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M elissa

It’s hard to have been fucked to within an inch of your life and still decide that you really have to leave your controlling captor of a dragon mate, but I’ve watched enough reels to know that this doesn’t go anywhere good.

I need to assert my independence. And I will. Just as soon as my legs work again.

Ornix wants my obedience at all and any costs.

He’s going to brutally discipline me if he doesn’t get it.

I’ve never come so hard as I did with his cock in my ass.

I’ve never felt so completely dominated and claimed, and that is saying something given he’s done nothing but dominate and claim me since we met.

I’m torn. I could sink into this feeling and just give him what he wants. I could settle into my submission and become small and let myself become his willing broodmare and go to classes and be polite to the instructors and debase myself to the dragons and…

Nope. Fuck it. Can’t do it. Just can’t. What he’s asking for is frankly unreasonable, and as much as I love being pinned down and railed, it’s not enough.

I leave the dungeon, doing a walk of shame more shameful than any I’ve done before. There’s cum dripping from my ass, tracing down my thighs. I need a bath.

That’s what I do first. I go to the bedroom, where Ornix is thankfully absent, and I take myself to the bathroom where I opened the portal to hell that one time, and I take a bath.

Then I get myself ready. I take the things I want to take and I go to Nox’s chambers.

This time he doesn’t leap when I enter the room. This time he’s expecting me. He looks ready, too. Like he’s used the hours I was being disciplined for good.

“Believe me now?”

“Yes,” I tell Nox. “I saw the cage. I felt it. He is going to keep me prisoner here, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Nothing except run,” he says. “This time is going to be different. I need you to understand that. I want you to stay with me this time, so I can actually shield you from him. If you stay with me, he won’t be able to feel you.”

“You can do that?

“Yes. I have been working on more than just games, Melissa. I tested it last time I was in the human realm, and it was a great success.”

I keep my mouth shut, but I am thinking about the test. I know exactly what it was.

I couldn’t feel the seal until he came back here.

I was in the human realm, and he already had the seal and was hiding it.

He wanted to see if his tech worked. I’m impressed—and more than a little concerned.

Nox is way ahead of me and Ornix. He has plans in play, and I know that I am one of them.

A funny little trickle is running down my spine, and the hair on the back of my neck is starting to stand up in that way hair does when something really fucked up and weird is happening.

Nox is not my friend, no more than Ornix legally owns me.

I’m trapped in a game of high-level dragon politics and I don’t understand exactly what’s happening.

What I do understand is that there’s a better chance of escaping when I’m in the human realm than there is while I stay here in the dragon world.

I’m going to go with Nox. Worst case scenario, Ornix captures me again, puts me in a cage, and breeds my ass until I have his baby.

There’s hardly anything at stake at all.

“Are you ready to go?”

“Yes,” I nod. “Let’s go.”

He hits a key on the keyboard, and a shimmering square opens up in the middle of the room. Nox takes me by the hand and leads me through. I go willingly, even while thinking I’m probably making a huge mistake. Fortunately, I’m used to making huge mistakes. They’re kind of my thing at this point.

We step through to the human world. This time, it’s definitely not one of Tempest’s houses.

We’re in some kind of corporate stronghold, that’s all I can really describe it as.

I’m standing on a brightly glowing square, which I find weird and try to move around from.

The second I move, a set of semi-translucent walls zip up around me.

They’re sort of holographic. I’m pretty sure I could walk through them if I wanted to.

“Don’t,” Nox says. “Those are very highly electrified magnetic barriers. Touching them will hurt very badly indeed, I’m afraid.”

“What have you done? Why have you done it?” I ask the questions dutifully, as the heroine finding herself finally confronted by the villain.

“The barriers are what keep you from being felt. Safety isn’t always comfortable, and often comes at the price of freedom.

Did you know humans used to be able to fly without being fondled by a stranger?

It wasn’t all that long ago, but I digress.

These barriers keep you firmly inside, yes, but they also stop Ornix from being able to sense you.

They give you freedom, in some sense of the word. ”

“In a completely inaccurate sense of the word, maybe,” I snipe back.

