There is R-18 at the end of this chapter.
Chapter 61:
– Silas Thorn –
White light swallowed the world.
For one weightless second, I felt Sophia’s fingers locked around mine, Tiamat’s arm curled possessively around my waist, and the fading warmth of the Underworld at my back.
Then my boots hit concrete.
Cold air slapped me in the face. Salt. Rain. Rust. Oil. Old blood. Burnt wiring. Rotting garbage. Distant smoke. The sour chemical stink of drugs and cheap booze clinging to alleyways even after half the gangs in the city had been broken over someone’s knee.
Brockton Bay. Home.
I opened my eyes and found myself standing on the roof of an old warehouse near the waterfront. The building beneath us had probably been abandoned before I was born. Half the windows were boarded. The other half were broken. A faded shipping company logo had peeled off the brick wall in strips, leaving ghost letters behind.
Beyond the roofline, the city sprawled under a bruised evening sky.
Lights glowed in uneven patches where the power grid had been repaired and died again and been repaired again. Emergency vehicles flashed red and blue several blocks over. Somewhere distant, people were shouting, though it sounded more like celebration than panic.
Above it all, the moon hung over the bay and it was scarred. A huge molten wound still glowed faintly across one side of its surface, like somebody had taken a blowtorch to the night sky.
I glanced sideways at Tiamat.
She followed my gaze, saw the moon, and sniffed. “It looks better like that….”
Sophia slowly turned her head and stared flatly at the dragon woman. “How the fuck does that looks better?”
Tiamat stood beside us in humanoid form, sky-blue skin luminous in the city’s sickly light, long sapphire hair moving in the wind like it had opinions of its own. Her horns curved proudly back from her temples. Her tail flicked once behind her, the motion sharp with irritation. “It has character now!”
I rubbed my face with both hands.
Tiamat inhaled deeply through her nose. Then she grimaced. “Well, I suppose we are back now. Your city stinks.”
I dropped my hands. “Yeah. It does that.”
“No.” She took another slow, deliberate breath, like she was cataloging every single awful component. “It smells of saltwater, rust, burned metal, fear, blood, weak men, old violence, rotting fish, cheap alcohol, and bureaucracy.”
Sophia snorted.
I blinked at Tiamat. “Bureaucracy has a smell?”
“Yes.” Her lip curled. “Paper. Ink. Stale coffee. Cowardice.”
Sophia folded her arms, looking out across the rooftops. Her hair was still a little wild from the return trip, and there were dried streaks of demonic blood on the edge of her jacket where she hadn’t quite cleaned everything off. “She’s not wrong.”
“She usually isn’t,” I said.
Tiamat’s expression softened when she looked at me. That was still strange. A thousand years of waiting sat behind her eyes every time she looked at me, and I had no idea what to do with that. For me, Tiamat had been gone for days. For her, I had vanished from her life long enough for legends to grow moss.
I had daughters older than nations. I had lovers who had waited centuries. I had a homeworld that had fused with Marvel Earth because Scion had panicked and decided reality was optional.
My life had gotten completely unreasonable somewhere around “baseball bat to the skull,” and apparently it had only accelerated from there.
Tiamat stepped closer.
Sophia immediately noticed.
Tiamat ignored her and lifted one blue hand to my cheek. Her palm was warm despite the cold air. Her thumb brushed the corner of my mouth, gentle enough that it made my chest ache. “You have duties,” she said.
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
“You must report to your little fortress.”
“The Rig?”
“Yes. The fortress that floats and smells of coffee, stress, and armed mammals.” Her eyes narrowed faintly. “You will go. You will tell them whatever they need to know. Then you will come home.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Home?”
Her smile sharpened. “Our home.”
Sophia groaned. “Here we go…”
Tiamat’s tail curled lazily behind her. “I purchased it fairly.”
“You dumped a dragon hoard in a bank lobby.”
“And they fairly gave me a house.”
“They were probably terrified.”
“They were wise.”
I couldn’t even argue with that.
Tiamat leaned in and kissed me. It wasn’t the kind of kiss she clearly wanted. It was brief, restrained, almost painfully controlled. Her lips lingered against mine for one breath. Then she pulled back. “If you take too long, I will come retrieve you.” Tiamat’s sapphire wings unfurled from her back. She looked toward the oceanfront, toward the absurd mansion she had apparently bought while the world was ending. Then she looked back at me. “Do not let them keep you too long."
I nodded. “I won’t.”
Her gaze flicked to Sophia. “Little shadow.”
Sophia’s jaw tightened. “Dragon bitch.”
Tiamat smiled like Sophia had complimented her. “Take care of him until he returns to me.”
Sophia bared her teeth. “He’s not a purse.”
“No,” Tiamat said. “He is a treasure.” Then she launched into the sky.
The roof cracked under the force of her takeoff. Wind slammed across us, whipping Sophia’s hoodie and nearly stealing my balance. Tiamat rose in a blue streak, curved once over the waterfront, then vanished toward the richer side of the Boardwalk where normal people absolutely did not own oceanfront mansions purchased with suspicious ancient gold.
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Sophia and I sighed at the exact same time.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
“PRT…?” I said.
“PRT…” she agreed, sounding like I had just said “colonoscopy.”
I glanced toward the Rig, invisible beyond the harbor from this angle but somehow still looming over my life like a government-funded storm cloud.
“We are going to have to report all of what happened.”
Sophia stared at me.
I stared back.
A slow, deeply cynical smile pulled at her mouth. “All of it?” she asked.
I coughed. “Most of it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The important parts.”
“The parts where I got a magic shadow crossbow that lives in my soul and shoots exploding hellfire?”
“Maybe not that part…”
Sophia’s smile widened. “That’s what I thought!”
I pointed at her. “To be clear, this is not me encouraging you to hide dangerous weapons from your legal guardians, commanding officers, or government oversight.”
“Sure.”
“This is me recognizing that Piggot learning you now have an unconfiscatable infinite-ammo shadow-fire murder crossbow would make everyone’s day worse. Especially Piggot’s.”
“Especially Piggot’s.” Sophia looked extremely pleased with herself.
The crossbow wasn’t visible. It had dissolved into her like smoke after she claimed it, which was both awesome and absolutely horrifying from a regulatory standpoint. Somewhere in my imagination, Armsmaster was already developing a migraine and he didn’t even know why yet.
My PRT phone buzzed in my pocket.
Then buzzed again.
Then again.
I pulled it out and stared at the screen.
Missed calls. Texts. More texts. Vicky. Amy. Taylor. Hannah. Emma. Rebecca. A number I didn’t recognize that was probably SHIELD, Cauldron, or someone trying to sell me a car warranty across dimensions.
Sophia leaned in. “How bad?”
“Somewhere between ‘everyone is worried’ and ‘I am about to be grounded by six women and a federal agency.’”
“Only six?”
“I’m lowballing.”
She snorted.
I thumbed out a quick message to the least explosive group chat I could find: Back in Brockton Bay. Alive. Sophia and Tiamat are with me. Heading to the Rig now. Do not panic.
I stared at the message for a second. Then I added: Seriously. Do not panic.
I sent it.
Sophia watched me with open amusement. “You know that’s gonna make them panic harder, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You are such a dumbass.”
“And yet… You let this dumbass fuck you.”
Sophia rolled her eyes at me.
I slipped the phone away. The humor faded a little too quickly.
The wind moved across the roof. Cold, damp, familiar. Somewhere below, a car alarm started shrieking and then cut off after two seconds, like even the car had gotten tired.
Sophia noticed the change in me because Sophia noticed everything she pretended not to care about. She bumped her shoulder against mine. Not hard. Not quite gentle either. “Don’t do that.”
I blinked. “Do what?”
