Page 24

M elissa

We are preparing to go back to the human world, and I am deeply excited. I miss home. I miss everything about how mundane it is and the stupid things we worry about and how nothing I do ever really matters there, whereas here there’s always some fucking insane consequence.

Three of us—me, Ornix, and Equinox—are in Ornix’s study, where the expedition will be staged.

“I cannot trust you out of my sight,” Ornix says. “I am not even sure I can trust you in it. But we do need to retrieve the seal, so the three of us are going to go back to the human world. Equinox will handle logistical matters, and I will handle you.”

“What about my wings?”

“We will have to deal with them. Don’t worry, I’m not thinking of cutting them off every time they appear, if they appear. But that doesn’t mean we let them explode everywhere and get instantly broken.”

“She needs a leash, doesn’t she?” Equinox pipes up with a comment probably designed to appease Ornix. It doesn’t work. Both Ornix and I give him a dour look.

“A leash isn’t going to stop me if I want to do something,” I point out.

“The consequences of your actions might,” Ornix says. “You do remember last night.”

That is enough to make me instantly somber.

“What happened last night?” Equinox immediately picks up the shift in energy, of course.

“I tried to make a portal in the bathroom and I opened a window to hell.”

“Oh, yes. The hell dimension. We’ve all seen it,” Equinox says dismissively.

“Actual hell,” I say. “We could all end up there.”

“Oh, no, nobody actually goes there unless they’re into it. I know it looks scary, but the universe is more based in consent than we think.”

“The horrors and atrocities would suggest otherwise, Mr. Live-Laugh-Love.”

“I feel like you’re insulting me, but I don’t understand how.”

I smirk.

He’s a dick, but the sort of dick who tries to help from time to time. And I can’t blame him, because I know I have caused him trouble and gotten him thrown into a dungeon. Most people wouldn’t be very chill about that.

“Enough bickering,” Ornix growls. “I’m going to use your senses, Melissa, to find the relic.

So I want you to think of the seal as I open the portal.

Ideally, we would open the door directly to it, take it, and be gone within seconds.

But. Just in case, we do need to ensure we are dressed appropriately. Put this on.”

We step through to once again terrorize Los Angeles.

According to Ornix’s instructions, I am wearing a special harness designed to stop my wings from ripping out of my body and flying of their own accord.

It looks kind of awesome, made from gold, set against the rest of the white outfit I’m wearing.

Equinox and Ornix are wearing black suits.

They’re trying to blend in, I think. They’re failing.

They’re too hot and the family resemblance is too striking.

Even in a place where everybody is attractive, they are drawing attention to themselves.

I would feel out of place between them, except for the way Ornix holds my hand in his much bigger one.

It’s funny, because in their dragonkin forms, they are much larger than in their human passing ones. But they’re still ridiculously tall in these forms too. People are taking pictures.

Someone darts up to us. “Oh, my god, can I ask you some questions for my TT?”

We walk on without answering, but I bet these guys, and me because I’m with them, are going to end up on street fashion accounts.

I can only just feel the seal.

“I don’t know where it is, but I don’t think it’s close. Maybe not even in the city anymore. I don’t know.”

I look at Ornix, expecting him to be absolutely furious.

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not worry. Becoming obscured by emotion will not help you sense the seal any easier. Relax. Let yourself sense it.”

I can’t relax. I know every second I’m here my wings are going to be growing. I can feel them tingling. I have mental flashes of falling, and then of hell. What if I die? I am definitely headed down. I feel it in my gut. I’ve never been very good.

“Why don’t we get a drink,” Equinox suggests. “Relax. If anything terrible happens with the seal, we’ll know about it.”

“I don’t want to know about it. I want to get ahead of the chaos.”

“Sometimes you can’t,” Equinox says. “Sometimes you get a drink and wait for it all to blow over.”

Ornix agrees with this plan, so we go into a bar. Thank God this is a city where everybody is over the top, so although we are dressed in a borderline outlandish and outrageous fashion, no brows are raised in our direction.

