A long hiss escapes from my capped tongue. The feel of her…so tight and wet around my seeding vessel.
“Reverence!” I hiss in the old language. I use my superior weight to anchor her luscious body into the glass and begin taking her with long, slow punishing strokes.
“Oh fuck, why does that feel so good?” she answers.
I treasure the whine in her voice, the way her breath fogs up the glass as she complains about what I’m doing to her.
“You will take my seed and in your womb, my progeny will grow,” I whisper into her ear. Then I grip her hips and drive myself in even deeper.
It is both too much and not enough. I want more of her than I am getting, but the exquisite feeling of being this deep inside of her sex is too much to bear.
For either of us. She begins to quiver around my primary seeder, releasing even more of her heat essence down my pulsing cock. She screams as she peaks, clamping down hard. The sensation!
One moment I am a drakkon king, taking what belongs to me. And in the next, I am falling over the edge with her. Unable to hold on. My primary cock jerks then spews into her, giving forth all of my seed.
The feelings…they aren’t just in my chest flame now. They light up my entire body as I once again swell and spike.
As with the last two times, she crests again when I lock myself into her. And I enjoy the feel of her writhing underneath me as she moans helplessly into the window’s glass.
However, as her moans decelerate into whimpers, the stupidity of my rash decision to take her against the front window soon becomes apparent.
My strength is immeasurable, but with my cock embedded so deep inside her from behind, there is no good way to get her back up the stairs into a bed or even to the couch on the other side of the receiving room. And as my she-wolf trembles, coming down from her second peak, I know she will not be long for consciousness.
The floor it is then…I lower us down to the carpet.
After I arrange our bodies upon the floor, I cover her body with half of mine, curving an arm over her torso and laying a leg down on top of hers.
She stiffens. “What are you doing.”
“Attempting to keep you warm,” I answer.
A long pause. Then, “Why? I know you hate me.”
No, Reverence. You know nothing about me at all if you believe I hate you.
But I say nothing out loud. I cannot let her discover how much power she has over me. That would be a disaster. All my plans so finely crafted over centuries would be ruined.
So I lie there silent, waiting for her to fall asleep. But I can feel the confusion and upset feelings over our mate bond, keeping her awake.
Eventually, she says, “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I wanted love and happiness. Like my parents. Not degradation and shame.”
A sickened sensation scrapes across my stomach. Her feelings, not mine. My side of the mate bond remains muted but her side pulses intensely in the space no longer between us.
“There is no reason to carry shame over our breeding act,” I tell her, nonetheless. “If it was something either of us could have helped, I would have found a way.”
“You could have helped it, bitch,” she points out, both her words and her tone harsh. “You didn’t have to kidnap me.”
“We are sexually compatible, and I am a drakkon.”
“Yeah, whatever, that doesn’t mean you have an excuse to kidnap me.”
“That is exactly what it means. You primate mutations insist on thinking you have free will despite all scientific and historical evidence to the contrary.”
I wrap my body tighter around hers. “I had no choice but to find you and wait for you to go into heat, which you did, it should be noted, less than six hours after you were healed from your wounds. And I’ve read your files, Queen of North Dakota. I know you are currently on heat control.”
Her body stiffens, and I continue on to my next point, twisting the knife. “This is something your anti-fertility drug could not fight against. A few hours was all it took. If you hadn’t run and we had simply spent time together in the same space as I had originally planned, I have no doubt your heat would have come upon you even sooner. That is how sexually compatible we are.”
Her uncharacteristic silence tells me I have broken past her stubborn pride.
“You are angry and bitter about this turn of events, and I am too,” I conclude, my voice somber. “I would not have chosen to have matched in this manner with the daughter of my mortal enemies. But not mating with you after I discovered that we could produce young together…that would have been impossible. Like one of you mutated primates inhaling a breath and deciding not to let it out. You are my mate and I am yours. This cannot be denied by either of us.”
More silence. Then she says “Okay, fine. Say I believe that fucking me is some kind of biological imperative for you. Why did you have to humiliate me? Why did you make me crawl?”
There are many true answers to this question and I pick the cruelest one. “You are a stubborn, defiant, idiot, she-wolf, and if I am to live with you as a mate until you bear my child, you must be brought to heel.”
“Fuck you,” she says before the last syllable has left my mouth. “I’m not your mate. I’m not your anything. I’m going to find a way to escape you. And then I’m going to hunt you down and kill you like my fathers killed your daddy. Call me an idiot if you want, but one day, you’re going to look up and find this idiot standing over you with a sword. I promise you that, and I always keep my promises.”
She is correct about one thing only. Her fathers killed mine. For that, I must have my vengeance. Like my claim of her, this is nothing short of biological imperative. I will pay my father the reverence he deserves.
As for her threat, she is ridiculously weak, and I am nearly all-powerful.
She is hopelessly ignorant, and I hold all the cards.
Yet my fire ices over at her words. For they do not sound like a threat.
They sound like prophecy.