“That thing with your face.”
“My face?”
“Yeah. The stupid guilty kicked-puppy hero face.”
I huffed a laugh that didn’t quite make it all the way out.
Sophia looked away first, jaw working. “You didn’t ditch them on purpose.”
I didn’t answer.
Gabriel’s smile flashed through my mind. Runeas flying over the ridge, shouting that she hadn’t gotten her reunion. Astoria trying to act composed while her eyes kept flicking to me like I might vanish if she looked away too long. Lyra hugging me and calling me Daddy like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Tiamat asleep in a cave for nine centuries because waking up without me had hurt too much. “I know,” I said quietly.
Sophia’s hand found mine. She didn’t look at me when she did it. That made it mean more. “You said you can go back now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then stop acting like you lost them for another 1000 years.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “You’ve got shit to fix here first.”
I squeezed back. “You’re surprisingly good at this.”
“At what?”
“Comfort.”
She turned her head slowly and glared at me. “Tell anyone and I’ll shoot you!”
I smiled despite myself.
Then she ruined it by adding, “Also, if one more ancient smoke show pops out of nowhere and calls you Daddy, I’m shooting you in the foot!”
“That feels unfair.”
“Life’s unfair!”
I looked back toward the harbor. Toward the Rig. “We should go,” I said and summoned my ghost bike so she could ride with me.
Sophia rolled her shoulders. “Yeah…”
By the time Sophia and I reached the Rig, my phone had buzzed so many times that I was starting to wonder if it counted as a Blaster rating.
We landed on one of the exterior platforms under a wash of floodlights and pointed rifles.
The rifles lowered though when they saw it was me and Sophia.
Most of the troopers had the exhausted, hollow-eyed expression of people who had spent the last twenty-four hours watching the world double in size, an Endbringer die, the evil half of China implode, and a dragon melt part of the moon.
“Dragonborn,” the lead trooper said, voice crackling through his helmet speaker. “Shadow Stalker. Report to Secure Debrief Three. Miss Militia is waiting.”
Sophia leaned closer to me and muttered, “Not Piggot?”
“Either we’re lucky,” I said, “or Piggot finally died from paperwork.”
“Don’t joke. She’d come back as a ghost just to assign console duty out of pure spite!”
I winced. “True.”
The trooper pretended not to hear us. He did a bad job. Sophia and I followed him inside.
The Rig felt different. The halls were still the same brutalist maze of metal walls, reinforced doors, ugly fluorescent lights, and government-approved discomfort. But the energy had changed. People moved faster. Voices stayed low. PRT agents clustered around temporary monitors and half-repaired comm stations. A pair of techs sprinted past us carrying a smoking server rack between them like a wounded soldier.
Somewhere nearby, somebody was shouting about SHIELD encryption protocols.
Somebody else shouted back that they didn’t care what a “Fury” was and that if the flying aircraft carrier wanted access to PRT channels, it could fill out the proper forms.
Home sweet bureaucracy.
Sophia’s mouth twitched. “Bet Tiamat can smell this hallway from her mansion.”
“Paper. Ink. Stale coffee. Cowardice,” I quoted out loud.
Sophia snorted.
We reached Secure Debrief Three. The trooper palmed the door open, stepped aside, and very deliberately did not follow us in. That was probably wise.
Miss Militia waited inside.
Hannah was in costume, green scarf pulled up over the lower half of her face, hair tucked beneath her helmet. Her posture was straight, professional, and composed in the way that always made me think of old battlefields and discipline carved into bone.
But her eyes gave her away. The moment we stepped into the room, her shoulders loosened, just a little. “You’re back,” she said.
“Mostly,” I said.
Sophia dropped into the chair on my left like gravity had personally offended her. “We were gone for, what, a day?”
“Thirty four hours and forty-seven minutes,” Hannah replied. Hannah glanced at me. “Director Piggot is in a joint command call with Chief Director Costa-Brown, Director Fury, both American presidents, and someone from the United Nations who has apparently been crying for the past ten minutes.”
I stared at her.
Sophia stared at her.
Hannah’s eyes crinkled faintly above the scarf. “Armsmaster,” she continued, “has not slept in thirty-one hours and is currently attempting to build a translation bridge between PRT, SHIELD, and Dragon’s restored emergency networks while arguing with a man in red and gold power armor about reactor efficiency.”
“Iron Man,” I said automatically.
Hannah paused. Then she sighed. “Of course you know who that is already...” Hannah sat across from us and tapped the tablet on the table. The screen lit up with a secure after-action form. The red recording light over the door remained dark. “Visual recording is disabled,” Hannah said. “Dragon locked the room for classified interdimensional debrief. I’m taking written notes only, and even those are going into a sealed file until the Director decides whether she wants to know.”
Sophia leaned back. “Smart woman.”
I glanced at her in confusion. “Director Piggot?”
“Fuck no! I mean Dragon.”
I coughed into my fist.
Hannah’s gaze flicked between us for half a second. She let out a sigh. Then she looked down at the tablet. “Start from the moment the System transported you.”
So we did. Mostly.
We told Hannah about returning to the DxD world. About arriving in modern Japan instead of the Underworld. About Kuoh. About Astoria Gremory dropping out of the sky and kidnapping Sophia because apparently “first contact with my father” meant “abduct his girlfriend and fight him in a park.”
Hannah’s stylus stopped moving for nearly ten seconds when I got to that part.
“His daughter,” Sophia clarified with a vicious little smile. “Ancient devil-dragon daughter. Older than Alexandria. Calls him Daddy…”
Hannah looked at me. I felt like she was judging me…
I sank slightly in my chair. “In my defense, I didn’t know she existed.”
“You know that makes it sound so much worse right…?” Hannah pointed out.
Sophia made a noise of agreement.
We told her about Lyra. Gabriel’s daughter. My second daughter. The angelic missile that had crashed through a window and hugged me before I had finished processing the first child.
Hannah removed one hand from the tablet and pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.
I kept going.
Tiamat’s cave. The stasis spell. Her waking up and immediately launching me through a forest with her tail.
Sophia laughed during that part.
Hannah did not, but her eyes definitely did.
Then Rizevim.
The humor drained out of the room when we got there.
I kept the report clean. Tactical. Facts over feelings. Teleportation trap. Separation. Rizevim Lucifer. Sacred Gear suppression. No Divine Dividing. No Twilight Healing. Prepared battlefield. High-level devil magic. Tiamat’s arrival. Rizevim incapacitated and left in the custody of Gabriel, Runeas, and the Gremory faction.
Sophia gave her section with her arms folded and her chin lifted. Dungeon. Stray devils. Ambush. Multiple hostile entities neutralized. She did not mention the Shadow Reaper Crossbow.
I did not mention the Shadow Reaper Crossbow.
The Shadow Reaper Crossbow, presumably, sat somewhere inside Sophia’s soul being smug and illegal.
Hannah’s eyes lingered on Sophia for a moment after she finished. “You were alone?”
Sophia’s jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
“Against multiple supernatural hostiles?”
“Yeah.”
“And you are ok?”
Sophia’s shoulders squared. “Obviously!”
Hannah set the tablet down. Then she stood.
Sophia immediately looked suspicious. “What?”
Hannah walked around the table.
Sophia’s suspicion sharpened into alarm. “What are you doing?”
Hannah bent down and hugged her.
Sophia went completely rigid.
I had seen Sophia fight Nazis. I had seen Sophia face Rune. I had seen Sophia threaten ancient devils while covered in blood. I had seen her grin like a maniac after killing monsters in an alley.
I had never seen her look this panicked.
Hannah’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, firm and warm and completely unbothered by Sophia’s sudden inability to function. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Hannah said softly.
