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“I have a portal I use for work. I can sneak you into it once we all get back to the Golden Keep. I don’t want you feeling trapped here. I’m not saying Uncle Ornix won’t come for you anyway, but it’s there.”

I feel a bit guilty, plotting to run away while Ornix discusses the seal with his advisors, or whoever they are. But I do want to get back to the human world. I want to get back to sanity. I want to find myself among people. I barely know the creature who has taken me as his mate, and the fact that we have spent almost the entire time we’ve known each other having sex doesn’t change that.

“That’s very nice of you,” I say. “Won’t it get you in trouble?”

“Everything gets me in trouble. I’m trying to bring this realm into the modern age. We can’t keep acting as if the human world is still stuck in medieval times. Taking some human female and ravaging her over and over until she spits out a baby isn’t right.”

“It’s pretty wild.”

“Wild isn’t the half of it. I couldn’t put that in the game. It would get the whole thing taken down. People don’t realize that the hunger of a dragon and the greed of a dragon extends to more than jewels. If too many of our kind were to enter the human realm it would be a disaster. It is better our numbers stay low, even though Ornix and the others insist on trying to make me take a mate.”

“You could find someone who likes you, who wants to be ravaged?”

He snorts. “Who would do that?”

“A lot of people, I think, of all genders.”

He smiles. “You’re sweet. I’d like to help you escape before you get pregnant. Nobody deserves to be stuck in this realm. It’s fun for a game setting, but year after year for eternity? It’s basically hell.”

Escaping is appealing for many reasons. When Ornix fucks me and breeds me, it is hot as hell, but the notion of actually giving birth, of mothering? That feels like a lot right now. I planned to have a family one day, but I always assumed it would be in my late twenties, with a human man.

“Come and find me when you’re back at the keep. My rooms are on the floor below his. Go downstairs and open the door with the three-horned dog on it.”

That’s the symbol his game company uses. I would have recognized it anywhere.

I nod, daring to feel a little excited.

I miss the world I came from. Already. It is a hollowness inside me, a certain amount of being completely unsettled all the time because this is not where I belong. I was not made in this world and to some extent, I think I feel it trying to eject me, like a splinter from skin.

A shadow falls over us, depriving us of moonlight in the shape of Ornix.

“What are you two talking about?”

I feel an instant surge of anxiety. What if he heard us? What if he already knows about the plot we were just hatching?

“The game,” I say.

“Nothing,” Equinox says.

Ornix’s golden gaze roams over the pair of us. “I do not know that I like the two of you talking,” he says. “The combined energy is far too chaotic. Equinox, get away from my mate.”

We both get up, probably looking as guilty as he has made us feel. Equinox drifts to the back of the other two again, and I am drawn to Ornix’s side.

“This is Melissa. She is my mate,” he declares. “She has taken my seed three times here in our realm, and is sealed to the bloodline. Let the others know the Golden Keep has a new mistress.”

“Of course, sire,” Arkos says. “It is an honor to meet you, Melissa.”

He makes me shy. Not just shy, but a little nervous. There is something in the energy of the older dragon that makes me feel assessed and weighed and perhaps even found wanting. I try to tell myself that’s just because of my issues with authority, but I do not really know if that is the truth. These dragons must be used to humans being abducted every few hundred years or so. I wonder what happened to the other ones that had been made immortal before me. I should ask, if I remember.

“It’s an honor to meet you,” I parrot back, being as polite as I can under the circumstances.

Jak nods at me and makes a polite verbal offering, which I also return. I am feeling a mixture of relief at being out of the forest, and awkwardness at being in front of all these dragons who clearly have great power and gravitas. I am glad Equinox is here. He makes me feel as though I have an ally.

I feel Ornix’s hand settle on the back of my neck, possessive and somewhat reassuring.

I am torn. Truly. I want to go back home. I want to be in my world. I want to be free. But there is a potent chemistry unfurling in my belly even now, even after four rounds of rough dragon sex, with my pussy so tender I can feel the insistent throbbing between my legs almost constantly.

“Are you ready to be escorted back to the keep, sire?” Jak asks the question.