"You should rest," I said.
"Can't."
"Because you think I'm leaving."
"Because I don't know what you'll choose." He moved closer. "And I need to be with you. Whatever time is left."
The words crushed me. Whatever time is left. Like I was dying. Like we were dying together.
Maybe we were.
I pulled him to me suddenly. "Breed me."
"Hallie—"
"I need you. Need the connection. Need to feel the bond." My hands were already on him, desperate. "Please. Even if it's the last time. Especially if it's the last time."
He positioned me on the furs immediately. We didn't speak after that. Just moved together with desperation neither of us could hide. Desperate. Clinging. Both of us trying to memorize this in case it was the last time we'd ever connect like this.
The breeding was intense in ways that transcended physical pleasure. Raw. Nothing held back. His cocks inside me, the knot locking us together, both of us crying silently while we mated.
I came thinking: this might be the last time I ever feel this.
He came thinking: I'm losing her.
His grief hit me through the connection as physical weight, and I felt my own grief amplify it, feed it, make it unbearable.
When the knot released finally, we lay tangled together. Both of us shaking.
"I don't want to lose you," I whispered.
"I don't want to die alone," he said, voice breaking completely. "If you leave, I'll die within days. Unbonded sickness will finish what it started. And I'll die knowing I failed you, failed to give you reason enough to stay."
"You didn't fail?—"
"Then stay." Raw. Desperate. "Choose me. Choose this. Choose us."
"I don't know if I can go back," I said. "Even if I wanted to. I'm not human anymore. Not really."
"You're still human enough to choose." His hand found mine. "The transformation hasn't finished. You could still survive the portal if you went through now."
"But what would I be going back to?" The question had been circling my thoughts for two days. "I have nothing there. No family. No home. Just debt clearance and suspicion and questions I can't answer."
"And here?"
"Here I have everything." I pressed his hand to my pregnant belly. "Here I have you and our young and a life that matters."
His desperate hope was barely contained.
That night, we bred again.
I needed the comfort. The connection. The reminder of what staying meant, what leaving would cost.
Drav was gentle this time, careful in ways that suggested I was fragile. Like I might break.
I wasn't fragile. I was breaking. But not the way he thought.
He pushed inside me slowly, the breeding cock stretching me in familiar ways. The pleasure cock working my clit with practiced precision. Both of us moving together in rhythm we'd established over weeks.