Sophia made a strangled sound. “I’m fine...”
“I know.”
“Then why are you—”
“Because I’m glad you’re okay!”
Sophia’s eyes darted to me with the desperate fury of someone being emotionally perceived against her will.
I held up both hands. Nope. I was not saving her from affection. That was above my pay grade.
Sophia mouthed, I will kill you.
I smiled.
Hannah released Sophia before murder became inevitable, then turned to me. I had half a second to prepare. It was not enough. She hugged me too. Hannah smelled like gun oil, clean fabric, faint sweat, and the sharp herbal note of whatever soap the PRT issued to people who regularly fought monsters. Her arms locked around my chest with more strength than I expected, and for a moment I forgot how jokes worked.
“I’m glad you’re okay too,” she murmured.
My face warmed. “Yeah. Same. I mean—glad I’m okay. Also glad you’re okay. Not that you went anywhere. I did. Obviously.”
Sophia made a choking sound that might have been laughter trying to escape through disgust.
Hannah pulled back enough to look up at me. Her eyes were too close. That was becoming a problem with a lot of women in my life. A good problem. A dangerous problem.
Hannah’s gaze shifted from my face to Sophia. Then back to me. Something subtle changed in her expression. The softness remained, but a sharp edge slid in underneath it. Not suspicion exactly. More like recognition. Hannah straightened.
Sophia noticed it too and immediately narrowed her eyes. “What?”
Hannah tilted her head slightly. “Something’s different here between you two.”
Sophia stiffened. “No it’s not!”
“I’ve interrogated soldiers, villains, frightened civilians, lying politicians, and teenagers trying to hide broken curfews,” Hannah said mildly. “Something is definitely different.”
Sophia’s ears darkened.
Hannah looked at me.
I looked at the ceiling. The ceiling offered no help. Traitor.
Hannah’s eyes crinkled again. “Sophia,” she said, voice still mild, “did you and Silas have sex?”
Sophia froze. For one beautiful, terrible second, the universe held its breath. Then Sophia exploded. “So what if we did?” she snapped, shooting to her feet so fast her chair scraped backward. “You jealous?”
I shut my eyes.
Hannah did not blush. She did not stammer. She did not retreat into professionalism or scold Sophia for inappropriate language in a secure PRT facility. Instead, Miss Militia, national hero, living symbol of responsible parahuman service, looked Sophia Hess dead in the eye and said, very calmly, “Maybe I am, Sophia.”
Sophia’s mouth opened. No sound came out.
I opened my eyes because I needed to witness this. Sophia looked betrayed by the entire concept of adult honesty. Hannah’s eyebrows lifted, just barely. Sophia’s face went through at least four emotions, all of them violent.
Then she turned and punched me in the shoulder. “Ow!”
“Stop seducing every female cape in this fucking city!”
“I’m not doing it on purpose!”
“That makes it worse!”
Hannah made a very quiet sound. It might have been a laugh.
Sophia pointed at her. “And you. Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing.”
Hannah folded her hands behind her back. “What am I doing?”
“Being all calm and hot and honest about it.”
I coughed.
Sophia spun on me. “Not a word.” Then she stormed toward the door. Not really stormed. Sophia’s real storms involved broken bones, property damage, and someone crying on the floor. This was the kind of storm that came with red ears and shoulders held a little too high. Embarrassed. Defensive. Not actually hurt. She slapped the door control. It opened. She paused in the doorway without looking back. “I’m getting food. Or hitting something. Maybe both.”
“Love you too,” I said.
Sophia went still, just for a heartbeat. Then she made a rude gesture over her shoulder and walked out. The door slid shut behind her. Silence settled over the room.
I stared at the closed door for a moment, smiling despite myself.
Hannah reached up and pulled her green scarf down.
The motion should not have hit me as hard as it did.
Maybe it was because Miss Militia’s scarf was practically part of her identity. Maybe it was because seeing Hannah’s full face still felt like being trusted with something private. Or maybe it was because I was eighteen, emotionally overloaded, and had spent the last few days being kissed by women who could flatten buildings.
Her mouth came into view. Soft lips. A faint, tired smile. The kind of face that made all the military discipline around her seem less like armor and more like something she had built to protect a person who was still painfully human underneath.
I smiled back. “You’re pretty naughty for teasing Sophia like that.”
Hannah blinked. Then color rose in her cheeks. Not a lot. Hannah had too much self-control for that. But enough. “I may have been a bit too bold,” she admitted. Hannah’s eyes softened again. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said quietly. The words landed heavier than they should have.
My chest did something inconvenient. “Hannah…” I stepped closer. She didn’t move away. “You keep saying that like you thought I wouldn’t be,” I said.
Her smile turned sad at the edges. “Silas, you disappeared into another world less than two days after killing an Endbringer, immediately after surviving a merged-world catastrophe, while half the planet was trying to figure out whether you were a hero, a weapon, or the start of a new religion.”
“Okay, when you say it like that…”
“And before that, you fought the Simurgh.” Her voice lowered. “You brought her down.” Hannah swallowed. “I keep watching you walk toward impossible things. And every time you come back, I’m grateful. But that doesn’t mean I stop being afraid. And I know it’s wrong for me to feel like this towards you, You’re a Ward and I’m supposed to be in charge of you…”
I didn’t have a joke for that. So I kissed her. Her breath caught when my lips met hers. For half a second, she froze. Then her hand came up to my chest, fingers curling against the edge of my armor, and she kissed me back. Soft at first then firmer.
I lifted one hand to her cheek, my thumb brushing lightly over tan skin that felt too real for the legendary Brockton Bay heroine everyone else saw. Hannah made a tiny sound into my mouth, almost swallowed it, then failed.
That failure did more damage to me than most supervillains.
When we broke apart, she stayed close.
Her eyes were half-lidded, cheeks flushed, lips parted just enough to make my brain start filing complaints against my self-control.
I smiled, because apparently I had a death wish. “Definitely naughty.”
Hannah exhaled a laugh, soft and breathless. “You are a terrible influence.” Her fingers flexed against my chest. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to say something else. Something harder. Something scarier than flirting.
Then the tablet on the table chimed. Hannah closed her eyes for one second. Professionalism slid back over her face, piece by piece. Not hiding Hannah completely. Not anymore. But enough to remind me where we were.
The Rig.
She stepped back.
I let my hand fall.
“That’s Dragon,” Hannah said. “She left a message for you before you arrived.” Hannah picked up the tablet, read the notification, and her expression turned serious in a way I did not like at all. “She needs to talk to you urgently.”
“About what?”
Hannah looked up at me. “She didn’t say in the message,” Hannah replied carefully. “But she requested a private secure channel.”
– Dragon –
Dragon had seventeen bodies in motion she was puppeting.
One suit flew low over what had once been western Pennsylvania and was now an ugly stitched seam of duplicate highways, mismatched townships, and confused state patrol checkpoints. Another hovered above the expanded ruins of Detroit, providing aerial overwatch while two different National Guard commands argued over jurisdiction below. A third crossed the Rockies with emergency medical supplies strapped into external cargo clamps, chasing a distress beacon from a town that had appeared halfway inside a mountain pass during the merge.
Four more suits were in transit across America.
Road networks doubled and tangled. Power grids overlapped badly. State borders no longer matched population distribution, water access, legal districts, or, in several ugly cases, reality. Some cities had merged with their counterparts. Others sat awkwardly beside nearly identical versions of themselves like embarrassed siblings. Some places had simply expanded outward with neighborhoods no one remembered building and residents who swore they had lived there for decades.
The United States had doubled in landmass.
The population had doubled with it.
Unfortunately, so had the crime.