She falls asleep just a few moments later, and I lie there thinking about her vow. Somewhere behind me, I hear the sound of Colby’s footsteps coming down the stairs. They recede into the kitchen even though it is still dark. He is most likely beginning early preparations for one of his gourmet breakfasts. Good, we will both need to eat before her next heat wave.
She lets me out of her milking hold about an hour later.
But as it turns out, there will not be another wave of heat. As soon as I pick her up, I smell it.
A hatchling! Sired by me. She did it. She actually took my seed and became fertile with it.
The confusing sparks of emotion suddenly give away to a new resolved flame.
As long as I draw fire, I will never let any harm come to this miraculous being now growing within her. And as for my unexpected mate, I will treasure her for as long as she lives. More than I treasure my own life.
Yet, as soon as those thoughts leave my head, the memory of what she said before I made my final claim invades my mind.
“I hate you. I hate this.”
She said she hated me, and she meant it. Even now, in her sleep, I can sense the animosity emanating from her mate bond.
Now that she is no longer under the heat spell…she will try to run again. This time with your progeny.
The voice in my head is more than a thought, it is a certainty.
One I cannot let happen.
After carrying her upstairs, I lay her upon the bed.
This time I do not reverently clean her magnificent body. Or hesitate.
I pick up the silver cuff and snap it back around her wrist.
Then I stride from the room, the problem of keeping my now pregnant mate heavy on my mind.
She ran. The first chance she had. And even when I came downstairs, she continued to fight miserably for escape.
She must be punished for that in a way that convinces her not to attempt to escape from me again.
The answer to my conundrum appears in the next instant.
I must kill someone she loves; I conclude quite logically. Make an example of her or him.
Not one of her fathers or her aunt Myrna…it is not their time yet and I would prefer for their deaths to be painful and slow.
But yes, it should be a family member. Someone she holds dear, but who was not part of my original revenge plot.
The person’s name appears like a wish granted.
A thrall I had yet to find much use for. But now, he will come in very handy indeed.
I wake him up with a thought and tell him exactly what to do. And by the time I reach my own bedroom, everything is in place for Ola’s next lesson.
Yes, this is a good plan, I decide as I walk through the door. A very good plan in—
I stop when I see the male standing inside my room.
Tall and broad and completely surreal.
For a moment, my mind cannot process what I’m seeing. Who I’m seeing. It is a moment of confusion I’ll soon come to regret.
For a moment is all he needs.
Part III
“If the fetus you carry survives laying…you will have granted me the boon of a hatchling. For this, I have no words to express my gratitude. In fact, on my planet, a drakkon who has been honored with a child will spend the rest of his life honoring the female who did bestow this gift upon him. Because of the young you carry within your womb, I will revere you for the rest of my breathing days, and never mate another. That is the Drakkon way, and we even have a formal set of customs to go along with this tradition. We call this custom Reverence.”
--Xenon, Her Dragon Everlasting
Chapter Twenty-One
AO QUONG
Ao Quong did not dream before he came to this planet. Nor had he experienced the sleeping trance state so many of the anthrohominids had spoken and written about over the thousands of solar rotations he’d spent stranded here.
Yet that night moving images appeared inside his sleeping mind.
He dreamed of walking upon the grounds of his palace in Zone 6. The one that he’d managed to keep fortified throughout eras of anthrohominid conflict and away from the prying surveillance of the Chinese government. He hadn’t been back to visit that palace in the nearly three decades—not since the King of Drakkon assigned him to the Idaho fating portal in Zone 8.
But this night he was back there, walking beside a female and gazing upon her most reverently. She was…something he didn’t quite understand, but he did not mind her confusing nature. Quite the contrary, he marveled that she would exist.
“Baba! Mama! Kan wo zheyang zuo a!”
Ao Quong looked up to see a small boy. He wore an anthromorphic shell but had drakkon wings, which he used to hover above them. His flame, Ao Quong noted, burned pure yellow from the top of his head to the ends of his hands and feet. Baba…he’d called him father. And he’d called the strange female beside him mama.
Could this really be their son asking them to watch him do something?
The female slipped her hand into his, and together they waited to see what their son would do.
“Incoming communication from the Lab Director! Incoming communication from the Lab Director!”
The overhead caused the dream to blink out in an instant, and Ao Quong jolted awake to find himself lying in the dark of the real world.
No, he’d never had a dream before, but having it taken away so abruptly…it felt as if a vital organ had been removed. Without warning or permission.
“Incoming communication from the Lab Director! Incoming communication from the Lab Director!” the smart room intoned again, reminding him what had ripped him from the sweet dream.
Irritation flashed through him at being awakened. But nonetheless, he sat up in bed and ordered the lights on to answer the hail. Normally, the room was set to do not disturb during his resting hours. However, his anthro Lab Director was no fool. He would not have interrupted his sleep unless it was important.
“Damianos Drákon has finally returned my message,” he guessed as soon as Ivar, appeared on his wall screen. He god spoke the brilliant Russian physicist decades ago, specifically to work with him on this project.
