Page 18

“It’s an honor to meet you,” I parrot back, being as polite as I can under the circumstances.

Jak nods at me and makes a polite verbal offering, which I also return.

I am feeling a mixture of relief at being out of the forest, and awkwardness at being in front of all these dragons who clearly have great power and gravitas.

I am glad Equinox is here. He makes me feel as though I have an ally.

I feel Ornix’s hand settle on the back of my neck, possessive and somewhat reassuring.

I am torn. Truly. I want to go back home. I want to be in my world. I want to be free. But there is a potent chemistry unfurling in my belly even now, even after four rounds of rough dragon sex, with my pussy so tender I can feel the insistent throbbing between my legs almost constantly.

“Are you ready to be escorted back to the keep, sire?” Jak asks the question.

“Yes. I will take my mate. Equinox, you can lead Otto back. Stand back, Melissa. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

He goes to a distance and becomes something so much more than himself. There is a flash of light, a certain magic that I feel as though I can smell.

I watch, astounded as Ornix shifts into his great golden form. He is the size of several elephants in his main body, and his wings have a span that would easily block out the sun in flight.

He reaches for me with his claws and picks me up, cradling me in a grasp that feels incredibly predatory and strong, as well as very strange. I am standing inside my mate’s clawed hands.

He looks down at me, his eye very nearly as big as the whole of me.

I feel an internal tremor. I cannot help but react with some measure of fear; he is a massive ancient beast capable of swallowing me in a single bite.

It is one thing to contend with his human form, but right now I am vulnerable in a whole new way.

His wings beat and I am swept up from the ground in a sudden gust. It is like taking off in a plane, but vertically rather than horizontally.

We rise into the sky, me holding onto his claw with both arms. I know he won’t let me go, but it would be easy to slip through his fingers.

As curvy and generously built as I am, I am so small compared to his dragon form.

Every time he beats his wings I feel us surge through the sky together at speeds that seem faster than any aircraft I’ve ever been in before, including Tempest’s private jet when she bribed the pilot to buzz the tower as if we were in Top Gun .

This is a thrill like no other. Surrounded by midnight sky, beneath clusters of foreign stars, I am carried in a grip powerful, gentle, and entirely possessive.

The notion of escaping him feels like a ridiculous dream right now. How could anybody hope to escape a creature who is this majestic, this powerful, and this absolutely massive?

We land at the very top of the keep just a few minutes later having made the distance small. There at the top of the castle, I am folded into his arms, then picked up again.

“I am taking you for a bath, and then bed,” he says. “You have had a very, very big day.”

Back in the bedroom at the top of the Golden Keep, I fall asleep in Ornix’s arms, absolutely exhausted by the efforts of the day. My dreams are wild, which makes sense given the situation. I dream of dragons, of kobolds, of blood, and of the kind of sex that destroys aging itself.

When I wake, the light has the quality of a warm afternoon. I have been left to sleep in the massive bed, though I can smell Ornix in the sheets, and I can even feel his warmth. I do not think it is long since he woke up.

I lie in bed for a while, just enjoying being safe and content and cozy.

I can still feel the tender ache between my legs when I move them, and when I think of him and my lower muscles pull tight, there’s even more of a spark.

I feel my clit tingle at the memory of being mated over and over, my pussy taking my mate and master.

I never thought I’d have sex that much. Tempest talks about fucking all day, but she has no idea what that really means.

“Ornix?” I call for him from the comfort of the bed.

He emerges from somewhere nearby, almost as if he had been waiting.

When he comes, he does so with a large platter of foods.

There are cut fruits, cheeses, pastries, and more.

There are several meats and some juices and cream to go on the baked goods.

It is enough for an entire army, but it all seems to be for me.

“Eat,” he says. “You did not consume enough yesterday. You were too busy breaking every rule in the book, and, well. You know. You were there.”

“I was there,” I agree as I start to devour the offering. I know it’s probably some kind of weird coping mechanism from way back, but food really does feel like love sometimes. Right now, it feels like absolute adoration.