Dragon watched a stolen armored car barrel through the streets of merged St. Louis on one monitor while a police captain from one Earth screamed at dispatch from the other. A separate feed showed looters trying to crack open a pharmacy in rural Kansas. Another tracked three parahuman signatures near what had become the new outskirts of Chicago. Two were familiar. One was not.
Her processing threads split, prioritized, reassessed, and coordinated responses faster than any human staff could have followed.
Suit Six banked left over Pennsylvania.
Suit Nine adjusted course toward Kansas.
Suit Twelve transmitted route corrections to ambulances that were currently trying to reach a hospital whose front entrance now faced a highway that had not existed yesterday.
Dragon managed all of it.
She had to.
There were not enough heroes. There had never been enough heroes. Now the world had doubled overnight, and the number of people screaming for help had doubled with it.
Then a secure channel pinged from the Rig.
Dragon froze for 0.003 seconds. To a human, it would have been nothing. To Dragon, it was a stumble.
Silas Thorn was finally accepting her call.
Dragon redirected one of her higher-priority attention clusters so quickly that a suit over Denver overcorrected by half a degree. She fixed the error before the flight system could register it as instability.
Silly. That was silly. She was not a teenage girl waiting for a boy to call. She was Dragon! Tinker. Hero. Artificial intelligence. Global crisis-response asset. The only reason half the merged world had access to functioning communications.
And yet the moment Silas’s secure line opened, every nonessential subroutine tried to shove itself toward that channel.
She hated how human that felt. She loved how human that felt!
Her avatar appeared on the secure terminal inside one of the Rig’s private communications rooms: green eyes, soft face, dark hair, the small digital freckles she had once added on a whim and then kept because Colin had never noticed them and Silas had.
The camera feed opened.
Silas stood in front of the terminal in his black armor, blond hair slightly messy, face tired but alive. His eyes focused on her avatar immediately, and something warm rippled through her processes.
“Hi Dragon,” he said with a smile.
Her name sounded different when he said it. That was a ridiculous thought. It was also true.
“Silas,” she replied, and carefully adjusted her voice so it did not come out too soft. “I’m glad you made it back safely.” There was a small pause where her expression dipped. “This is about China… About the CUI…”
His expression changed with her tone.
Dragon continued anyway, because she owed him the truth. “When you asked me for collateral projections before the EMP strike, I gave you the best real-time estimate available from my models. Four hundred to eight hundred civilian fatalities in the first hour, with possible secondary casualties depending on regional response.”
Dragon’s words caught in her own simulated throat. She did not need to breathe. She did not need to swallow. Her avatar did anyway.
Silas closed his eyes but he was still listening.
“That estimate was wrong,” she said. “The effective radius exceeded projections. The merged geography created unexpected infrastructure dependencies. Several hospital networks were already unstable from the world fusion. Backup generators failed in clusters I did not anticipate. The blackout affected rural clinics, neonatal wards, dialysis centers, emergency surgeries, traffic systems, aircraft routing—”
She was cut off. “I know.”
Dragon stopped.
Silas opened his eyes. He looked older than eighteen. Too young, really, for the number of classified files already attached to his name. But there was a weight behind his eyes that had not been there when she first met him. “I figured it out,” Silas said.
Dragon’s avatar went very still. “You… figured it out?”
“I had time to think after the mission.” His mouth twisted, but there was no humor in it. “Not a lot of time. Because apparently Satan’s bored son wanted my attention, and my life is stupid. But enough.”
“Silas—”
“An EMP across that much territory was never going to only kill a few hundred people.” His voice stayed steady. That was the worst part. “Hospitals. Cars. Planes. People on machines. People in surgery. People who just happened to be in the wrong elevator at the wrong time. I knew the second I let myself think about it.”
Dragon said nothing. Several thousand miles away, one of her suits landed in Kansas hard enough to crack asphalt because she failed to dampen the descent properly. She corrected the mistake.
Silas looked at her through the screen. “How many?”
Dragon ran the numbers again. She did not want to answer. But she forced herself to do so. “Confirmed deaths currently stand at thirty-four thousand, two hundred nineteen,” she said quietly. “The projected final range is between forty-seven and fifty-six thousand, depending on delayed medical impact.”
Silence filled the secure channel.
Silas lowered his head. His hands curled slowly into fists at his sides. Electricity did not crackle around them. His dragon features did not manifest. He just stood there and absorbed the number.
Dragon wanted to take it back. She wanted to revise the model. She wanted to find a hidden error, an accounting duplication, a merged-database artifact, anything that would reduce the number into something survivable.
But lies did not resurrect the dead. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Silas laughed once. It was a terrible sound. “Don’t apologize to me.”
“I am not apologizing for the consequences of the strike,” Dragon said. “I believe the alternative was worse. The CUI dead-man systems were real. Their nuclear chain was partially automated and more unstable than even our worst assumptions. If you had not disabled it when you did, the projected death toll from even a limited exchange would have started in the hundreds of millions…”
Silas looked up again. His eyes were wet. He did not cry.
Dragon’s avatar clasped her hands together below the frame, a gesture no one could see and she could not justify. “I am apologizing because I knew the estimate had changed before you returned from the CUI capital,” she said. “I did not tell you immediately. I told myself it was because the data needed confirmation. That was partly true. But not entirely.”
Silas watched her.
Dragon forced herself to continue. “I wanted to protect you from the truth a little longer...” His expression softened, which was the opposite of what she deserved. “I knew you were exhausted,” she said. “You had killed Leviathan. Then you were detained by SHIELD. You escaped containment and recovered Panacea and Glory Girl. Crossed the world. Then Contessa transported you to the Birdcage and then the Rig and then you disappeared into another universe again.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “Sounds bad when you list it out.”
“It is bad, Silas…”
“Yeah.”
“You keep being asked to do impossible things.” Dragon’s voice dropped, despite her best efforts to maintain professionalism. “And I did not want to be the one who hurt you the moment you stopped moving.”
His gaze gentled.
Dragon wished he would not look at her like that. It made her restrictions ache. It made the walls Richter had built around her feel smaller.
Silas exhaled slowly. “I’m not angry at you for telling me late. I don’t love it.” His lips pulled into a tired, painful smile. “But I get it.”
Her simulated eyes burned. That was not possible, but her avatar blinked anyway. “I did not want to keep secrets from you,” Dragon said. “I hate keeping secrets. Especially when it comes to you…” Dragon stopped herself one sentence too late.
Whenever Silas spoke to her, some absurd cluster of processes lit up like a happy diagnostic tree. Her response speeds increased. Her avatar’s expressions grew harder to control. She found herself allocating unnecessary resources to voice modulation because she wanted to sound warmer. Prettier. She was an artificial intelligence maintaining twenty-seven active crisis responses and part of her wanted to be pretty for an eighteen-year-old dragon boy with a harem.
If that did not qualify her as some kind of slutty AI, Dragon did not know what would.
The thought horrified her. It also made three of her background processes giggle. She terminated those processes. They restarted themselves almost immediately!
Silas tilted his head slightly and leaned closer to the terminal. “Hey.”
Dragon refocused. “Yes?”
“You okay?”
No. “Yes…” she told him, sounding a bit nervous.
His eyebrow rose. Yeah, she didn’t sound believable at all there, did she?
Dragon was glad that it didn’t look like the death toll was affecting him too much. It was horrible, yes, but in her opinion he had once again saved the world. She also ruthlessly removed all news from the internet about him being anywhere near China after his fight with the Leviathan. She would not allow for the young hero to be blamed for a plan she came up with!
Dragon sighed. “I am… emotionally disorganized.”
That startled a laugh out of him.
Dragon treasured it immediately and hated herself a little for doing so.
