I don't have to choose. I don't have to decide if what I feel is real or trauma or madness. Fate chose for me. The universe looked at both of us and said, "These two belong together."
Even if one of us is a monster. Even if one of us is a prisoner. Even if everything about this is wrong and twisted and broken.
But what does that mean for me? For my humanity? For my mortality?
The thought is horrifying. An eternity of this darkness, this silence, this prison. An eternity of wanting him and needing him and hating myself for both.
But at least he'd be there. At least I wouldn't be alone.
He pulls away, and I feel the loss immediately. The absence of his warmth, his weight, his wings. He's leaving now. So I can have space he says.
No. No, don't go. Don't leave me. I need you. I need you so much it's killing me. The bond is killing me. We're dying because I can't reach for you, can't claim you, can't complete what the magic is demanding.
Part of me is relieved. I need space. Need time to think, even though thinking is all I ever do in this darkness.
Maybe I was always insane, and the bond just gave me an excuse.
The bond writhes inside me, angry and frustrated and demanding. It wants him back. Wants him inside me, around me, covering me. Wants his bite, his claim, his possession.
His bite.
Oh God. His bite.
That's when it happened, isn't it? That's when the bond formed. All those times he's bitten me during sex, his fangs sinking into my shoulder, my neck, my breast. I thought it was just part of his possessiveness, his need to mark me as his.
His footsteps fade but I sense him moving in the castle. Just like I have been except now I know I’m not imagining it. Down the corridor. Down the stairs. Down and down until I can barely sense him anymore, just a faint presence at the very edge of my awareness.
I wish his mouth was on my throat, pumping more of that claiming magic into my veins, strengthening the bond that's already strangling us both.
I wish I could drift off into actual sleep, real sleep, wrapped in his embrace, knowing that I'm his and he's mine and nothing will ever change that.
All I know right now, all I can focus on, is that I wish he were still inside me. I wish his cock was still stretching me full, those ridges dragging against my walls, his body covering mine. I wish his wings were draped over us both, cocooning us in warmth and darkness and the illusion of safety.
I want him inside me, claiming me, biting me, binding us together even more tightly.
Soon I'll have to wake up.
I want to be his forever, bound by magic and fate and this terrible, consuming need.
Soon I'll have to choose. Except I've already chosen. The bond chose for me. Fate chose for me.
I'm his. Forever. For eternity. Until the end of time itself. And that thought, that terrible, inescapable truth, fills me with a dread so profound I can barely breathe.
Soon I'll have to choose.
And I have no idea what that choice will be.
ACT II
AWAKENING
CHAPTER 8
THE DRAGON
One hundred years. It has taken me one hundred years to decide what to do.
I'm sitting beside her bed, watching her sleep. I do this often now, just watching. My tail curls around the bedpost, my clawed hands resting on my scaled thighs. I'm naked. I don't bother wearing clothes much anymore. The need to fuck her comes almost constantly now. It consumes my every thought. I've become so distracted that I've let four princes make it all the way into the foyer of the castle before I noticed they were here. My magic is failing.
