I read every word. Every rule, every promise, every consequence. The absolution clause that made my eyes sting. The blank section now filled with my hesitant, hard-won wants.
It was terrifying. It was perfect. It was everything I didn't know I needed until this moment.
"I want this," I said. "I want to sign."
Zephyron smiled. Not his public smile—the charming one he'd worn in the plaza. This was smaller. Private. Real.
"Then let's make it official."
He pulled a lightning-charged blade from his desk drawer. Not obsidian—this was silver metal that hummed with contained electricity, the edge glowing faintly blue. My stomach clenched at the sight of ritual blades, but through the bond I felt his intent. This wasn't harvest magic. This was sealing magic. Creation instead of destruction.
"Blood signatures make it binding," he explained, setting the blade between us. "Dragon-vellum parchment requires life-essence to accept the contract terms. It's old magic. Permanent."
The floating text compressed, condensing into actual physical form. The parchment materialized on the desk between us—pale, almost translucent, with a texture that looked organic. Dragon-vellum. Made from something I probably didn't want to know about.
Zephyron picked up the blade. Didn't hesitate. Drew it across his palm in one smooth motion. Blood welled immediately—bright red that seemed to glow from within, carrying his electrical nature. He pressed his bleeding hand against the bottom of the parchment.
Lightning erupted from the contact point. Blue-white arcs that raced across the dragon-vellum, following invisible pathways, making the contract text blaze with sudden illumination. His signature burned itself into the parchment in letters that looked like frozen lightning.
Then he offered me the blade.
My hand shook taking it. The cult had used blessed obsidian. This was charged silver. Different tool, different purpose, but my body remembered blade-ritual-blood as a sequence that ended in death.
"You're safe," Zephyron said quietly. Through the bond, I felt his steady certainty. "This is binding us together, not tearing you apart. I promise."
I pressed the blade against my palm. The edge was impossibly sharp—I barely felt the cut. Just sudden warmth as blood pooled in my cupped hand. More blood than his. Human blood that looked mundane next to his glowing draconic essence.
I pressed my bleeding palm against the parchment beside his signature.
The world exploded.
Lightning erupted from the contact point like I'd touched a live wire. But this wasn't the gentle sparks from before. This was raw electrical fury, the full force of Zephyron's power channeling through the blood bond directly into my nervous system.
I screamed. Couldn't help it. Couldn't breathe through the sensation of my entire body catching fire from the inside out.
The transformation that had been gradual over three days—gentle healing, subtle changes, manageable adjustments—compressed into seconds. My cells rewrote themselves. Human biology fighting dragon magic in a war happening at the molecular level.
My bones burned. I felt them changing, reinforcing, becoming denser. My spine arched involuntarily as each vertebra shifted, strengthened, prepared to anchor power that human frames weren't designed to carry.
My nervous system ignited. Every nerve ending fired simultaneously as electricity raced through pathways that were being carved open and widened. The lightning scars on my temple pulsed, spreading, branching down my neck, across my shoulders, racing down my arms in intricate patterns.
I could see them. Through vision that had gone white with pain, I watched silver-blue patterns bloom across my skin like frost forming on glass. Branching, dividing, creating networks of conductive pathways that would carry Zephyron's electricity through my body without destroying me.
But the cult conditioning fought back.
In my neural pathways—places where six years of ritual training had carved deep grooves—the dragon magic hit resistance. The conditioning tried to reject the bond. Tried to maintain the High Priestess programming that said I was a vessel for spiritual service, not a mate worthy of care.
The conflict was agony. Two types of magic warring for control of my brain. Dragon-bond trying to rewrite neural patterns. Cult programming trying to maintain them.
I felt myself fracturing. Splitting. High Priestess Thalia clawing to stay dominant. Little Thalia trying to emerge to submit. The real me—whoever that was—caught between them, being torn apart.
"Let it happen." Zephyron's voice cut through the chaos. His hands were on my shoulders, grounding me, channeling the wild electricity into controlled pathways. "Don't fight it. The conditioning is just neural patterns. The bond is stronger. Let it rewrite you."
I couldn't answer. Could barely hear him over the roaring in my ears. But through the bond, I felt his absolute certainty. His hands on my shoulders became an anchor point. Real. Solid. Something to focus on while my entire identity restructured.
The lightning intensified. I felt it carve new pathways through my brain, burning away cult conditioning like fire through dead wood. Each burned-away neural pattern released a memory—ritual chants falling silent mid-syllable, Solmar's voice losing its authority, the blessed obsidian blade becoming just metal and magic instead of divine instrument.
My senses exploded outward. I could feel electrical currents in the walls, in the city below, in the storm brewing miles away over the ocean. Could sense the magnetic field of the planet itself, could track the lightning dance happening constantly in the upper atmosphere.
