Page 20

M elissa

I wake up lying on my stomach with my shoulders bandaged, but without the horrific wings that hurt like hell. I don’t know whether to be relieved or furious. Something that was mine has been taken from me, but it was something I couldn’t control and hurt like hell every second of its existence.

I was trying to run away from Ornix when it happened, when the itching and the bleeding and the weird pressure suddenly turned to relief and then the new limbs on my back started to follow the impulses of my mind.

I was flying before I knew what was happening.

The ground just fell away from me, right up until I started to fall back toward it.

When I look around, I see that Ornix is right next to me, eyes focused on me. I have the feeling he has not stopped watching me since we returned from the human world. A wave of relief and guilt washes over me at the same time.

“Tell me I’m not going to be scarred forever. I want to wear a bikini next beach season.”

I’m only half joking. Those wings were the worst things I have ever seen in my life, massive and bloody and clawed.

I was a monster. He’s turned me into some kind of freak creature.

He promised me that his cum would stop me from aging.

He never told me it would turn me into the world’s weirdest bat.

“I’m sorry, we did not know that would happen. But this is why humans do not return to their own world after they take the dragon seed. This is why I insisted you stay here. It is all for your own safety. You can no longer walk the human world without becoming monstrous and broken.”

Those words sink into my gut and make it churn.

“I can’t ever go back?”

“Not without this happening. Not without the semblance of the dragon emerging from you at inconvenient times and in painful ways.”

“Why did you cut the wings off?”

“The healer said it would be for the best. They had no scales, and…”

“So I flew once, and I’ll never fly again.”

He moves even closer beside me, taking my hands in his. “It should never have happened,” he says. “You should never have grown wings. They were mutations. Abominations.”

“But it did feel nice to fly, at least, until the falling part. I feel like I could have gotten it with more practice.”

“Your wings didn’t have the necessary strength. You need the musculature to operate them. You don’t have it. You are soft. You are sweet. You are human. You were made to run, not to fly.”

He’s being sweet, but I already feel the loss, even though it hurt. Even though it scared me. Even though it was the kind of body horror more appropriate for a terrible movie, it was my kind of body horror.

There’s something about losing a part of you, even if it was a temporary part, and even if it hurt you, that doesn’t feel good.

“You had no means of retracting them properly,” he said. “They made you bleed. And they were broken. I’m sorry. It must have been terrible to have them, and then to lose them.”

“I could get them back by going to the human world again?”

He reaches out tenderly and cups my chin in his hand.

“You are never going to leave this realm,” he says softly.

“I intend to keep you here for all eternity. This is where you are safe. This is where you are entirely mine. We are going to breed a new legion between us. Melissa, you are not merely a mate, you are part of history yet to be written. You will not have wings, but you will have a legacy.”

“I’m not sure I want a legacy. And I miss the human world. I want to see my friends. I want to see my family. I want to live a normal life. I like you, but I’m not ready to be a mother, and…”

“Shhhh,” he murmurs softly. “I know you think you want all of those things now, but you cannot have any of them. They would destroy you. The life you left behind never had any capacity to contain you. You were not made to be human. You have become more than mortal. Time to accept the gifts of your new reality, little one. Time to become all I wish for you to become.”

He’s magnetic when he speaks this way, low and deeply passionate.

The words themselves are the utterances of an overly possessive madman, but the delivery is so smooth it almost seems reasonable.

Maybe I should give into what he wants. Maybe I really did never have any future among humans.

Maybe this is my destiny, and always was.

“So you’re not mad at me?” I ask him the question with more than a little curiosity. I really thought he’d beat me if I ever escaped, but I don’t think he’s going to punish me, not more than I already have been punished.

“Being angry at you would be pointless. You were manipulated out of this world. You were told terrible things by a terrible little whelp who is going to suffer for it. You have been punished enough by the consequences of your actions. Others are being punished more directly.”

“You mean Equinox is in trouble.”

“Equinox is going to be spending several years in the dungeons for the crime of enabling your escape, and he is lucky that is all that is happening to him. Anybody who helps you escape is going to be punished severely. If he were not family, I would surely have ended him.”

