Page 23

“I did mention the likelihood of such an event,” Arkos reminds me.

“She has fate wrapped around her, a particular and peculiar power that I do not pretend to understand. You have not chosen an ordinary human female. It is possible she had some of the blood in her already, or that she is otherwise tainted, the product of another adjacent realm. Or, perhaps, she may simply be so rebellious and chaotic that magic itself twists and bends to her will in ways it will not for others.”

I do not have time to listen to theories. I need to go and get my mate. Now.

“Where is she?”

“Ripping the dungeon apart.”

Of course she is.

I go down to the dungeon, where I find my mate standing in the midst of the remnants of Equinox’s cell.

There are bits of ceramic all over the floor, which is rather wet.

I suspect the water pitcher spell has been deployed here many times over, in addition to the incredible numbers of bread, which are still in evidence.

Equinox is still in the cell, which is something. As is Melissa. But they are not alone. They are enjoying the company of a very large hole in the wall that is threatening to undermine the foundations of the Golden Keep.

“Maybe we can put it back together?” Melissa is saying hopefully.

“You want to rebuild a wall when you’ve atomized half the stones? What are we rebuilding it with?” Equinox is sarcastic when he is stressed.

“Is there a conjure stone spell? Or a ‘make it look like there’s stones here’ spell?”

“There’s a kiss both of your asses goodbye spell,” I growl.

They see me and swing around like a pair of naughty whelps.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Melissa gasps.

“Really? Because it looks like you came down here and asked my nephew to teach you enough low-level magic to allow you to create an unstable portal to the human world that just flooded a hillside with magic dragon bread.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, in that case, it’s exactly what it looks like.”

“Come out of there. Now.”

“I can’t. I’m locked in.”

“I know you walked between the bars. Walk through them again.”

She swallows deeply and looks at me with wide, frightened eyes. “I don’t want to,” she says, speaking in very nearly a whisper.

“Melissa. Now.”

She whimpers and obeys me, snugging out between the bars. The moment she is outside, I grip her by the back of her robe, turn her around, and spank her ass. Hard.

“Ow!” Her wail is just the beginning of the well-deserved cries I will hear this evening. “I did what you told me to do, why would you do that?”

“I did not tell you to sneak down to the dungeons and learn to perform magic that not only undermines my orders, but once again causes a serious problem with porous events in the human realm.”

“It’s not completely her fault. She came looking for me because they didn’t feed her.”

“Excuse me?”

Melissa whimpers in agreement. “I woke up and nobody would even talk to me. There was nothing to eat. So I came down here, and Equinox shared his breakfast with me and taught me how to make bread and water. The rest of the dragons in this pile of rocks wouldn’t care if I lived or died.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes. I asked someone about where the kitchen was and they wouldn’t even answer me. So I came down here. And then…”

“And then naturally you ended up exploding the castle wall.”

“That was an accident!” she says, her tone very much indicating she was as surprised as anyone. “All I did was swear. It wasn’t even a spell. I don’t know how that happened.”

I sigh, and cancel the ward on the cell door, opening it. “You may as well come out,” I tell Equinox. “You do as much damage in confinement as you do outside it. Besides, I believe I will need your help. I was not able to find the seal.”

“I won’t be able to find it either.”

“Why not?” My voice is clipped as I try to maintain patience in the face of extreme provocation.

“Because it attuned to your mate. It will only speak to her.”

“That makes… that’s impossible. It’s the wild seal. It belonged to the Bear. And you are telling me that my human mate, who has not only grown wings in the human world, is also attuned to the wild seal?”

“I suppose, yes. It is a little overpowered a build, but she has no control over any of it, so it’s not really all that useful,” Equinox says. “I’m not sure how any of this is happening.”

I am not sure how any of this is happening, but I do realize now that my advisor was right. Melissa truly cannot be trusted out of my sight. She invites chaos wherever she goes.