I didn’t expect this to go well, but I thought it would go bad more slowly, in a sort of controlled descent.

I didn’t think it would crash and burn immediately.

“So you told me about Ornix’s terrible dungeon, then lured me into one that doesn’t even have a bathroom. ”

Nox smirks. “I don’t think you’re going to be here long enough to need a bathroom. I think Ornix is going to come looking for you, and once he does, you won’t need to be inside the cage anymore, because he’ll be in one of his own.”

“You’re going to kidnap Ornix?”

“Yes.”

“That’s insane. Do you have any idea what he will do to you?”

“He’ll kill me if I don’t do a good job of this,” Nox says.

“I know that. But that just means I’ve prepared well enough that I don’t think I am going to end up dead.

What I do think will happen is Ornix will be trapped in this world, and I will be able to reign over the dragon realm as my father always wanted.

You’ll be free to return back to your normal human life, such as it is.

I’ll even give you a job in my studio, if you like.

You could be a tester. The pay isn’t very good, but you don’t end up being punished in a dungeon. ”

“Remember, time passes quite quickly here compared to the dragon realm. He will be here sooner rather than later. I would be surprised if there’s…”

“ Equinox! ”

“There he is now,” Nox smiles. “Right on time, and in the right room. I do love it when a plan comes together.” He rubs his hands together and grins broadly as Ornix roars his name in fury.

There’s an even louder rage-filled exclamation when Ornix hits the electromagnetic wall.

“Let me go deal with him,” Nox says. “You’re free to go.”

“Not really sure why I had to be in the thing anyway if you were just going to let me walk away.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I didn’t know that Ornix would actually fall right into my plan or not. I wanted to keep you safe from him. I promised you that.” He looks down and toys with his phone for a moment.

The walls around me shimmer and disappear.

“You’re really letting me go?”

“I don’t have any need to keep you, and I don’t want to hurt you. You’re as close to an innocent as anyone gets. I hope you’re not pregnant, and if you are, and don’t want to be, just let me know.”

Those words hit me deeply. I haven’t been thinking about the breeding side of things in terms of the consequences that much.

It’s because it doesn’t really feel real.

The notion of actually being pregnant is very different from the experience of being impregnated. The mind just doesn’t make the link.

What Nox just says feels like a threat. Not to me, but to the potential of life inside me. I suddenly feel protective of a baby I don’t have. It’s strange. This is all very odd.

Nox is already walking off toward Ornix. He doesn’t give me a second look, which is a mistake because it means he doesn’t notice me following him.

“Nox, you have done some stupid things in your time. You have done some things that are even more stupid recently. But this is absolutely mad, and will lead to repercussions that will…”

“Oh, shut up,” Nox says. “Your lectures don’t have any effect on me anymore.

You’re in a containment field that cannot be dismantled.

You are going to find yourself trapped here for hundreds of years while I return to the dragon realm and take the throne.

I have the seal. I have your mate. I have everything you’ve ever held dear, and I have no intention of letting you ever have any of it ever again. Do you understand?”

That question, ‘do you understand,’ ripples.

It’s like what Ornix said to me when he finished punishing me.

These two are really two sides of the same coin.

One isn’t better than the other, and I don’t think Nox is ready to rule anything.

He just hates Ornix. And yeah, maybe he has a reason to, but this isn’t going to end well.

I can just feel the almost inevitable disaster.

“I’m going to have your mate watched. I’m going to have her meet some of my boys. She’ll take one of them as a lover, I’m sure. She’ll forget about you, and if she has your baby, that baby will never know you, or the dragon realm. I am ending your line one way or another, Ornix.”

“ You are my line, idiot boy,” Ornix says.

He is quite furious, which doesn’t surprise me.

He has been battling Nox for a long time, trying not to hurt him, trying to give him warnings, but Nox just won’t take them.

I kind of feel like I might be the same, not listening to him no matter how many times or in how many ways he expresses his need to have me obey.

“That’s an inconvenience I intend to overlook.”

I have a choice. I can walk away right now and just let this play out. I’ll never go to the dragon realm again. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life hiding my wings, but everybody is hiding something on this planet too, I guess.

I should go.