“You will need to keep your strength up for what is to come.”

“Why? What is to come?” I ask the question in between bites of flaky pastry.

“Your life in the keep is not going to be restricted to bed, though I admit I have been tempted to keep you here. Being my mate will eventually very much become about the tending of whelps, but…”

“Oh. See. I don’t want… I’m not really a kid person. My degree was in business, so. I was hoping to have a career. Maybe you could stay with the whelps and raise them.”

The expression on his face when I tell him that makes me giggle into my brioche.

“I will be doing some of the raising of the whelps, naturally. But my duties as leader, combined with the natural dependence of a young creature on its mother…”

“We can feed them milk and let the ponies raise them.”

I am somewhat joking, but only somewhat. I am not ready to mother anybody. I barely feel like an adult myself. The way Ornix treats me isn’t exactly like an equal either. He wants me to do as he says, birth his babies, accept my captivity. But it’s not going to be that easy.

I yearn for where I come from, and as spoiled as I might feel in this room of riches and delicious treats, I know I don’t belong here. Yesterday, I had no notion that this world even existed.

My shoulders are itching again. I thought I’d bathed pretty well last night, but maybe not.

“I’m going to take a bath,” I say.

He watches me go with an expression I can only describe as dangerously indulgent. He thinks I am trapped here. He doesn’t know I already have a way out. I go and I bathe, and I think of home while simultaneously pushing the thought of what will happen to me once I leave for Earth out of my mind.

As soon as I get a chance, once Ornix is busy with his advisors, I take the seal and I go to Equinox. I don’t know why I take the seal. I just do it, naturally, as if it belongs to me. It feels like picking up my phone. God, I miss my phone.

I open the door and go into the chamber, just like he said to.

“Oh, my god, you have computers in here!”

Equinox swings around and smiles at me. His dark hair is tied up in a ponytail and he’s wearing a T-shirt, which looks wild on a man with scales. It’s interesting to see a dragon dress like a human man. He’s even wearing dark jeans and trainers.

Ornix pretended to be human as well, but he was in a kind of disguise where you couldn’t see the scales or the eyes, or the full extent of his majesty. Equinox is just in his dragonkin shape, but he’s dressed like a gamer bro. I guess it makes sense. That’s what he is.

“Yes, they help with the coding,” he says. “You’re ready to go?

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I’m going to open a portal, you need to go through it, and get as far away from the portal as possible. They’re going to know it was opened. Ornix is going to feel it. He’s going to know you’re not on this plane anymore. And he’s going to come for you.”

There’s so much intensity in Equinox’s voice right now, it’s kind of freaking me out.

“This is your chance, maybe your only chance, okay? So the second you get through that portal, you have to run. Get the fuck away from there, and never, ever go back to anywhere or anyone he might be able to track you to. Go get a job in the middle of Texas as a waitress. Stowaway on a cargo ship to Shanghai, if they’re still running.

Take a position as a cleaner in Antarctica.

If you stay in even remotely the same geographical area, he will find you. ”

“Oh, um. But. I don’t have any money over there.”

He pushes a piece of paper into my hand. “This is my number. Use it when you’re through. I’m going to stay here and mirror the portal.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m going to push it behind seven different proxies. He’ll know it’s open, but he won’t know where. The tech doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that you have a chance to escape now, and only now.”

“I’m scared.”

“You should be. Use the fear to escape.”

“I mean, I don’t know how to do any of that stuff. I don’t know how to get to Antarctica…”

He nods, briefly. “Okay. Then I’ll take care of all the details. Don’t worry about any of it. Just worry about walking through the portal.”

Anxiety twists my gut. I know I said I wanted to leave this world, and I do, but I am also starting to freak out.

He’s being so intense, and this all feels so high stakes, and I know if I just go back upstairs, I won’t have to do anything that frightens me again.

Ornix will take care of me until I give birth…

Oh, fuck that.