“I’m not taking her into the human realm. Her wings will regrow, and god only knows what else will happen. But we need to regain the seal before the humans find it. You and I will go, Nox, once I have dealt with my mate.”

Melissa

We all know what that means. I am picked up, tossed over Ornix’s shoulder, and taken to the bedroom where Ornix’s cock slides inside me in one smooth stroke, like he owns me, like my flesh was made for him. Like I am his human fuck toy.

“You’ve been so bad,” he growls in my ear, his fingers finding my clit and landing a slap on it. “You’ve been plotting with the enemy, you’ve been working behind the scenes. And you’ve forgotten who you belong to, and what can happen to this pussy.”

“Who is the enemy?”

“Equinox was my prisoner, and you consorted with him.”

“I did not! I asked him for some breakfast because they were gonna starve me and you abandoned me here.”

He slaps my pussy again, his scaled fingers stinging my sensitive clit.

I am flushed with desire, need, and everything I cannot help but having when he fucks me.

Ornix can do what he wants with me, because my body is absolutely calibrated to him.

I find what he does incredibly hot. I also find what he does incredibly unethical.

But I am not the only one of us who has some kind of objection to the other’s behavior.

“My very own mate, stealing a seal, attuning to it. Learning the deep magic with little effort when it takes those of our own kind many hundreds of years of continuous study to even begin to attain a sliver of mastery over. I took decades to attune to my seal. You claimed yours within moments of touching it. It shouldn’t be possible. ”

I wonder if he’s angry at me for my many disobediences, or if he is truly furious because he is afraid, because as much as he tries to control me, he can’t. I wish he’d learned from the beginning, when he saw my records, when he knew who I was.

“You’re never going to make me good.”

“Is that right, little human? I think I can make you very good. I think I can make you leak with my seed and swell with my whelps. I think I can make you everything you were ever destined to be.”

“No,” I moan. “You can’t.”

He bends me over the arm of the chair and starts hard fucking me, thrusting deep, ravaging my pussy as if fucking me hard is the way to make me submit. But it’s not really about submission. It’s about trying to control chaos, and that’s just not possible.

I didn’t try to attune to the seal. I don’t even really know what that means.

It’s just a thing that happened, the way so many other things have been things that happened.

Nobody ever understands. They think I’m fucking with shit on purpose.

I never am. Half the things I got fined for were things I didn’t even really mean to do.

Wherever I am, things just seem to happen.

Pinned down beneath this massive dragon, taking his huge cock as it stretches me lewdly wide, I know he can’t and won’t understand.

He’s like all the other people in authority.

He thinks I do things that are bad because I make choices.

What really happens is I get somewhere and events start unfolding.

Being abducted by a dragon king is on brand for me for that very reason.

I come on his cock, take another dose of his seed. I have an eye-rolling orgasm. And when it is over, nothing has fundamentally changed. I am still attuned to a lost relic, my wings are already starting to regrow—I haven’t mentioned that, but I can feel the tingling and I know what it means.

He falls back, satisfied, as if sexual domination might somehow change my intrinsic nature. I let him think what he needs to think, while knowing that as soon as he is asleep, I am going to open one of those messy portals and I am going to crawl back to where I came from.

It doesn’t take as long as I expected for him to fall asleep. He is ancient, after all, and he thinks his presence is enough to contain me. There’s so much arrogance in men of all kinds, even the ones who are actually massive dragons.

I go to the bathroom, and I concentrate with all my power. There’s no way to make this go well, but all I can do is try.

I murmur the portal word softly, but with calm intention. I imagine the portal, as it should be, as it could be. I think about the human world I came from, about the city and the hills, my friends. I hold the destination in mind, and…

There is a mirror on the bathroom wall, massive and complexly framed with carvings of dragon origin.

As I speak the portal incantation, it, for whatever reason, decides to become a roiling molten mass of a portal to a hell dimension.

