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Ican hear Alice get up from her chair. My body tenses as she does. There are knives on the table, forks, spoons. Any of these could be used against me. For all I’ve enjoyed taking her blood and giving her pleasure, what exactly do I know about this human?

Humans kill Wyrms. It’s a well-known fact. It’s why my great-great-grandfather commissioned the tapestry she didn’t like. Humans and Wyrms have a relationship which is as complicated as it could possibly be.

I know I’m holding my breath as she approaches. I have good reason to be on edge with a human in the room.

Only this human is Alice. She is my mate. She has touched other sensitive parts of me. And yet, having her touch my wings…

A soft hand slides down the outer strut, and instantly a calmness descends on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as she gently places the tips of her fingers on the membrane between.

If I thought my pizzle being touched by her was something incredible, it isnothingcompared to her touch of my wing.

My mind goes blank. A completely unwritten text. A sheet of parchment yet un-inked. I can’t think of anything. I don’t want to think of anything. All I want to do is breathe in the scent of her. The faint tang of blood and her particular perfume, somewhere between blooming heather and dripping honey.

Against my will, my knees sag, and I release a long lungful of air, my claws gripping at the stone over the fire. I concentrate on the flames, the ones I should be able to produce, only I never have.

The fire is everything. Alice’s touch is everything. I stretch out my wing so she can see it all. It belongs to her.

I belong to her.

Without a word, she continues to slide her hands over the membrane until she reaches the areas where it is thicker with scars. No part of my body is without scars. Her fingers feel incredible as she slowly explores the knotted area, making it feel less tight than it has done in the decades since it healed.

This female has no magic, yet she has bewitched me entirely. She could plunge a knife into my heart at this very moment and I’d thank her.

“So sensitive,” she breathes. “So beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as you,” I hear myself say.

“How would you know?” Alice asks.

“I’ve seen a sunset,” I respond, as she moves to my other wing, the one more ragged, more scarred. “I know what beauty is.”

ALICE

Fenrother’s pronouncement stops me momentarily in my transition from wing to wing. It is not what I expected from him at all.

He thought I was something almost from another planet not so long ago. He didn’t understand my anatomy or what I was. Only that as a human, I posed a possible danger to him.

But now I am a sunset, a thing of beauty. I’m not sure what to make of it all.

Fenrother holds his other wing tightly to him. I’ve noticed before he favours his other one, using it to hold open doors or the thick clawed hook at the shoulder to take hold of things. I know he can fly—after all that’s how I got here—but he does not want to show me his other wing.

I trace my fingers down his back and over the muscles where his wing joins the rest of his body. I can feel Fenrother weaken slightly, and I press my advantage. If he can be spellbound by me, surely I get to look at all of him?

Like before, when I press lightly on the outer edge, he swings it open, almost as if he cannot help himself. This one does not rise like the other. There is resistance. Fenrother is resisting me.I smooth my hand over the pretty membrane. It has a sheen like his scales, and I love the way I can see my hand through it, the thin veins which spread like a map of who he is livid under my touch.

But as he expands it further, I see what he doesn’t want me to see, even if he is unable to help himself. The bottom portion is ragged, and the centre is criss-crossed with scars, making the wing significantly thicker.

“What happened to you?” I whisper as I trail my fingers over it.

Fenrother snaps the wing shut. “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he growls, pushing away from the fireplace.

“I didn’t say…”

But he’s already backing off, the look in his eyes similar to when we first met, guarded and angry.

“I have to go check on the defences,” he says, swirling away from me in a swish of wing and tail before he becomes the Wyrm, huge, even in the great hall, swarming out and into the courtyard. I see him through the large arched windows as he climbs up and up towards the roof of the castle.

Fenrother is gone, leaving a Wyrm-shaped hole behind him and my head deep in confusion. I know all of this is new to him. I know he learnt from books and more recently by following his instinct, but I still don’t know whathewants.