward the crack, each shell rocking inside a rim of wood and feathers.
From every bed came the sound of a hatchling trying to break free.
Too loud. Too even. Too many.
Jiang wanted every parent here to keep the choice his emperor family still possessed: answer a living body, or refuse a copy. He needed the beds off the buried metal before the root turned that love into leverage.
Mottle left the bridge chain on her shoulder and limped into the crush.
The black-feathered mother snapped at her. A blue-backed father climbed over the next bed with both wings open. At the highest shelf, a pale wyvern stood alone and called to a shell that answered from somewhere beneath the floor.
