Sixty years.
You want to know what Sixty years of obsession looks like? What it means to love something so completely that the world itself becomes irrelevant? Let me tell you about the decades I've spent worshipping at the altar of Adelaide's existence.
She chose to stay. That's what matters. After everything, after the truth, after the rage, after the blood, she looked at me with those eyes that have haunted me for over a century, and she chose me. Not because she had to. Not because I compelled her or trapped her or owned her. Because she wanted to.
The first few years were... complicated. Beautiful and terrible and soaked in blood.
When I woke her, the stasis spell was failing. If I'd let it run its course, she would have aged all at once. Over a hundred years in an instant. She would have crumbled to dust in my arms before she could draw breath. So, I bound her to me completely, made her immortal whether she was ready or not.
She didn't take it well.
The first time she truly understood what I'd done, that she would never age, never die, never return to the mortal world she'd known, she came at me with a knife. My Adelaide, my perfect savage girl, tried to carve her rage into my flesh. I let her. I always let her. She stabbed me in the shoulder, the chest, dragged the blade across my ribs while screaming that I'd stolen her humanity, her choice, herdeath.
And then I fucked her on the stone floor with her blade still buried in my side and my blood painting her skin crimson.
We did that dance dozens of times that first decade. She'd realize again what immortality meant. No ending, no escape, forever bound to me, and the fury would take her. She'd attack me with whatever weapon she could find, and I'd let her hurt me because her violence was honest. Pure. It was the only way she knew how to process what I'd made her into.
And every single time, without fail, the violence would transform. Her hatred would twist into hunger. We'd fuck in the wreckage of her rage, blood-slicked and desperate, and afterward I'd hold her while she cried or cursed or simply stared at nothing. Then I'd carry her to our bath, and wash the blood away and begin our ritual again.
Every night for sixty years, I have bathed her. I fill the tub with water hot enough to make her skin flush pink, and I wash every inch of her with my clawed hands. I know her body better than I know my own. Every scar, every sensitive spot, the way she shivers when I touch the small of her back, the soft sound she makes when I massage her scalp. I brush her hair until it shines like spun gold in the firelight, then I braid it carefully, reverently, because she likes the way it feels when I take it down later.
Then I carry her to our bed. Always carry her. She's perfectly capable of walking, but this isours. And then I lay her down and worship her with my body the way I've done thousands of times and will do thousands more.
We make love for hours. Multiple times, until she's trembling and oversensitive and begging me to stop or continue, she's never quite sure which. And when we're finally spent, I stay inside her. Always. She needs me there, needs to feel me filling her even as we drift toward sleep. She reaches back and grabs my tail, wraps it around her leg like an anchor, and I curl my wing over both of us, cocooning us in darkness and warmth and safety.
That's when the world disappears. When it's just us, tangled together so completely that I don't know where I end and she begins. My cock buried deep inside her, her cunt still fluttering with aftershocks, my wing blocking out everything else. Perfect. Complete.
The world calls it obsession. Unhealthy. Codependent.
I call it love.
And then, five years ago, she gave me something I never thought I'd have. Something I didn't even know I wanted until I held her in my arms, tiny and perfect andours.
Our daughter.
Adelaide was terrified during the pregnancy. We didn't know what would happen. Dragon and human, immortal and transformed. But she was magnificent. Strong and fierce and so fucking beautiful, carrying our child that I could barely breathe when I looked at her.
And when our daughter finally came, screaming her fury at the world with lungs that could already produce small puffs of smoke... I understood. I finally understood what Adelaide had been trying to tell me all those years ago about choice, love, and what it means to give someone everything.
I would burn the world for Adelaide. But for our daughter? I would unmake reality itself.
Adelaide is an extraordinary mother. Patient in ways I never expected, fierce in ways that make my ancient heart swell with pride. She sings to our girl in that slightly off-key way that somehow makes the songs more beautiful. She teaches her to read, draw, and think. And when our daughter's temper flares, literally, small flames erupting from her mouth, Adelaide handles it with a calm I could never manage.
Being a father has changed me. Not softened me. I'm still the monster the kingdoms fear. But it's given me something new to protect. I watch Adelaide with our daughter, and I fall in love with her all over again, deeper and more desperately than before.
Adelaide is still learning to control her own fire. I've been teaching her for years, and she's getting better. She can summon flames at will now, shape them, use them. But when she's overwhelmed with pleasure, when I'm deep inside her, and she's coming apart beneath me, sometimes the fire just... erupts. She's singed my hair more times than I can count, left scorch marks on the sheets, and once set an entire tapestry ablaze when I made her come so hard she forgot her own name.
I love it. Every accidental burn, every moment when her control slips and her power manifests raw and wild. It's proof that she's mine in every way.
But the world won't leave us alone.
The knights still come. Every few years, some new band of heroes decides they're going to save the poor captive princess from the evil dragon. They want my head and her body. They don't understand that Adelaide would burn them alive herself if they tried to take her from me. We've moved six times in sixty years, seeking more remote locations, places where the kingdoms' reach is weaker.
It doesn't matter. They always find us eventually.
I will never let anyone take her from me. Not because I own her, I don't, I never have, even when I thought I did. But because shechoosesthis. And I will give her everything she wants. Everything.
If she wants safety, I'll kill anyone who threatens it. If she wants pleasure, I'll worship her body until she can't remember anything but my name. If she wants our daughter to grow up wild and free and powerful, I'll make sure the world bends to accommodate that.
