He didn't move. "You're certain?"
"I'm certain." I walked back to him, stopping close enough to feel the heat radiating from his massive body. "I have a homenow. A partner who builds things with me. An offspring who's going to need a nursery."
"The portal closes in minutes. Once it's gone..."
"I know." I reached up, touched his face. "I know what I'm choosing. A lifetime here, with you. No going back. No escape route."
"That doesn't frighten you?"
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
"No," I said. "What frightens me is the idea of going back. Of returning to a life where I was invisible. Where I built things for people who didn't deserve them. Where no one ever..."
He kissed me before I could finish the sentence.
The kiss was different this time. Not claiming. Not desperate. Tender. The kiss of someone who'd been given a gift he'd spent twenty cycles hoping for.
When he pulled back, the portal was flickering. Destabilizing. Beginning to close.
"Let me watch," I said. "I want to see it go."
We stood together, his arm around my shoulders, and watched the portal collapse in on itself. The shimmer condensed, brightened, and then vanished entirely, leaving nothing but empty air where escape had been.
Gone. My last connection to human space. My last chance to return to the life I'd left behind.
I felt nothing but relief.
"It's done," Bruk said.
"Yes." I turned to face him, pressed my body against his. "Now breed me."
His eyes darkened. "Here?"
"Here. Now. Where the portal was." I pulled at his armor, finding the gaps, feeling the heat of his skin underneath. "I want you to fill me in the exact spot where I chose to stay."
He didn't argue.
He laid me down on the bone surface, right where the portal had been. Stripped away the simple clothing I'd been wearing. Looked at my body, fuller now, rounder, obviously pregnant, with an expression of pure possession.
"Mine," he said. "You're mine now. Permanently."
"Yours," I agreed. "Now prove it."
He proved it.
Slow this time. Almost reverent. He entered me inch by inch, letting me feel every ridge, every texture, every bit of the cock that had bred me and would breed me again. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper, wanting all of him, wanting to be filled in the place where I'd made my final choice.
He fucked me slowly, deeply, his forehead pressed against mine, his eyes locked with mine. Not the desperate rutting of survival or the hard claiming of victory. This was worship.
"I've waited twenty cycles for you," he said, his voice rough. "And you stayed."
"I stayed." The words came out broken, punctuated by the pleasure of his slow thrusts. "I chose you. I chose the Keep. I chose this life."
His knot began to swell. I felt it pressing against my entrance, that familiar stretch, that burn that had become pleasure.
"Push out," he said.
I pushed. The knot slid inside me, locking us together again. Then he came, flooding my already-pregnant womb with seed, marking me, claiming me, filling me in the exact spot where the portal had closed.