I immediately feel the worst guilt I have ever felt. Equinox sacrificed himself for me.

“I want to see him.”

“That will also never happen,” Ornix says. “He helped you escape this world. He made sure that you were put in danger. Without him, your escape attempt would have been entirely impossible.”

“I want to see him because I want to know what happened to him. I want to know what I made him suffer.”

“You didn’t do anything. He was misguided, and he needs to pay for his actions. He is paying.”

“I still want to see him.”

“No.”

It’s firm. Not mean. Not loud, but absolutely unyielding.

“You have much to recover from,” he says. “You have suffered injury and surgery. Do not worry about the one who put you here.”

“I put me here.”

“You have done what you were told since I met you. You bent over the table for your first spanking; you took my cock when I decided you would be my mate. You have been obedient—perhaps not when you stole the horse, but in general. I do not want to hold you responsible for what happened with the wings, but if you go near Equinox again, I can promise you will regret it and share in some of his punishment.”

It’s a threat. One he means. One I don’t intend to bow to.

I did escape because I wanted to. Not because I was tricked into it by Equinox, or because I didn’t know better. I knew there would be trouble and I invited it anyway. I am about to invite it all over again.

Ornix does not keep me under guard. I guess I seem pretty pathetic and battered right now. The surgery scars are healing well, but there’s still something in my body, a resonance of pain and of trauma that is going to take longer to shed.

The first chance I get, I sneak down to the dungeons.

I know where they are the same way I know where everything is.

This place is slightly more complex than the game makes it seem, but the general outline of things is exactly the same.

Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that dungeons are generally down.

I walk past guards, who barely cast a glance at me, and start looking for Nox. It’s not hard to find him. There aren’t any other inhabitants of the dungeon, and there’s only one humming the theme music to DFE online to himself.

“Hey,” I say as I come up to his cage.

Equinox looks bruised and battered. I can see marks on his face, his lip is split, and his throat looks as though a muscular circlet pulled too tight for too long. He has been through quite a lot of pain for me. I recognize that, and it makes me immediately guilty.

“Well,” Equinox says. “That did not go well.”

“It did not. Sorry you’re in the dungeons.”

“It’s okay. It’s not actually that bad. I don’t have to push any updates at least. Sorry I couldn’t get you out. And sorry about the wing situation. I heard that was…”

“Gross? Yeah. Skin wings. Like a plucked chicken. Weird and gross,” I say, trying to lighten the mood a little.

I’m trapped here, in a world where I do not belong, and Equinox is trapped down here, in the bowels of the keep.

“How the hell did she find her way down here?”

The question is thundered back at the dungeon entrance.

I stiffen, my eyes widen at Nox as I realize I’m absolutely fucking caught.

I don’t think there’s a way out of here.

Ornix’s surprise is kind of funny though.

He keeps forgetting I know the place better than he thinks.

I played every inch of this place when it was released in the game world.

Me and my friends have idled down here plenty of times, waiting for the mobs upstairs to respawn.

Nox gives a little shrug. I’m fucked. We both know it. Fortunately I only have a few seconds to wait to find that out.

“I told you not to come down here. I told you never to speak to him again!” Ornix is thunderous as he grips me by the arm, turns me about, and proceeds to spank my gown-clad rear over and over until I cry out.

This isn’t the kind of spanking I’m used to, with my trespasses laid out and addressed firmly yet fairly.

This is the kind of whipping a relieved parent gives a lost kid they just found.

“Ow!” I cry out. I want to argue back, but it is hard to make a coherent argument when your ass is on fire.

Again, all I can do is take the punishment that is being delivered in front of Equinox in disciplinary show for one.

“Stop it! You’re just angry and taking it out on me.”

“I am angry, and yes, I am taking it out on you. That is what being disciplined is.”

He smacks my ass over and over, making me dance in his grip, making me yowl and wriggle and take it, because I have absolutely no choice.

“Please stop! I’m sorry!”