Page 17

“Sex is what you do to make a baby.” I genuinely can’t believe I’m saying this to a monster who, in his unshifted form, is a veritable god on legs with his chiselled good looks and abs for days.

Fenrother lets me go. “No,” he says firmly. “I know you are not like me. You have no pizzle, and you have those”—he points to my boobs—“but even so, the texts are clear. A male and a female share a bed and a home and then they have young.”

“I have no…pizzle?” I’m absolutely struggling as none of this makes any sense at all. “Fenrother, you said you had no mother or father. Did you have anyone at all, anyone to tell you about becoming a parent?”

“A Wyrm doesn’t need anyone,” he says haughtily. “And anyway, I had my texts.”

“So, no one has explained about, um—” I hesitate, wondering how to explain. “The birds and the bees?”

“Why would anyone need to explain those to me?” Fenrother snorts. “I eat the birds, and the bees make honey from the heather.”

“Okay.” I consider an alternative explanation. “Do you know how you came to be here? How you were born?”

His furrowed brow tells me everything I need to know.

Or rather everything Fenrother doesn’t know.

He is a virgin, a complete innocent in the ways of the flesh in more than one, having never seen female anatomy before and entirely ignorant of how anything works.

And I have to decide what my next move is.

FENROTHER

My female has to be with young. I have done everything the texts told me to do. She has been fed, and she has slept in the same bed as me. A sliver of ice runs up my spine. Perhaps I was not supposed to sleep with her in my shifted form. Perhaps this is why she says she is not carrying my child already as she claims.

As sure as I was about my texts, in the face of a human who is so different from me, whom I believed (and I can’t say I don’t still) wished me ill, because the rest of her kind have always persecuted Wyrms, doubt is creeping in.

Alice puts her hand to her mouth in an action which causes a strange feeling in my crotch.

“Um.” She looks up into the ceiling of the long gallery as if trying to find inspiration. “I’m not sure how best to explain it.”

“Perhaps you should try because as far as I am concerned, my texts are clear on the matter,” I say with not a little annoyance.

“The way most species have young…mate…is for the male to put his”—she hesitates and swallows as I lean forward a little despite not wanting to believe her over my text—“his, um, penis into her vagina and then ejaculate his sperm. If she has an eggready inside her, it will be fertilised by his sperm, and that’s what makes a baby.” She finishes stronger than she started with a rush which leaves her breathless.

“Pe-nis?” I query.

“The…thing,” she says, her face and chest, including her orbs, turning a deeper pink colour. “The thing between your legs.”

“My pizzle?” I am completely confused. “I use it to piss. Sometimes I use it to pick things up. How do I even get it in a female?”

The idea makes me feel hot and bothered, especially as my pizzle is tingling like I need to piss urgently.

“Oh god.” Alice tilts her head to the ceiling again. “This issoawkward.”

“Do I put it where you have no pizzle?” I ask with an element of triumph at my deduction. “In the slit where you piss?”

Alice wraps her arms around herself, and I feel another chill, one I can’t quite put a claw on.

“Let’s get something quite clear, Fenrother. I am not letting you put your…yourpizzleanywhere near me, let alone inside me, okay? I don’t care if the failure for you to do so results in death by Faerie queen. It is not happening.”

She pushes past me, walking away down the walk with her clothing and her hair flowing behind her, leaving a scent which makes the tingling worse.

I toy with the idea of following her, to find out more about why she is different, but I’m going to have to deal with my needs first. I sprint to my bathroom, ready to have a piss the size of a river.

Only to discover my pizzle is wildly engorged and throbbing with an ache I’ve never felt before. I will not be able to piss with it in this state.

I grip at the thing, and a feeling shoots through me, down my spine, through my wings, through my tail. The feelingconcentrates in my balls, and without any warning, my pizzle explodes with a creamy substance as my knees buckle and a grunting noise escapes my lips. It does not stop, and I don’t want it to, not while my spine is shattered and my wings grow to fill the room. All my control is ripped away, and I don’t care in the slightest.