We sit at a booth and we get drinks. I order a cocktail. The waitress pauses like she’s about to card me, but then she catches Ornix’s eye and decides not to.

“I never thought I’d be at a bar with you, Uncle,” Equinox says. “We never spend any time together in the human world.”

“Because we’re not supposed to both be here at the same time. Right now, the entire lineage is absent from the realm. If anything were to happen to us here, bloodlines would be ended. An entirely new dynasty would have to rise. War would likely break out.”

The waitress brings our drinks. I sip mine; it tastes of cherries and chocolate with an alcoholic kick that starts my head spinning quicker than I have any intention of letting on.

“I guess we’d better find the seal before that happens,” Equinox smiles. “Or maybe we split up, so we can be certain nothing can happen to both of us at the same time.”

I flag the waitress down and order fries. There’s something about grease, carbs, and salt that I think would really set this chocolate cocktail right off.

She delivers them way faster than I expected, and I eat them while listening to Ornix and Equinox verbally spar.

There’s palpable tension between the two of them, love and hate in equal measure, I think.

They’re not the same sort of people. They’re not the same kind of creature.

Ornix is an emperor. He expects to be respected and obeyed.

He carries so much weight on his shoulders, and he does it without seeming to notice.

Equinox has built something outside his uncle’s realm.

He has the blood of a leader too, but nowhere to express it in the dragon realm. So he made his own. Very creative.

I still don’t feel the seal. I’m starting to wonder if I ever brought it here at all, or if I ever felt it in the first place.

“What if someone else already attuned to it?” I mumble the question into my drink, but Ornix hears it. I know, because I feel him get instantly more still.

“Possible,” he says. “I hope not, but if the artifact can attune to one human, it can do it to another. We might not find it again. Not until it acts. Or someone acts. Or you feel it again.”

“We’re going to give up after looking for thirty minutes?” Equinox says. “We should get some meals.”

“Equinox, go and tend to your company,” Ornix says. “I will be in touch if you are needed.”

Equinox gets up. “Fine,” he says. “Call me if you need me. I never get a chance to visit the offices in person. I’m going to be taking new computers back, too. Hope you know that.”

Ornix narrows his eyes. He cannot do much here in this public human space, which is precisely why Equinox is pushing things now.

Equinox flashes a bright smile and walks away. Ornix waits until he is out of earshot, out of the bar entirely, before he comments.

“I love the boy,” he sighs. “But he is too much like my brother was.”

“What was your brother like?”

“In the end? Dead.”

It’s a conversation-killing response if ever I have heard one.

“I’m sorry.”

“It is not your fault, but thank you. Our bloodline runs hot with conquest. We have these urges for power. They are built into us. My younger brother wanted…”

I have that tingling feeling you get when someone is on the verge of telling you some incredible tea. Whatever is happening here is deep. I almost want to fill in the blanks without knowing them.

I stay quiet, hoping he’ll fill the space.

“Did you kill him?”

The question slips out. Oops.

Ornix goes even more deeply silent. I don’t know how men do that; males of all kinds seem to be able to put themselves into emotional lockdown at a moment’s notice.

“Sorry. That was a rude question,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I did. I did not want to, but I did.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Much history has taken place,” he says.

“And a lot of it is regrettable. That is the problem with age. You live to see the consequences of your decisions, to regret things you thought you would never regret, and to realize that sometimes there are just no ways to win a situation. Being ancient means understanding that consequences are inevitable. Today we lose the seal. Maybe it does not feel like much of a problem right now, but the ripples of what is currently happening will not stop rippling for a thousand years. It is imperative we get that seal back.”

“Arf arf,” I say, making the lamest possible cocktail-inspired joke. My back is itching again. I know my wings are growing. I am fifty percent excited, and fifty percent horrified. The drink is making my head buzz. I wish I had my phone. I’d call Tempest. I miss her.

