Wind whipped through the space, carrying our mingled sounds—his groans and my cries and the wet sound of ourbodies meeting. The crystallized flame walls pulsed brighter, faster, in time with our rhythm. Storm clouds gathered overhead, visible through the open top, lightning arcing between them without striking, building charge that mirrored the magic building between us.
His thrusts grew harder, deeper, more demanding. I met each one, learning the rhythm, learning how to move with him to make it better for both of us. My transformed body could take what he gave—the strength, the intensity, the raw need that would have hurt my human form. Instead, it felt perfect, like we'd been designed specifically for this joining.
"You're mine," he growled, punctuating the words with particularly deep thrusts. "Mine to claim. Mine to fill. Mine to love. Say it."
"Yours," I gasped, spiraling higher toward something massive. "I'm yours, Daddy. Forever yours."
The magic building around us, inside us, reached critical mass. I could feel my transformation completing in this joining—the final integration happening at the cellular level as he moved inside me. My mortality was burning away, the human limits on my lifespan dissolving like smoke. The bond was sealing permanently, welding us together in ways that would last as long as stars burned.
I was becoming eternal, becoming his, becoming more than I'd ever been, and it was happening now, happening with him buried deep inside me, happening through pleasure so intense I couldn't tell if I was dying or being born.
"Come for me," Caelus commanded, his voice carrying harmonics that bypassed my conscious mind and spoke directly to my body. "Let go. Let me feel you break apart. I've got you."
The orgasm hit like lightning finding ground through my transformed body.
Reality fractured into pure sensation—color and sound and feeling all mixed together until I couldn't separate them. I was flying without wings, burning without heat, becoming undone and remade simultaneously. Pleasure exploded from my core outward, racing through every nerve ending, making me convulse around him with force that would have hurt if my body hadn't been transformed to handle it.
Through the bond, I felt his climax follow mine—the way my internal muscles gripping him pushed him over the edge, the relief and triumph and love that accompanied his release. Heat flooded inside me as he marked me in the most fundamental way, his seed claiming me, binding us, completing what the ceremony had started.
The transcendent pleasure went on and on, riding waves that seemed to originate from somewhere beyond my body, from the bond itself, from the magic that had rewritten my very existence. I was sobbing with the intensity of it, overwhelmed and remade and absolutely complete.
When it finally crested and began to ebb, I was shaking all over, tears streaming down my face, clutching Caelus like he was the only solid thing in a world gone liquid with sensation.
He was trembling too, aftershocks wracking his body, his face buried against my neck as he fought to breathe through the magnitude of what we'd just experienced.
Around us, the caldera slowly settled. Wind died to gentle breeze. Lightning faded to distant flickers. The crystallized flames pulsed softer, steadier, like a heartbeat after exertion.
We'd done it. Survived it. Been remade by it.
I was his, he was mine, and nothing in any realm could undo what we'd just sealed.
We lay tangled together in the nest, both trembling with aftershocks that felt like earthquakes in miniature. My body didn't feel like mine—or rather, it felt more mine than it everhad, like I'd been walking around in borrowed skin for twenty-two years and only now discovered what fit properly.
Caelus was still inside me, and I could feel how that connection continued the work the orgasm had started—magic flowing between us through the most intimate possible conduit, sealing bonds, erasing the last boundaries between his power and my transformed body's ability to hold it.
"Don't move yet," I whispered when I felt him start to withdraw. "Just . . . stay. Let me feel this."
He settled back down, careful to keep most of his weight on his forearms but maintaining our joining. Through the bond—so much clearer now, so much more present—I felt his understanding. This was about more than physical connection. It was about feeling fundamentally different, cosmically complete in ways I didn't have words for yet.
The bond had transformed from connection into fusion. I couldn't find where I ended and he began anymore, couldn't separate my emotions from his, couldn't tell if the love flooding through me originated in my chest or his. We were distinct people still, but braided together so thoroughly that "separate" had become a meaningless concept.
"How do you feel?" he asked finally, his hand stroking my hair with infinite tenderness. His voice held reverence, like I was something precious he'd been entrusted to protect.
"Like I was born tonight," I whispered, the truth of it settling into my bones. "Everything before was just . . . waiting. Preparing to become this."
I looked up at him, seeing my Daddy, my mate, my forever with perfect clarity. The dragon who'd caught me falling. Who'd protected me from corruption. Who'd guided me through regression and transformation. Who'd brought me to his birthplace and made love to me under the stars while the mountain bore witness.
"I love you," I said, and the words felt like jumping off a cliff—terrifying and freeing all at once.
It was the first time either of us had said it explicitly. We'd been so focused on survival, on fighting the mark, on sealing bonds properly. The love had been present—obvious through actions and devotion and the way we'd fought for each other—but we'd never given it voice.
His eyes went bright with emotion that crashed through the bond like a tidal wave. Joy and relief and wonder all tangled together into something that made my chest ache with fullness.
"I love you too," he said, voice rough with feeling he wasn't trying to hide. "I've loved you since the moment I caught you falling. Since you jumped rather than surrender. Since you chose to fight even when fighting seemed impossible."
He shifted, finally withdrawing—I couldn't help the small sound of loss—then gathered me against his chest, wrapping both arms around me like he could shield me from the entire world.
"You saved me as much as I saved you," he continued, words rumbling through his chest into mine. "Gave me purpose after millennia of emptiness. Made me remember what it means to care, to be soft, to love instead of just existing."
