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“He’ll kill me if I don’t do a good job of this,” Nox says. “I know that. But that just means I’ve prepared well enough that I don’t think I am going to end up dead. What I do think will happenis Ornix will be trapped in this world, and I will be able to reign over the dragon realm as my father always wanted. You’ll be free to return back to your normal human life, such as it is. I’ll even give you a job in my studio, if you like. You could be a tester. The pay isn’t very good, but you don’t end up being punished in a dungeon.”

“Remember, time passes quite quickly here compared to the dragon realm. He will be here sooner rather than later. I would be surprised if there’s…”

“Equinox!”

“There he is now,” Nox smiles. “Right on time, and in the right room. I do love it when a plan comes together.” He rubs his hands together and grins broadly as Ornix roars his name in fury.

There’s an even louder rage-filled exclamation when Ornix hits the electromagnetic wall.

“Let me go deal with him,” Nox says. “You’re free to go.”

“Not really sure why I had to be in the thing anyway if you were just going to let me walk away.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I didn’t know that Ornix would actually fall right into my plan or not. I wanted to keep you safe from him. I promised you that.” He looks down and toys with his phone for a moment.

The walls around me shimmer and disappear.

“You’re really letting me go?”

“I don’t have any need to keep you, and I don’t want to hurt you. You’re as close to an innocent as anyone gets. I hope you’re not pregnant, and if you are, and don’t want to be, just let me know.”

Those words hit me deeply. I haven’t been thinking about the breeding side of things in terms of the consequences that much. It’s because it doesn’t really feel real. The notion of actually being pregnant is very different from the experience of being impregnated. The mind just doesn’t make the link.

What Nox just says feels like a threat. Not to me, but to the potential of life inside me. I suddenly feel protective of a baby I don’t have. It’s strange. This is all very odd.

Nox is already walking off toward Ornix. He doesn’t give me a second look, which is a mistake because it means he doesn’t notice me following him.

“Nox, you have done some stupid things in your time. You have done some things that are even more stupid recently. But this is absolutely mad, and will lead to repercussions that will…”

“Oh, shut up,” Nox says. “Your lectures don’t have any effect on me anymore. You’re in a containment field that cannot be dismantled. You are going to find yourself trapped here for hundreds of years while I return to the dragon realm and take the throne. I have the seal. I have your mate. I have everything you’ve ever held dear, and I have no intention of letting you ever have any of it ever again. Do you understand?”

That question, ‘do you understand,’ ripples. It’s like what Ornix said to me when he finished punishing me. These two are reallytwo sides of the same coin. One isn’t better than the other, and I don’t think Nox is ready to rule anything. He just hates Ornix. And yeah, maybe he has a reason to, but this isn’t going to end well. I can just feel the almost inevitable disaster.

“I’m going to have your mate watched. I’m going to have her meet some of my boys. She’ll take one of them as a lover, I’m sure. She’ll forget about you, and if she has your baby, that baby will never know you, or the dragon realm. I am ending your line one way or another, Ornix.”

“Youare my line, idiot boy,” Ornix says. He is quite furious, which doesn’t surprise me. He has been battling Nox for a long time, trying not to hurt him, trying to give him warnings, but Nox just won’t take them. I kind of feel like I might be the same, not listening to him no matter how many times or in how many ways he expresses his need to have me obey.

“That’s an inconvenience I intend to overlook.”

I have a choice. I can walk away right now and just let this play out. I’ll never go to the dragon realm again. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life hiding my wings, but everybody is hiding something on this planet too, I guess.

I should go.

I should, but I am finding it hard to make my legs move. It was one thing when I was escaping him, when I thought he would come after me and I would have to keep moving in order to evade him and when, let’s be real, I didn’t think it was actually going to be over, and that I’d be leaving him to the mercy of his increasingly unhinged nephew.

Fuck. I’m going to have to rescue him.

The same tyrant who just pinned me down in a cage and fucked my ass for my attitude is now dependent on me for his escape.

Nox starts to come back toward me, I slip away around a corner, let him think I’ve gone just like he told me to. The plan is changing so quickly. It’s gone from me having to stay with Nox for protection to having to, well, hide in his secret lair so I can maybe rescue my captor.

Fortunately I am adaptable. And devious.

“You won’t get away with this, Nox,” Ornix says.

“Actually, I will. I’ve planned it to the letter, and it’s going very well. In the human realm, I have the kind of power you can only dream of. I have economic power, riches beyond your imagining.”

“They’re not real, boy. They’re ones and zeroes. They mean nothing.”