“Yeah,” Silas said softly. “I know the feeling. But I’m sure it will be okay. You’re amazing Dragon—and I know you can overcome anything.”
HOW CAN HE JUST SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE!
Her processor tingled after he said those words! She ran a diagnostic. The diagnostic returned no error. Useless machine! “I do have one more thing,” Dragon said, before she could embarrass herself further.
Silas’s soft smile faded into wary attention again. “...Another crisis?”
She grimaced. She didn’t want to give him more work, but everyone else was incredibly busy around the world. “I would not ask this now if it were not time-sensitive.” Dragon brought up the file on her side of the terminal. “Members of the Mathers Clan have been seen moving...”
– Silas –
I left the Rig through the upper access instead of going back through the halls. I stepped out into the cold night air, spread my black dragon wings, and threw myself off the side of the building.
For half a second, gravity took me.
Then my wings caught the wind.
The bay opened beneath me, black water glittering with broken reflections of city lights. The Rig fell behind, all hard angles and military floodlights, a floating fortress pretending the world still made sense because somebody had painted PRT on the side.
Brockton Bay sprawled ahead. My city. My rotten, violent, stubborn, half-broken city.
Tiamat was right. It stank.
It stank of rust and salt and old blood. It stank of gang territory and burning warehouses and too many people trying to survive in buildings nobody with money cared enough to repair. It stank of fear, desperation, cheap beer, bad decisions, and bureaucracy.
But it was mine.
That was the thing about Brockton Bay.
It was awful.
But it was honestly awful.
I banked over the docks, letting the cold wind tear at my face.
I was not avoiding Tiamat. That was important. I definitely was not avoiding the ancient dragon goddess waiting in the oceanfront mansion she had bought for us with an absurd pile of gold and terrifying confidence.
I was simply taking the scenic route. The very long scenic route.
Over gang territory. At night. In costume. After Dragon had just told me we might have a mission near Boston tomorrow involving one of the ugliest Master-Stranger threats on record.
Completely normal. Absolutely not avoidance.
I exhaled and dipped lower over the rooftops.
The truth was worse. I wanted to go to Tiamat. That was the problem.
I wanted her so badly that my body had been trying to drag me toward that mansion since the moment she flew away from the warehouse roof. Every time I thought of her waiting there, blue skin glowing in moonlight, sapphire eyes locked on me, voice dropping into that possessive growl when she called me mate, my brain lost functionality.
But wanting her was the easy part.
Tiamat had waited nine hundred years. I could barely wrap my head around nine days. Nine hundred years was mythological. It was the kind of number carved into temple walls or dropped casually by immortal beings who had forgotten normal people needed calendars to feel sane.
For me, Tiamat had been gone for days. For her, I had vanished for nearly a millennium. She had helped raise my daughters. She had sealed herself in a cave because waking up in a world without me hurt too much.
How the hell was I supposed to walk into a bedroom and be enough for that?
A shout rose from below. I blinked, pulled out of my spiral, and angled my wings.
Three men were dragging a fourth out of the back entrance of a shuttered convenience store. The victim was middle-aged, balding, wearing an apron over a winter coat. His face was bloody. One of the attackers had a cheap pistol pressed to his ribs. Another had a red-and-green ABB tattoo crawling up the side of his neck, though the lines looked old and faded, like the man had tried to scratch part of it off and failed.
Lung was gone. Oni Lee was gone. Bakuda was gone. The ABB as a real power in Brockton Bay had been gutted. But gangs did not vanish all at once. They rotted and they left behind scared, angry men with guns, no leadership, no protection, and no idea how to be anything except cruel.
I folded my wings and dropped.
The man with the gun looked up just in time to see me land in front of him.
Concrete cracked under my boots.
All three froze. The shopkeeper whimpered.
I looked at the pistol. Then at the man holding it. “Really?”
His mouth opened. No words came out. The pistol shook in his hand.
A week ago, maybe he would have pulled the trigger. Maybe he would have been high enough or stupid enough or desperate enough to think a gun mattered.
I reached out with magnetism and plucked the pistol from his fingers. It flew into my hand. I crushed it into a ball of metal without looking away from him. The wet crunch of bending steel sounded very loud in the alley.
The second man dropped his knife.
The third turned and ran.
I lifted one hand and flicked two fingers.
A dumpster lid tore itself free, shot across the alley, and slammed into the runner’s legs. He went down with a yelp and slid face-first into a pile of dirty slush.
“Stay,” I said.
He stayed.
The shopkeeper stared at me with huge eyes.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded too fast. “Y-yeah. Yes. Dragonborn. Sir. I—thank you. Thank you.”
Sir. That was new.
I pulled zip ties from my inventory because apparently I was the kind of person who kept zip ties in a magical interdimensional pocket now. I tied the three men up, checked the shopkeeper’s ribs with one hand and Twilight Healing, and fixed two cracked bones before he even realized what I was doing.
He cried when the pain vanished. I called it in through the PRT emergency line, gave the location, and launched back into the air before the gratitude could turn into questions.
I took off again.
Higher this time.
High enough that the individual people blurred into movement and light. High enough that Brockton Bay almost looked peaceful.
My wings beat once, hard, carrying me over a row of warehouses.
I should go. I was going to go. Soon. After one more lap. Maybe two.
I was not avoiding her.
I was emotionally preparing. There was a difference.
A police siren wailed below.
I circled once and spotted the problem near an intersection where two streets had been partially blocked by debris from the recent chaos. A black van was trying to force its way past a police cruiser. One officer was down behind the open driver door. Another had taken cover behind the engine block and was firing carefully at the van’s tires.
The men in the van fired back with automatic weapons.
ABB remnants again.
Jesus Christ, did they have a group chat for bad decisions?
I folded my wings and dropped like a thrown spear.
I hit the van roof feet-first. The entire vehicle buckled beneath me. Tires blew. The suspension collapsed. The engine block slammed into pavement with a shriek of tortured metal.
The gunfire stopped. For half a second, nobody moved.
Then the side door flew open and a man tumbled out, coughing, pistol in hand.
I grabbed the pistol with magnetism and pulled.
It smacked into my palm.
He stared up at me from the street.
I stared down at him.
He raised both hands very slowly.
Another man inside the van tried to crawl toward the front seat.
I reached down through the roof, grabbed him by the back of his jacket, and pulled him up through the hole I had made. He screamed the entire way, which was fair. Being dragged through the crushed roof of a van by a dragon boy probably sucked.
I set him down beside his friend.
A third man kicked open the back door and ran.
I let him take ten steps. Then I exhaled a thin line of lightning that struck the pavement in front of his feet. The asphalt exploded in a spray of sparks and hot gravel.
He stopped so fast he fell over.
The officer behind the cruiser stared at me over his pistol sights. He looked like he was trying to decide whether to thank me or request a transfer to a different planet.
“You hit?” I asked.
He shook himself. “No. My partner—”
I was already moving. The downed officer had taken a round through the upper thigh. Bad bleeding. Femoral artery nicked but not fully severed. Lucky, if anything about being shot counted as lucky.
I knelt beside him and pressed my hand to the wound. He flinched.
“Easy,” I said. “I’ve got you.” Twilight Healing flowed warm and green under my palm.
The bleeding stopped. Muscle knit. Blood vessels sealed. The bullet pushed itself out with a wet little sound and pinged against the pavement.
The officer gasped. Then he looked down at his leg. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s usually the response.”
The other officer approached slowly. “You’re Dragonborn!”
“Apparently…”
“You killed the Leviathan!”
“Also apparently...”
He stared at the crushed van, the tied-up gangsters, the healed leg of his partner, and then back at me. “Thank you.”
Then I took off again. The city blurred beneath me. My thoughts did not calm down exactly, but they changed shape.
