Page 14 of Davoren (Dragon Master Daddies #1)

"Together," he commanded, extending his bleeding hand.

I pressed my palm to his, and the world exploded.

The moment our blood touched, the contract reacted like a living thing recognizing its purpose.

The parchment—dragon skin, ancient and waiting—absorbed our mingled essence with an eagerness that suggested consciousness.

Golden light erupted from every word, silver fire from every amendment, rose flames from every clause about pleasure and pain.

The frozen flame pedestal melted and reformed, cycling through states of matter that shouldn't exist.

But the light was just the beginning.

The transformation hit me like being struck by lightning while drowning in honey.

Every cell in my body suddenly decided to have an opinion about its current state, and that opinion was change.

I heard myself scream—not from pain exactly, though there was plenty of that.

More from the sheer overwhelming sensation of becoming something else while still being conscious to experience it.

My bones were the first to rebel. I felt them crack—no, that wasn't right.

They sang, resonating at a frequency that made my teeth ache, and then they began to dense.

Not growing, but becoming more themselves, as if all the hollow spaces were filling with something harder than diamond.

My spine elongated with a series of pops that should have paralyzed me, but instead sent waves of pleasure mixing with the agony until I couldn't tell them apart.

The mark on my shoulder went supernova. What had been a contained symbol spread like spilled ink, if ink were made of lava and starlight.

I watched—actually watched—the golden lines trace down my arm, across my collarbones, down my spine.

Each new line felt like being written on by the universe itself, authored into existence as something that had never been before.

"That's it," Davoren's voice anchored me to reality, though reality was negotiable at this point. His hand still pressed against mine, our blood creating a circuit that fed the transformation. "Let it happen. Don't fight it."

Fight it? I couldn't have fought it if I wanted to.

My skin was literally rewriting itself, becoming tougher while somehow growing more sensitive.

Every nerve ending fired at once, sending signals my brain couldn't properly interpret.

Hot, cold, pleasure, pain, ecstasy, agony—all of it simultaneous and overwhelming.

My muscles dissolved and reformed. I felt them unknit and reweave themselves with threads of something that wasn't quite human anymore.

Dragon strength, dragon endurance, but kept in my familiar shape.

The paradox of it made my head spin—or maybe that was just the blood literally changing composition as I watched.

The golden threads I'd noticed earlier spread through my entire circulatory system, turning my blood into something that could carry dragon fire without burning.

Somewhere beyond the cacophony of my transformation, Scarlet's voice rose in what had to be the old tongue.

The words meant nothing to my ears but everything to my bones.

She was chanting, witnessing, recording this moment in magic itself.

The ceremony required a witness not just to observe but to anchor the transformation in reality, to make it true and lasting and recognized by the old laws.

My lungs forgot how to breathe air. For a terrifying moment, I suffocated on oxygen, drowning in the element I'd never questioned.

Then they remembered—or learned—how to process both normal atmosphere and the sulfur-rich air of dragon domains.

The first breath I took afterward tasted like freedom and chains combined.

The changes went deeper than flesh. My mind expanded—not becoming smarter exactly, but gaining space for concepts that human brains couldn't hold.

The ability to understand geological time, to feel the mountain's slow breathing, to know that Davoren's heartbeat had synchronized with mine and would remain that way for eternity.

I could sense his emotions now, not just through the mark but as if they were my own.

His satisfaction at the bond finally completing.

His anticipation for what came next. His genuine awe at how thoroughly I was transforming, exceeding even his expectations.

My eyes burned and reformed. When the pain cleared, colors existed that hadn't been there before. The ceremonial chamber revealed new decorations visible in spectrums humans couldn't perceive—dragons painted in infrared along the walls, ultraviolet runes that spoke of bindings millennia old.

Through it all, our hands remained pressed together, blood continuing to mingle and feed the contract that had gone from parchment to pure light. I felt the exact moment it settled into completion—a click in reality itself, like a lock engaging that could never be picked.

The light died. The pain receded. The transformation finished with a gentleness that seemed impossible after such violence.

I found myself on my knees on the chamber floor, gasping, shaking, but whole.

More than whole—complete in a way I'd never realized I wasn't. My body hummed with new strength, new possibilities.

The dress I'd been wearing hung in tatters, unable to survive the transformation, but I felt no shame.

This body was mine and his and ours, marked by magic that went soul-deep.

"Perfect," Davoren purred, helping me stand on legs that felt newly made. His eyes traced the golden lines that now decorated my skin, following their paths with a possessiveness that made me shiver. "Absolutely perfect."

I looked down at myself, at the artwork the bond had made of my flesh. The lines weren't random—they told a story. Our story, written in a language older than words. Here, where the mark originated, flowing down to where we'd first touched, spreading to encompass everything I was and would become.

Scarlet had stopped chanting. When I looked at her, she was smiling—actually smiling, not her usual controlled expression. "Welcome, Lady Lyris, to your true existence."

True existence. As if everything before had been pretense, waiting. Maybe it had been.

"How do you feel?" Davoren asked, his hand coming up to cup my face with that devastating gentleness he wielded like a weapon.

"Different." I tested my voice, relieved it still sounded like me despite everything else that had changed. "Stronger. More." I paused, searching for the right word. "Yours."

His thumb traced my cheekbone, and the simple touch sent cascades of sensation through my new nerve endings. Everything felt more intense, more immediate, more everything.

"Mine," he agreed, and the word carried weight that would have crushed my human self. Now it just made me want to kneel, to submit, to discover what this new body could experience. "Now then, little one. Time for your first proper discipline."

The words sent liquid heat straight to my core. In the haze of transformation, I'd almost forgotten his promise. My eyes widened.

"You did enter a room marked private, after all." His smile was dark honey and promised consequences. "The bond may be complete, but lessons still must be taught. Come. Let me show you how dragons discipline their treasures."