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Maybe it has. This place is magic, after all.

Fenrother lowers us both into the water. I hiss as my sensitive parts come into contact with the hot water, and he buries his head in my hair, crooning softly.

“Good mate,” he says. “You took my pizzle so well during your heat.”

“Is it over?” I ask as he sluices the water over me and my painful parts begin to ease.

“It should be.”

“What about your rut?”

“That doesn’t end until the moon month is up. Your heat makes it easier for me to fill you, but my body will not rest until it is sure,” he says with some considerable enthusiasm.

Exhaustion, rather tension, flows through my limbs. The dull ache in my stomach has been replaced by the soreness between my thighs and deep within me where I have been repeatedly stung around my cervix. My shoulder burns in a slow pulse where Fenrother bit me.

All in all, it’s been a wild ride.

I lean my head against Fenrother’s chest. It moves up and down with his even breathing. My big bad monster is asleep once again. Despite everything, it seems mating for a full twenty-four hours can take it out of any male, including Fenrother.

His ruggedly handsome features are softer when he sleeps, taking on an innocence which I know I’ve taken from him with my mere presence. Fenrother was untouched, and within a short time, he has discovered what a female is and has done things he probably hadn’t ever thought about.

I gently stroke a finger over his strong jaw. The fine scales there glitter under my touch. I didn’t expect my heart to openfor him, but it has. What we have done has nothing to do with instinct or the countdown the queen believes she has imposed.

It has far more to do with two souls finding each other. Fenrother is funny, both intentionally and unintentionally, playful, growly, and sweet in varying measures. Above all, he’s as lonely as I was, trapped in a life he didn’t understand and which he didn’t ask for.

Beneath me, my great Wyrm flinches, his hand flapping at his nose and spraying himself with water as his eyes open in alarm. For a brief second, I see terror there until they fall on me and instead a smile spreads over his face.

“Alice.” He rasps my name.

“You were somewhere else.”

“I was, but I’m here with you now.” He sighs deeply, one hand playing under the water, sweeping from side to side in a rocking motion. “I always want to be with you, Alice.”

I wish I knew how much of this is Fenrother and how much of it is his instinct, the part of him he cannot control. For the time being, I don’t want to think about it at all, simply enjoying the moment when he is calm and I am calm and the bath is hot.

Whatever happens next, it’s in the lap of fate, and if there’s one thing I’ve discovered in my time in the Yeavering, it’s that fate will do what fate will do.

ALICE

Fenrother’s rut manifests as a compulsion to have sex often and anywhere. In the long gallery, my hands pressed against the wood panelling as he takes me from behind, growling in my ear and sending my orgasm sky high.

Afterwards, he insists on cleaning me up, mostly with his tongue but often by carrying me to the nearest bathroom and then using his tongue.

I’d stop wearing knickers, but he likes the challenge, and I still haven’t been able to stop him from carrying around a used pair with him. A pair I regularly find him sniffing, his face buried in the fabric and his eyes closed in ecstasy.

I’m sort of getting used to it, to him, to everything Fenrother is. To the fact his tail has a habit of curling around my ankle whenever he gets the chance, almost like a comforter. To his desire to follow me around, yes, even to the toilet, something which still fascinates him despite everything we’ve done together.

But most of all, it’s having his huge, bombastic presence in my life. Fenrother does everything with gusto, whether it’s hunting, eating, or stalking me around the castle.

As for me, I’ve gone from no one giving a single shit about my existence to having a very large, very scaly shadow. One with a penchant for undergarments which he keeps stuffed in his pockets.

And Fenrother is scaly. I pick up another of his shed scales from the bedroom floor as I’m dressing. This one is about the size of my palm and has a delightful iridescent sheen on its translucent surface. I add it to my collection, the one I keep in a wooden box in the wardrobe. I’m getting quite a pile. I like them because they smell of him.

I like the fact that slowly, this situation is making more sense. Yes, I was thrown into it without a choice, but since then there have been far more choices than I thought I would have.

Even potentially being pregnant with Fenrother’s child is less of a threat than it was.

“Come see the moors,” Fenrother says, extending his hand to me after breakfast. “The heather is blooming.”