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“No.”

It’s firm. Not mean. Not loud, but absolutely unyielding.

“You have much to recover from,” he says. “You have suffered injury and surgery. Do not worry about the one who put you here.”

“I put me here.”

“You have done what you were told since I met you. You bent over the table for your first spanking; you took my cock when I decided you would be my mate. You have been obedient—perhaps not when you stole the horse, but in general. I do not want to hold you responsible for what happened with the wings, but if you go near Equinox again, I can promise you will regret it and share in some of his punishment.”

It’s a threat. One he means. One I don’t intend to bow to.

I did escape because I wanted to. Not because I was tricked into it by Equinox, or because I didn’t know better. I knew there would be trouble and I invited it anyway. I am about to invite it all over again.

Ornix does not keep me under guard. I guess I seem pretty pathetic and battered right now. The surgery scars are healing well, but there’s still something in my body, a resonance of pain and of trauma that is going to take longer to shed.

The first chance I get, I sneak down to the dungeons. I know where they are the same way I know where everything is. This place is slightly more complex than the game makes it seem, but the general outline of things is exactly the same. Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that dungeons are generally down.

I walk past guards, who barely cast a glance at me, and start looking for Nox. It’s not hard to find him. There aren’t any other inhabitants of the dungeon, and there’s only one humming the theme music to DFE online to himself.

“Hey,” I say as I come up to his cage.

Equinox looks bruised and battered. I can see marks on his face, his lip is split, and his throat looks as though a muscular circlet pulled too tight for too long. He has been through quite a lot of pain for me. I recognize that, and it makes me immediately guilty.

“Well,” Equinox says. “That did not go well.”

“It did not. Sorry you’re in the dungeons.”

“It’s okay. It’s not actually that bad. I don’t have to push any updates at least. Sorry I couldn’t get you out. And sorry about the wing situation. I heard that was…”

“Gross? Yeah. Skin wings. Like a plucked chicken. Weird and gross,” I say, trying to lighten the mood a little.

I’m trapped here, in a world where I do not belong, and Equinox is trapped down here, in the bowels of the keep.

“How the hell did she find her way down here?”

The question is thundered back at the dungeon entrance. I stiffen, my eyes widen at Nox as I realize I’m absolutely fucking caught. I don’t think there’s a way out of here. Ornix’s surprise is kind of funny though. He keeps forgetting I know the place better than he thinks. I played every inch of this place when it was released in the game world. Me and my friends have idled down here plenty of times, waiting for the mobs upstairs to respawn.

Nox gives a little shrug. I’m fucked. We both know it. Fortunately I only have a few seconds to wait to find that out.

“I told you not to come down here. I told you never to speak to him again!” Ornix is thunderous as he grips me by the arm, turns me about, and proceeds to spank my gown-clad rear over and over until I cry out. This isn’t the kind of spanking I’m used to, with my trespasses laid out and addressed firmly yet fairly. This is the kind of whipping a relieved parent gives a lost kid they just found.

“Ow!” I cry out. I want to argue back, but it is hard to make a coherent argument when your ass is on fire.

Again, all I can do is take the punishment that is being delivered in front of Equinox in disciplinary show for one.

“Stop it! You’re just angry and taking it out on me.”

“I am angry, and yes, I am taking it out on you. That is what being disciplined is.”

He smacks my ass over and over, making me dance in his grip, making me yowl and wriggle and take it, because I have absolutely no choice.

“Please stop! I’m sorry!”

Apologizing doesn’t work though. He just keeps spanking me, keeps punishing me like he has some right to do it, like I have no opinions or desires that are worth anything outside of fucking him.

And that’s when I get mad.

And that’s when I tell him what I really think.