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M elissa

“So he put you down here, huh? You’re like his sex slave?”

“I’m his mate. He’s trying to make me have his baby.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

“We should just kill him. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“We all die?”

“What did they do with our gear?”

“I bet they put it in the guard room.”

“We can take them.”

I listen to the conversation, knowing that they are going to break out and kill Ornix, and knowing that he won’t see it coming because no matter how many times I warn him, he just doesn’t believe it’s possible.

Later that night, they make their move. Someone in the party has leveled lock picking and taken it as a legendary feat, which means they literally cannot be kept behind any physical door for more than twelve hours.

It seems overpowered to me, but the developer of this world isn’t interested in nerfing it yet.

I experience such incredible helplessness, knowing they are going to go for Ornix, and that he will not only not anticipate them, but completely underestimate how dangerous they are. I am about to be stuck forever in a dragon realm with a bunch of humans who just killed my mate.

And then it hits me. I’m a magical winged human sitting in a box like I don’t have any control over the situation. Okay, I can’t open portals to the human world anymore, but maybe I can open one to outside the dungeon.

I mutter the magic word, and a second later, I am standing in the kitchen.

“Get out of the way!”

A dragon chef shouts at me while holding a pan of boiling oil. I do what he says. I run up the service stairs as fast as I can. These aren’t in the game, so the party won’t know about them.

I throw myself into Ornix’s bedroom and bolt the door behind me.

“What are you doing out of your cage?” He asks the question almost indulgently. Ornix was not in bed. He was standing by the window, fully dressed in armor. Almost like he never took it off. Almost as if he has been waiting for things to go sideways.

“They’re coming to fucking kill you!”

He raises his brows. “Are they now?”

“They broke out of the dungeon in seconds once they decided to go. They’ll have gotten their gear. They know spells. They understand all your potential attacks!”

Even though he is no longer here, Equinox is performing an assassination.

“They are human,” he says. “They may have gear, but they are not in a game. They are in a world that contains magic Equinox never accounted for. Do not worry.”

“I am very worried. I am very, very worried. If they come through that door, they will kill you.”

“They will not,” he says. “I assure you, they will not. It has been several hundred years, but this is not the first time humans have tried to kill me.”

I can hear them coming up the stairs, yelling at one another, preparing for what they think is just a game. But it’s not a fucking game. It’s my life. My world. My fucking man.

Ornix is not prepared. He thinks he is, because the last time humans came for him they had little more than spears and swords. These guys are going to have run through the forest and left it a bloodbath.

They hit the door.

I know the bolt won’t hold. I know they’ll use a spell to…

Boom!

The thing comes off its hinges as it explodes into a thousand shards. The last defense against their incursion just turned into a million toothpicks.

The humans rush through the door, weapons drawn. The tanks are in front, heavily armored and shining with protection spells. I can see cloth-clad mages in the back, their hands glowing with power. This is it. The moment I have been so terrified of all this time. He won’t understand their…

“No!” I run toward them, trying to block them from getting to Ornix.

“No!” My wings expand, and the sound that comes out of my mouth following that word is nothing I have ever heard before.

It’s not a scream, or a word I know. It is a sound drawn from the very fabric of existence itself.

I can almost feel atoms realigning themselves in response to the command that rips its way out of me.

They stop. All of them. Immediately. They don’t just stop. They freeze. They don’t quiver. They don’t blink. When I look closely, I realize that they are not even breathing. They are just standing there, absolutely frozen.

I look around behind me. Ornix has not moved. He has not tried to defend himself at all. He is standing by a window, entirely relaxed, maybe slightly amused, or proud. His expression is hard to read.

“I told you. They cannot harm me, no more than a fly could harm you. Humans are so far below me they barely count as sentient.”

“But what did you do?”

“What did you do, is the question,” he smiles. “You froze them in time.”

“I, uh, what?”

“They will stay in that state as long as you like. A year, perhaps. A hundred, if you become forgetful.”

“I really did that?”

“My love, you once opened a portal to hell itself. You blew open the side of the dungeon. You performed a damn near biblical miracle in the human world with the sky bread. Of course you did it.”

I step forward and touch one of the gamers. They feel like warm rock. “What else can I do?”

He smiles at me, fangs flashing. “So many things, little human mate. You have only embodied a fraction of your power.”

“If it’s possible to do this, to make people go all frozen, why didn’t you do this to Nox?”