“Yes, Master,” Ivar answered, his Russian accent still thick despite having now lived the majority of his life in the small Idaho mountain town where their lab was located. “We received a communication from Damianos Drákon just now.”
So late at night? No matter. Ao Quong’s flame flared with excitement at his assistant’s announcement. Finally, the go ahead he’d been waiting for had arrived.
“Very good. We will review the portal trial plan at tomorrow’s morning meeting before recruiting volunteers.”
With that order, he opened his mouth to end the call. Perhaps if he returned to sleep now, the dream would come back to him. His flame quivered in anticipation.
“But Master, he did not give us the go-ahead to start conducting trials.”
The words to end the call froze in Ao Quong’s mouth, dissipated and reformed as, “What?”
“The communication…it said we were all allowed to return home as the project had been shuttered until further notice. And it ended with a dismissal. Mr. Drákon said our services were no longer needed.”
No longer needed…millenniums of research, experimentation, and waiting for the technology on this backward planet to advance enough to recalibrate one of the Betrayer King’s fating match portals to achieve their goal. And now his king was saying their project was no longer needed?
This time Ao Quong didn’t ask, he roared, “WHAT?”
DYANA
“Are you sure I can’t escort you home?” Brandon yelled over the blaring club music after Dyana told her gang of #richkidsoflondon friends that she was shoving off. “Or you could come back to mine.”
Dyana bit her lip. No, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything but that she was a fool, an utter fool for what she was about to do.
Which was turning down yet another invitation to “come back to mine” from Brandon. Brandon, the boy she’d had a crush on for ages before Maxwell Kreft had come along.
Originally, the only reason she’d started flirting with Max at that meet-and-greet mixer for their Oxford MBA program was to make Brandon jealous. Max’s hair had been hopelessly untrimmed, and he’d worn unimpressive store-bought clothes without a bit of nanite in them. But he’d also been the only bloke in their entire program who was both taller and fitter than Brandon, so she’d decided to chat him up. She’d wanted Brandon to see that unlike his weak-chinned girlfriend of the month, she could have any guy she set her sights on.
But the half-interested flirtation had quickly turned into a real conversation. And then a little voice in Dyana’s head had told her that she was done with reality series bad boys. This sweet, handsome guy with the boarding school accent…yeah, he was it.
“You might not be any hashtags, but you’re a right laugh,” Dyana ended up telling Max. “And I promise I won’t report you if you go in for a snog.”
He’d taken her up on her invitation, and by the time Brandon broke it off with his latest girlfriend some short weeks later, Dyana was already head over heels in love with the totally unminted boy from the mixer. She’d floated Brandon a few sad face emojis, and that was that.
Dyana and Max hadn’t had nearly as much in common as she and Brandon did. Brandon’s parents had been on the same reality internet series as hers. And their parents’ fans had been shipping them for ages. If Dyana had fallen into a relationship with Brandon after his breakup, she imagined they would’ve received advance offers of full wedding sponsorship in exchange for spontaneously “deciding” to get married.
Max had been the opposite of Brandon and every other boy she’d ever dated if Dyana were being honest. Much to her parents’ dismay, he’d refused on-camera time, and he barely used his biosystem to do anything but study. He’d seemed to be dating Dyana despite her lux hashtags, not because o
f them. And when he asked her questions, he expected intelligent answers. Which had been a first, hadn’t it? She’d always been quietly smart, but she’d never had a boy appreciate that about her.
Not until Max.
Max was unputtogether for reasons that had nothing to do with irony. He used a basic Tesco styler to cut his hair for presentations and interviews, and he only replaced clothes when they became holey—sometimes not even then.
But that didn’t mean he had no pride or respect. Quite the opposite, really. Even though his only hashtag was #skint, he insisted on splitting the bill when they went out for dinner—which was rare, because he was an excellent cook.
And he’d even found a way to make her last birthday special, despite not being able to afford much. He’d contacted all of her friends behind her back and had them pair their favorite picture of her with a written memory on their biofeeds. Then he screenshot the lot of them all and delivered them to her in a scrapbook along with a wonderful meal, better than anything she could have gotten at a five-star restaurant. The gift couldn’t have cost more than a quid or two, but for a very long time, it was the most valuable thing she owned.
The truth was, she still brought it out nightly. But now when she flipped through it, she looked for clues about how she could have been so wrong about Maxwell Kreft.
Why had the sweet boy who’d gone out of his way to give her such a wonderful gift left without a word of explanation in the middle of the night during their Ibiza vacation? Just a few hours after he asked her to marry him!
Dyana still had no explanation.
For why Max had left.
Or for why instead of taking Brandon up on his invitation, she shook her head and said, “Thanks, mate, but it’s straight to sleep when I get home. I’ve got an early day tomorrow, unlike you, Brandon.”
Brandon was one of the lucky second generation, who was able to ride his parents’ fame to a show of his own. He got paid to sleep in late and party until the wee hours of the morning. Also… “I know any of the other girls in this place would be happy to feature on your show as a one-night stand,” she pointed out as she slipped on her coat.
Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet Book 1): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 1 Page 13