I see lava dripping from ceilings of vaulted caves, I hear the wailing of hundreds of thousands of damned souls, and I see demons torturing them, hideous beasts with the wrong numbers of eyes, legs, and hands.

They see me. Snapping their heads toward me all at once, like the same brain controls them all.

They scuttle toward me, coming from all directions, reaching through the portal, long, clawed fingers reaching for me.

This is a flash of insight into the worst of the worst, and it horrifies me so deeply all I can do is stand and stare and scream. My cries blend with those of the damned until all I can hear is one great cry that makes my ears feel as if they might shatter.

Ornix bursts in behind me, grabs me around the waist, extends his hand, and snarls something in the direction of the portal. The demons hiss in fear and withdraw. The portal closes, leaving the mirror behind.

I am sobbing in fear as Ornix pulls me out of the bathroom and carries me to bed.

“I know,” he says. “It’s terrifying. This is why we don’t practice portal magic on our own in a room where there’s a mirror. Mirrors are hard to trust at the best of times.”

“Hell is real?”

He chuckles. “You found out dragons are real, but you’re surprised hell is?”

“I never thought… it’s not… that means… oh, my god.”

I thought I’d had existential crises before.

But never like this. Never so deep they went all the way to my soul.

It’s all real. Everything. I got so used to being jaded, to thinking nothing really existed, and now I know, for absolute sure, that everything does.

Unicorns. Aliens. Mermaids. I bet they all exist.

“It’s a place, Melissa. You don’t need to fear it. You’re one of the few who could probably walk right out of it. Look how hard I am having to work to keep you contained. By the time you are in any position to be anywhere near hell, you’ll be able to walk on water and through walls.”

“Really?”

“Ordinarily I’d say no, but your progress has been extraordinary in every way, so, probably.”

I am still shivering. You can’t see actual hell and not be affected by it. It’s like having every terrible fear you ever had, every nightmare, every pang of anxiety all rolled up together and shoved down your throat at once.

Ornix holds me, seeming way more amused by the whole thing than I expected. I thought he’d be furious again. I thought he’d punish me. Give me another one of those harsh beatings followed by another fucking that leaves me drenched in his seed, bred yet again. Instead, he snuggles me.

I risk asking him a question that might remind him he’s supposed to be angry. “You’re not mad at me?”

His hand smooths down my back in a soothing motion.

“I have been mad at you. I have been afraid for you. I have been furious at your refusal to settle into your place. I have wanted more from you. But you are a force of nature, Melissa, and anger is not the right response to your continued efforts to learn. Even when they go terribly wrong.”

“But you were so angry…”

“I was expecting too much. I am not perfect. You are the first mate I have had, the first human I have had total responsibility for, and you are challenging in the extreme. We are going to clash. I understand that now.”

Ornix

She’s so shaken. I’ve never seen her this scared before, not even when she first found herself in my realm, or when she saw my true form, or when the creatures of the forest tried to manifest her worse fears.

My protective urges are at the forefront right now. She is so afraid she is sweating and shaking in my arms. It could have been much worse than it was. If I had not heard her, and woken to her scream, she could have been dragged into hell.

Some might say she would have deserved that if it happened, but the truth is that she is young and she is learning, and experiments happen. We’ve all accidentally opened a portal into hell. It’s practically a rite of passage.

I pull her close to me and I let her regulate over time.

It is late and it would be nice to be asleep, but I want to offer some comfort.

I’ve done so little of that of late. I’ve been a tyrant.

I’ve been a lover. A mate. I’ve pinned her down and bred her, and yes, to my credit, saved her from the consequences of her actions more times than anyone might strictly think necessary.

It’s hard to be gentle with someone who breaks every rule you give them. Even harder to maintain discipline when my mate is unable to follow orders. She’s an absolute brat, through and through.

As she starts to settle, and finally even relaxes against me, I risk drifting off again. This time, however, I keep my arm wrapped around her firmly, keeping her in place. Finally, we sleep.