“Because I wanted to give him a chance to redeem himself, to make better decisions, and to come to understand his place in the world. I did not know the depth of his treason, or the ridiculousness of his plan.”

“In the game, you die. You always die. Maybe you wipe the party a few times, but more come. It’s just… crazy to me that in the end, you didn’t even need to fight.”

My mate laughs. “The game was his creation. Nox needed a world in which I could be defeated, because it could never happen in any realm of the real. So he made one up, and gave a place for others who needed to slay dragons to be. It is hardly deep psychology.”

“This is why you weren’t worried.”

“Yes. This is why.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did. Many times. You didn’t believe me.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I didn’t.”

“You underestimated me, my little mate. I could take offense to that if I were the type to take offense, but I hope you have learned something. What’s worse is that you underestimated yourself.”

He comes toward me and embraces me, smacking my ass as he does.

“Ow. Wait. Did you put me down there with them on purpose so I’d have this whole moment of saving you and becoming the hero and finally discovering my own power and realizing that loving you and becoming mother to your whelps is what I want more than anything?”

“Maybe,” he smiles, fangs flashing. “Or maybe I thought you were a spoiled little brat who deserved to be put into the dungeon.”

“That was so dangerous.”

“It really wasn’t. I could crush these creatures like bugs if I wanted to. I am no more at risk from them than you are from a crowd of sandflies.”

“I feel like they’re watching me,” I murmur, snuggling into him.

Maybe this wasn’t a big deal for Ornix. Maybe he had faith all along, but this is the most transformative event in my entire life.

I am strong in ways I didn’t know I could be strong.

I have access to magic that has been lying dormant inside me for longer than I can imagine.

The wings should have given it away, but I guess it’s not really that weird for women to not notice how amazing they are even when they’re working miracles.

Lucky for me, Ornix is not going to let me forget it.

“Now, shall we keep them as ornaments?” he says. “Or do you want to bury them somewhere in the human world where they can be dug up a long time from now and regarded as some kind of artifact?”

“We can’t go to the human world.”

“That’s right. Well. We might have to put them right back in the dungeon, properly this time, without locks that snap at lock pick spells, and ensure that they stay where they need to be. I have seen a few of my dragons taking an interest. There could be more mate-ships occurring if they’re lucky.”

“So you’re not going to kill them?”

“Humans try to slay dragons. Dragons rarely, if ever, bother to attack people. The dynamic has been horribly imbalanced from the days of those awful clanking knights. Do you know how awkward it is to have to wait for someone to be hoisted off his horse so he can come and jab a sword at you? Ridiculous. Anyway.”

I snuggle into his arms. “I’ve decided I do want to be your mate. I mean, along with the whelps.”

“Good,” he says. “Then we can finally set about getting you properly pregnant.”

“What do you mean? You’ve been breeding me all this time.”

“A dragon can only breed the willing. This is a realm of magic, and magic requires intention. Not just mine, but also yours. When you truly wish to become the mother of my bloodline, it will happen. Until that time, I will enjoy the use of you.”

“But you said…”

“Are you annoyed I wasn’t actually forcing you to be pregnant against your will?”

“No, I guess, but…”

He smacks my ass again, harder this time.

“Do not worry, my little mate. There will still be plenty of things for you to resist. I do not expect you to become disciplined any time soon. We can continue our dynamic, you as my sweet magical acolyte, learning more, surprising herself more, making mistakes, and delighting me with your innocent fire.”

There is so much deep and genuine affection in his voice I feel as though I am being warmed from the inside out. I love this man—who is not a man. I adore his strength, his patience, the way he chooses gentleness so much of the time when obliterating his enemies would be so much easier.

“I can’t wait to make you a daddy dragon,” I murmur against his lips. “You’re going to be so good at it.”

“And you are going to be an amazing mother, so full of life, sparking with natural magic. Our young will be like none that have ever come before, and you will nurture them into the same bold, brave, fearless creature you are.”

“Stop it, you’re making me blush,” I giggle, very much not wanting him to stop it at all.

“It’s time you went to bed, young lady,” he says, lowering his voice. “You’ve had a very long day, and I need to fuck a baby into you right now.”

“In front of them?” I gesture to the gamer statues.

“In front of all creation,” Ornix growls, tossing me down on the bed for a breeding that will change our realities forever.

The End