“Energies are never as strong as they are when they are sexual. We may be able to locate the seal by making love.”

There’s a hotel not far away, a fancy place with a fancy man in a fancy coat. I’m not taking in the details. I’m aware that another rough erotic encounter is about to ensue.

“This feels so dirty,” I giggle as he leads me into the room we’ve booked, a room that really does not feel like it is worthy of holding a royal dragon in it.

Ornix smirks at me and grabs me, pulling me down on the bed on top of him. He doesn’t undress me, or himself, he just pushes clothing out of the way until I feel the hot line of his cock against my pussy.

My arousal follows his, my body responding just as he needs it to. I am wet, but tight as he slowly slides inside me, opening me up a fraction of an inch at a time.

“Pay attention to the energies,” he says, reminding me this is about finding the seal. I had practically already forgotten. There’s something about the way his cock enters me that makes me absolutely fucking amnesiac.

“I still can’t find it. I can’t feel it. I can only feel you.”

“That’s okay, just keep taking my cock, keep feeling what you need to feel…”

He rocks me back and forth on his dick and I can feel nothing but him and the incredible arousal that courses through me whenever he is inside me.

I’m not getting any closer to the seal, but I am getting closer to coming.

I feel like a horny teenage boy, so fucking ready to come when he slides inside me.

Ornix makes matters worse by drifting his hand down my stomach and playing with my clit, rubbing above that tight little bud as he encourages me to kneel over him, bent forward slightly to allow his cock to simply sluice in and out of me as he sees fit.

I close my eyes and focus on the sensations.

His cock sliding in and out of me, my clit tingling under the insistent ministrations of his fingers, my shoulders feeling warm and…

Oh, fuck, my attention is drawn back to my pussy as he pulls me down all the way on his cock and holds me there as he plays with my breasts, lapping that deviously forked tongue against my nipples as he shifts from his pure human form to his dragonkin one while he is still inside me.

My pussy is instantly stretched wider, fucked deeper. The sensation of being filled almost twice as much is so wild I find myself bucking on his cock, only barely contained by his big, scaled hands that hold me in place and keep me from pulling right off the tip.

“Good girl, stay on my cock, that’s right. This is all yours, little one. Your pussy stretches so well for me. You can take it, grind your clit back against me. That’s right, rub against my fingers.”

He encourages me every step of the way, praising me for the way I take my fucking, while making absolutely sure that I very much do take every bit of him. He is a stern and unyielding lover, and my pussy is being trained to submit to him.

“I think I’m gonna come,” I whimper.

“That’s okay, you can come. Show me how good my cock feels, how hungry that bare pussy is for another dose of my dragon seed. Good girl. That’s right…”

I scream as I come, absolutely unable to contain my reaction to the physical pleasure he is unleashing in me.

But that’s not all that’s unleashed.

As I hit the peak of my climax, my wings burst forth, no longer able to be contained by the harness.

Last time they were weak, fleshy, and bloody.

This time, they are stronger. I can feel it immediately.

My shoulders have been adapting to their structure, and this time when they expand, it’s not some wild unfolding that rips me off the ground.

It’s an almost elegant expansion that makes me feel incredibly powerful.

The only thing that keeps me in place are his hands on my hips, pinning me to his cock as my wings instinctively beat, nearly pulling us both up off the bed.

“Gods,” Ornix breathes. “Look at you. Look at what you are becoming.”

When I look to the side, I do not see the bloody abominations I saw the first time. This time my wings are covered, not in scales, but in feathers, black and white feathers that form a pattern of a kind I cannot quite see.

“Wow, pretty!”

“Very,” he says, slowly easing out of my tight sex. “We are going to have one quick walk around to see if that triggered the seal, and if not, we are going back to my realm. I cannot risk you being seen.”

“People will see me outside, though?”

“As long as they think it’s a costume, it won’t matter,” he says, righting his clothes. “Just. Don’t. Fly. Understand?”

“Yessir,” I agree. “Don’t fly.”