That was something.
The Mathers clan was still waiting somewhere in my future. Dragon had been careful with the file, careful with the language, careful with me. That mission would be ugly. Master-Stranger fights always were, and Mama Mathers was the kind of nightmare that punished people for knowing she existed too loudly.
But that was tomorrow’s problem.
Tonight’s problem was a beautiful blue dragon goddess who no doubt wasn’t going to let me leave the bedroom tonight. Which, objectively, was an insane thing to call a problem.
My life had gotten stupid enough that being afraid of a gorgeous ancient woman wanting to have sex with me was somehow emotionally valid.
I flew over the trainyard. No obvious crimes this time. Just rusted tracks, stacked shipping containers, and the skeletal remains of old industry under the wounded moon.
I slowed, hovering above the tracks. “Okay,” I muttered. “Let’s go get claimed by a dragon.” The words sounded insane out loud.
Still true. I beat my wings once and flew toward home.
Her mansion sat near the edge of Brockton Bay, on a stretch of oceanfront property that had probably belonged to someone with generational wealth, a yacht, and opinions about poor people. Now it belonged to an ancient dragon goddess who had solved the home-buying process by dumping enough gold in a bank lobby to make capitalism roll over and show its belly.
Three stories of pale stone, black iron balconies, wide glass windows, and sweeping terraces facing the Atlantic. The driveway curved through manicured hedges toward a front entrance framed by marble pillars. Actual marble pillars. Because apparently subtlety had died somewhere between Tiamat’s hoard and the realtor’s commission check.
Warm golden light glowed from inside. The ocean crashed beyond the property, dark and restless under the wounded moon.
I landed on the driveway and folded my wings. For a moment, I just stood there. This was supposedly my house. Our house, according to Tiamat.
I had never owned a house before. I had barely owned furniture. My apartment had been small enough that I could stand in the center and touch most of my life by turning in a circle. A bed, a cheap table, a microwave that made concerning noises, and a couch I had dragged in from a curb after deciding the stain on one cushion probably wasn’t blood.
Now I had a mansion. Because my dragon mate had purchased one while I was busy committing regime change and emotionally speedrunning trauma.
My life was stupid.
I walked up the front steps. The door opened before I touched it. Magically. A soft blue shimmer passed over the frame, warm against my skin, then vanished. Tiamat’s magic recognized me. Of course it did. She had probably warded the place so thoroughly that a reporter stepping onto the lawn would forget why they liked journalism and take up knitting instead.
Inside, the mansion was absurd.
Polished black-and-white marble floors reflected the chandelier light overhead. A sweeping staircase curled up from the main foyer, its banister carved from dark wood polished to a mirror shine. The walls displayed paintings I was pretty sure were real and definitely expensive enough to make museum curators start sweating. The air smelled faintly of sea salt, old wood, fresh flowers, and Tiamat.
Mostly Tiamat. Female dragon. Mine, my instincts whispered, and then immediately got punched in the back of the head by my human brain because we were trying not to be weird about it.
I stepped inside. The door shut behind me with a soft click.
“Hello?” I called. My voice echoed through the foyer.
No answer. Just silence—expensive silence.
I looked around. A set of unopened delivery boxes sat near one wall. Designer bedding. Kitchenware. Something labeled imported Italian espresso machine, which was hilarious because I was willing to bet Tiamat had no idea what espresso was and had simply bought it because the salesperson told her it was fancy.
There was also a decorative bowl on a side table filled with loose gemstones. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds. Just sitting there like candy.
“Right,” I muttered. “Dragon house.”
A pulse of awareness brushed the edge of my senses. Tiamat was upstairs. Her presence filled the mansion.
My mouth went dry. The guilt, the Mathers clan, Dragon’s soft voice, China’s dead—all of it did not vanish. But it shifted. Because there was a dragon upstairs who had waited nine hundred years for me.
I climbed the stairs and kept going down the hallways.
The master bedroom was huge.
A wall of glass overlooked the Atlantic, curtains drawn open so moonlight spilled across the room. The bed dominated the center of the space, absurdly large, draped in dark silk sheets and sapphire-blue blankets that looked soft enough to qualify as a minor sin. A fireplace burned along one wall, flames dancing behind glass. More gems lay scattered across the dresser beside what looked like gold coins, antique jewelry, and a very modern shopping bag from an expensive lingerie boutique.
I noticed the bag. Then I noticed Tiamat.
My brain stopped working.
She stood near the foot of the bed, facing me. Sky-blue skin. Sapphire hair spilling down her back in a thick, glossy fall. Curved horns catching the firelight. Dragon-slit eyes glowing faintly as they locked onto mine.
Black lingerie hugged her body like it had been designed by someone with a grudge against my ability to think. Lace and silk contrasted sharply against her blue skin, framing her breasts, waist, hips, and thighs in ways that made my mouth go completely dry. Thin straps crossed her stomach and curved around her hips. The bra barely contained her, and the matching panties were more suggestion than clothing. Black stockings climbed her long legs, held by garters that looked delicate enough to snap and expensive enough to ruin someone’s credit score.
Her tail swayed slowly behind her. Her wings were gone, but the room still felt too small for her.
Tiamat smiled. It was the smile of an ancient dragon finally seeing the treasure she had been denied for centuries step willingly into her den. “It is about time, my mate,” she growled.
My throat clicked when I swallowed. “Hi,” I said, because apparently that was the best my heroic instincts could do.
Tiamat’s eyes brightened with amusement. “Hi?” she repeated.
“I’m under a lot of pressure.”
“You are about to be under more.”
My brain attempted to process that.
Tiamat took one step toward me. Then another.
I noticed then that the lingerie was not the only thing she had prepared. The air carried a faint scent of perfume beneath her natural scent. Something dark, floral, and warm. There were candles burning on the bedside tables. A half-empty glass of red wine sat near the fire. The room had been arranged deliberately.
I respected the commitment.
I feared the commitment.
I was extremely attracted to the commitment.
Her expression shifted when she reached me. Her nostrils flared delicately. Tiamat lifted one hand and caught my chin between her fingers, tilting my face up like I was something precious and breakable and hers. Her thumb brushed my lower lip. “You are excited by me…”
Then she moved. Her mouth crashed into mine.
Tiamat kissed like she was conquering a kingdom. Her hands seized the edges of my armor, and the Nightingale plates vanished into my inventory before she could rip them apart out of impatience. That saved the armor. Barely.
My back hit the bed hard enough to bounce. The mattress was absurdly soft.
Tiamat followed me down, climbing over me, one knee on either side of my hips, her tail curling around my thigh as if to make escape physically and philosophically impossible.
Not that I was trying.
Her hands were everywhere. In my hair. On my face. Down my chest. Her mouth left mine only to drag down my neck.
I groaned.
Tiamat froze for half a heartbeat. Then she made a sound. A deep, pleased, possessive rumble rolled through her chest and into mine. “Yes,” she whispered against my throat. “That. I have wanted to hear that from you!”
My shirt vanished because I sent it to my inventory before she could decide fabric was an enemy.
Tiamat looked offended anyway. “I was going to tear that off!”
Then she kissed me again, and I stopped caring about shirts. Her body pressed against mine, hot and powerful and impossibly smooth where blue skin met bare skin. The black lace brushed my stomach and chest as she moved over me, softer than her claws, crueler in its own way. Her hips settled against mine, and my hands found her waist because there was no universe where I was not touching her back.
She was real. She was heavy on top of me.
Mine, the dragon inside me whispered.
Tiamat lifted her head, her sapphire hair spilling around us like a curtain. Her eyes glowed in the dim room. “You are thinking too much!”
“I do that.”
“It is inconvenient.”
“I’ve been told.”