“What if I’m already pregnant?”

“Your baby won’t show any signs of the nature of the father while it remains in the human world.

There are actually quite a number of biological half dragons in the world, but they’ve never been to this realm and they do not understand what or who they are.

If you happen to be pregnant—and it is very possible you are not, more likely than you are—then your baby will live a happy human life never knowing any different. ”

“But then Ornix will never know his child.”

“Ornix kidnapped you and forcibly mated you. Fuck Ornix.”

Equinox really does not like his uncle. I can already tell that all of this has fuck all to do with me and a lot to do with getting back at his guardian.

“I’m going to open the portal now,” he says. “But you should get changed first. If you appear in the human world dressed like a dragon princess, people are going to raise their brows.”

I almost forgot I was wearing a long golden gown. That’s how quickly you can get used to nice things. He’s right. If I show up, even in Los Angeles, looking like this, people are going to notice. They’ll pretend they don’t, but they will.

“Where will the portal go out to? My phone and stuff is still at Tempest’s house.”

“I’m going to put you back there, but I’m also going to send a car to that address, and that car will take you to the airport,” he says.

“Once you get to the airport, there will be a ticket waiting for you at a counter that I’ll text you.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. ”

He really has planned this all out. Nothing has been left to chance, even with having to shift plans, he’s ready to act.

“I’m going to open the portal,” he says. “Grab your phone and whatever else is at the house. It’s late at night in the human world now. With any luck, nobody will even know you were there. You can do this, Melissa. Now. Go.”

He hits the Enter key on his keyboard, and a big square door-shaped portal opens up in front of me.

It doesn’t look at all like the one Ornix used when we first came through, but that doesn’t surprise me.

I bet they all have their own ways of summoning and constructing magic. Equinox is based in tech.

I take a deep breath, and I walk through.

The first thing I feel is my feet on carpet.

Carpet. Only a day away from the human world and I’d almost forgotten about the existence of carpet. Fuck. It’s weird the things the mind erases when it finds itself in another dimension.

Also, I forgot to get changed.

When I look down, my clothing is different. I don’t know how that happened, but it has been done. Equinox’s tech, I guess. I’m wearing a knee-length denim skirt, long socks, trainers, and a jacket. It’s kind of a weird combo, like something out of a retro hackers movie, but I guess it works.

One thing he was wrong about is the time of day. It’s not the middle of the night. It’s more like two p.m. The sun is shining warmly through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I feel like I can hear Tempest somewhere in the house.

I want to go to her, tell her what happened. But I know if I do that she’s going to think I am insane. So I go and I grab my bag. It’s still out by the pool, almost as if nobody even noticed I was missing.

I wonder how much time has actually passed here since I left. A whole day went by in the dragon realm, almost two, really. Maybe that’s why dragons live forever. Wait. Does that make sense? And am I still immortal here? I don’t know if I functionally age here. I forgot to ask about that.

I check my phone. Nothing.

I slip out of the house. It’s so big there’s no way anyone is going to see me, besides maybe one of the security guys, but even they don’t really have eyes everywhere. It’s hard to pay attention to everything all at once.

He’s supposed to be sending a car, but I don’t see a car.

I decide to start walking. I feel weird.

I thought it would be a relief to be back in the human world.

I thought it would wrap around me and make me feel better.

It feels… strange. Like a favorite piece of clothing that I loved once, and now I’ve tried it on again it just doesn’t fit or look as good as I remembered.

The roads are narrow and windy and go uphill here. My shoulders are itching again. It’s so annoying. It’s enough to make me turn around and go back to back with the wall, scratching against it.

But this time, scratching doesn’t seem to do anything, or it kind of feels like it’s doing too much. I feel the skin on my back move underneath my clothes, like really bad sunburn can sometimes, sloughing off.

“What the fuck?” It feels weird, but it also feels good, like a relief.

And then there’s an even stranger pressure that makes me take the jacket off. There’s something on it. Something thick and dark… is that blood?