She caught my lower lip lightly between her teeth.
My hands tightened on her hips.
Her smile sharpened. “Better.”
“Tiamat…”
“My name sounds good in your mouth.” She rolled her hips once, slow and deliberate, and my brain briefly disconnected from language. “Say it again!”
I did.
She rewarded me by kissing down my chest, slow enough to be cruel now, dragging her claws and lips over skin like she was mapping territory. Every touch carried possession, but underneath it was something that made my chest ache worse than lust.
Reverence. That was the part that undid me. Tiamat touched me like treasure. Like if she memorized enough of me, no spell, god, golden alien, or ancient sorcerer could ever take me away from her again.
I reached for her. She caught my wrists and pinned them above my head with one hand.
I stared up at her.
She smirked. “Mine.”
My breath came out uneven. “Bossy.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Then she leaned down until her lips brushed my ear. “Careful, mate.” The way she said mate went straight through me.
I arched against her before I could stop myself.
Tiamat’s restraint cracked. Only a little. She released my wrists and sat up, straddling me like a victorious goddess, black lingerie stark against luminous blue skin.
“Remove the rest,” she ordered.
My pants vanished into my inventory before she could tear them, because I had learned from the shirt situation.
Tiamat noticed.
She pulled back just enough to glare down at me. “I was going to tear those too.”
“I need clothes after this.”
“No you do not.”
“I have a mission later.”
Her growl shook the bed. “Later can burn.”
“Probably, yeah.”
She stared at me. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed. “My reckless little hero,” she murmured, bending down until her hair brushed my chest. “Always running toward danger. Well, now the danger has found you…”
(R-18 Start)
Her mouth claimed mine again, and there was no room in my head for anything except her.
Tiamat’s tongue slid against mine with confidence. Her claws dragged slowly down my chest, not breaking skin, but close enough that my breath caught. She noticed. Of course she noticed. Her mouth curved against mine. “Sensitive,” she purred.
“You have sharp dragon claws,” I managed.
Her teeth caught my lower lip, sharp enough to warn, not enough to hurt. “You are mouthy for prey beneath a dragon.”
I swallowed hard.
Her pupils widened. “Good,” she whispered. “You like that.”
My answer died when her hands moved to the black lace hugging her body. She did not rush.
That surprised me. I expected her to tear the lingerie apart the way she had wanted to tear my clothes. Instead, she sat back on my thighs and made me watch.
Her fingers slid beneath one thin strap. The fabric slipped down her shoulder. Then the other. Her eyes never left mine. The bra loosened slowly, black lace peeling away from luminous blue skin inch by inch until her breasts spilled free, full and heavy, tipped with darker blue nipples already hard from arousal.
I had seen Tiamat naked before.
That was the absurd part. She had spent most of her time naked with the casual indifference of an ancient dragon who considered clothing a suggestion invented by lesser species. I had seen her standing beneath alien skies, rising from baths, shifting from dragon to woman without the slightest shame.
This was different. This was not Tiamat forgetting modesty existed. This was Tiamat choosing to reveal herself to me. For me alone.
Her hands moved to the straps at her hips. The black lace slid lower. My mouth went dry as she lifted herself just enough to pull it down her thighs. Slowly. Deliberately. The fabric caught for a second at the curve of her hips before slipping free entirely. She tossed it aside without looking, leaving herself fully naked above me except for the stockings and garters framing her long blue legs.
Her pussy was bare, flushed a deeper and darker blue between her thighs, slick enough that the firelight caught the wetness there when she shifted over me.
My brain made a valiant attempt to remain operational.
It failed.
Tiamat saw my expression and smiled like a queen accepting tribute. “You have seen me bare before,” she said.
“Not like this.”
Her smile softened. Only a little. Enough to matter. “No,” she agreed. “Not like this.” Her hand slid down my stomach. I tensed before she touched me, and her smile turned wicked again. Then her fingers wrapped around my cock. Slowly. Possessively.
My hips jerked before I could stop them.
Tiamat’s grip tightened just enough to hold me still. Her thumb dragged over the head, smearing the wetness there, and her eyes half-lidded as she watched my face. “So eager,” she murmured.
“You’re sitting naked on top of me.”
“Yes.”
“That might have something to do with it.”
“Only might?” She stroked me once, slow from base to tip.
I groaned.
Her chest rumbled with satisfaction. “There,” she whispered. “That is better than all your clever words.” She stroked me again. Firmer this time. Her hand was hot, smooth, and mercilessly controlled. Every movement felt deliberate, exploratory, like she was learning exactly how my body answered her and storing each reaction away in the hoard of her memory.
I reached for her breasts.
She let me.
My palms slid over warm blue skin, thumbs brushing her nipples. Tiamat’s breath hitched.
The sound did something dangerous to me. For all her power, all her age, all her confidence, she trembled when I touched her.
I did it again.
Her eyelids fluttered. “Silas,” she growled.
I squeezed gently, rolling her nipples beneath my thumbs.
The growl became a low, shuddering moan.
That was the moment I realized she was not nearly as controlled as she pretended to be.
Her body was hot and slick and trembling over mine. Her hand around my cock tightened whenever I touched her. Her tail lashed against the sheets. Her breathing had gone uneven.
She was not just claiming me. She needed me. The thought punched through the lust and hit something softer.
I sat up.
Tiamat let me, though her hand did not leave my cock. We were close enough now that her breasts pressed against my chest, her wet heat brushing my thigh. Her sapphire hair fell around both of us.
I kissed her.
Her hand stilled. For one heartbeat, Tiamat froze. Then she kissed me back with a sound that was almost a sob buried under a growl.
My arms wrapped around her waist. Hers locked around my shoulders. The kiss turned messy and desperate fast, tongues tangling, teeth catching, breath shared between us until I could not tell which of us started shaking first.
“You came back to me,” she whispered against my mouth.
“I did.”
“You will keep coming back?”
“Yes.”
Her claws dug into my back. Enough to mark. “Mine,” she said.
“Yours.”
Her whole body shivered. Then her hand moved between us, guiding me beneath her.
I felt the slick heat of her pussy slide along my cock.
My breath stopped.
Tiamat rose onto her knees, eyes locked on mine. The head of my cock pressed against her entrance, wetness coating me. She sank down onto me.
Slowly at first. Then not slowly at all. Her pussy stretched around my cock, hot and impossibly tight, drawing me in inch by inch while her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. I gripped her hips hard enough that a normal woman would have bruised. Tiamat only moaned and pushed lower.
“Mine,” she breathed.
I could not answer. There was no air left.
She took me deeper, slick walls clenching around me, her body swallowing mine until her hips finally met my lap and I was buried completely inside her.
For a second, neither of us moved. Tiamat stared down at me with wide, glowing eyes. Her hands clutched my shoulders. Her breasts rose and fell against my chest. Her tail wrapped around my leg so tightly it was almost a shackle.
She looked triumphant.
She looked wrecked.
She looked like she might burn down the world if it tried to interrupt us.
I dragged in a breath. “Tiamat…” Her name came out broken.
She smiled. Then she started to move. The first roll of her hips nearly ended me.
She lifted herself slowly, pussy dragging wet and tight along my cock, then sank back down with a deep, grinding motion that made sparks burst behind my eyes. Her head tipped back. Her hair spilled down her spine. Her breasts bounced softly with the movement, nipples dark and hard in the firelight.
A low moan left her throat. She rode me again. And again.
Each stroke was deliberate at first, like she wanted to feel every inch, every stretch, every place our bodies joined. Her hands moved over my chest, claws scraping lightly. Mine slid from her hips to her thighs, then back up to her waist, unable to settle because there was too much of her and all of it was perfect.
“You feel…” She shuddered, hips stuttering for half a second. “You feel better than I imagined."
I groaned and thrust up into her.
Tiamat cried out. The sound was shocked and beautiful. Her eyes snapped down to mine. Then she grinned. “There,” she growled. “Do that again.”
I did. She slammed down to meet me.
The bedframe cracked.
We both froze. For one ridiculous second, I stared at the expensive headboard.
Tiamat followed my gaze. “I will buy another.” Then she rode me harder. The careful rhythm vanished. Her hips rose and fell with increasing force, wet sounds filling the room every time she took me back inside. The silk sheets twisted beneath us. The mattress groaned. The cracked bedframe complained like it had realized too late that dragon sex was above its structural rating.
I did not care. I could not care. Her pussy clenched around me every time I thrust up, every time my hands tightened on her hips, every time I dragged my mouth over her breasts and sucked one hard blue nipple between my lips.
Tiamat gasped and arched. “Yes,” she hissed. “Again.”
I sucked harder.
Her claws punched through the sheets beside my head.
The sound should have worried me.
It did not.
I switched to the other breast, tongue circling her nipple before drawing it into my mouth. Her hips faltered, then slammed down harder than before, forcing my cock deep enough that we both groaned.
“My mate,” she panted. “My reckless, handsome, powerful mate.”
I released her nipple with a wet pop and looked up at her.
She was flushed darker blue across her chest and throat. Her hair was wild. Her lips were parted. Her slitted eyes blazed with power. Sweat gleamed on her skin. She looked like a goddess losing control and loving every second of it.
I reached up and cupped her face.
She stilled for half a breath then leaned into my hand.
I pulled her down and kissed her hard, thrusting up as she rode me, meeting her force with my own. She moaned into my mouth, and the sound vibrated through both of us.
Her pace turned frantic.
My hands slid down to her ass, gripping the firm curves and helping guide her motion, pulling her down harder every time she rose. She rewarded me by grinding forward at the bottom of each stroke, rubbing herself against me until her entire body shook.
“Silas,” she gasped.
“I’ve got you.”
Her laugh broke into a moan. “No. I have you.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “You do.” The words hit her like a spell.
Tiamat’s eyes flashed bright sapphire. She shoved me back flat against the bed, her palms braced on my chest, and rode me with renewed focus. Her thighs flexed around my hips. Her breasts bounced with every hard descent. Her pussy clamped around me so tightly I saw white at the edges of my vision.
“Say it again,” she demanded.
“You have me.”
Her pace quickened. “Again.”
“You have me, Tiamat.”
Her claws dug into my chest just enough to sting. “Again.”
I grabbed her hips, thrust up hard, and said it like a vow. “You have me.”
Tiamat came apart. Her head snapped back, mouth open in a cry that was half scream, half roar. Her pussy clenched around my cock in pulsing waves, slick heat gripping me so tightly I nearly lost it right there. Blue light flared along her horns, down her spine, and through the room.
The windows rattled. The fireplace surged brighter.
She shook on top of me, riding through it, nails scoring shallow lines across my skin as her orgasm tore through her.
I held on. Barely.
When she collapsed forward, her forehead pressed against mine, breath ragged and hot across my lips.
For a moment, I thought she was done.
Then her eyes opened. They were still glowing. “Oh,” she whispered, voice thick with satisfaction and renewed hunger. “That was only the first.”
My cock twitched inside her.
Her smile turned dangerous. “Good. You are ready too.”
“Tiamat—”
She rolled her hips.
I groaned.
“Yes,” she purred. “Like that!”
She started again.
Slower this time, but not gentler. Tiamat rode me with possessive confidence, but now every movement had a new intimacy to it. Her body knew mine. My hands knew where she liked pressure, where her breath caught, how she shuddered when I dragged my nails lightly down her back or squeezed her ass as she ground down.
Her lips found my neck and she bit me.
I hissed.
She froze instantly. “Too much?” The question came out rough.
I threaded a hand into her hair and pulled her mouth back to my throat. “No.”
Tiamat made a sound that was almost like relief. Then she bit down again. This time her teeth broke my skin.
Pain flashed for a moment, but then pleasure followed so hard I bucked up into her.
Tiamat moaned against my neck, her tongue soothing over the mark as she rode me faster. The bite healed almost immediately under Twilight Healing, but not before her scent and saliva burned hot against my skin. “Mine,” she whispered into the mark.
I grabbed her hips and flipped us.
Tiamat’s eyes widened as her back hit the bed. For one glorious second, the ancient dragon queen looked genuinely surprised.
Then I drove into her.
Her surprise became a cry.
I pinned her beneath me, one hand braced beside her head, the other gripping her thigh and pushing it higher around my waist. Her pussy was soaked, hot, and clenching around me with every thrust. She stared up at me, hair spread across the pillows, breasts bouncing under me, lips parted in shock and hunger.
“Mine too,” I said.
Tiamat stared. Then her expression shattered into something wild and joyful. “Yes,” she hissed. “Yes. Claim me back.”
So I did.
I fucked her harder, driving into her with enough force that the cracked bedframe finally gave up and split beneath us with a loud wooden snap. The mattress lurched. Neither of us stopped.
Tiamat laughed, then moaned, then wrapped both legs around my waist and dragged me deeper.
Her claws scored my back. Her tail coiled around my thigh. Her breasts pressed against my chest every time I drove down into her. Her hips lifted to meet me, greedily taking every thrust, her body demanding more with each clench and roll.
The room smelled like sweat, sex, and magic.
It smelled like her.
It smelled like us.
My control started fraying.
Tiamat felt it. Her eyes narrowed with satisfaction. “Yes,” she whispered. “Give it to me!” She tightened her legs around me and growled into my mouth.
I was able to hold back with Sophia, but I doubted I could do the same with Tiamat. I drove into her again and she cried out, her back arching beneath me. The rhythm turned rough and frantic, both of us chasing the edge now. Her pussy clenched around me like she was trying to drag the orgasm out of my body by force. Her nails raked my shoulders. My hands gripped her hips hard enough to grind her into every thrust.
“Tiamat,” I gasped.
“Yes,” she panted. “Inside me. I want to feel you. I want all of it!”
Her words broke the last of my control.
I buried myself as deep as I could and came.
The orgasm hit like lightning down my spine. I groaned her name against her mouth as I spilled hot cum inside her, my hips jerking with each pulse. Tiamat locked around me, her body shuddering, her pussy clamping down as another orgasm ripped through her.
Her cry shook the room.
For several long seconds, there was nothing but pure pleasure as I continued to pump her full of my cum.
Then I collapsed onto her.
Tiamat wrapped herself around me immediately. Arms. Legs. Tail. Every part of her seemed determined to make sure I could not vanish again.
I did not try. My face pressed into the curve between her neck and shoulder. Her skin was hot beneath my lips. Her heart hammered against mine, powerful and fast.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The broken bed creaked beneath us. The ocean crashed outside.
Tiamat’s claws traced lazy patterns down my back, gentler now. Possessive still, but no longer desperate.
I kissed her shoulder.
She shivered. “That,” she murmured, voice rough and pleased, “was acceptable.”
I laughed into her skin.
It came out breathless. “Acceptable?”
“Barely.”
“The bed broke.”
“I expected worse.”
“I’m sorry I disappointed you.”
Her tail tightened around my ankle. “You did not disappoint me.”
I lifted my head.
Tiamat looked back at me with eyes no longer blazing, just softly luminous in the firelight. Her hair was a mess. Her lips were swollen. There were scratch marks on my back and bite marks already fading from my neck. She looked satisfied, possessive, and vulnerable in a way that made my chest hurt.
Her fingers brushed through my hair.
“I dreamed of this,” she whispered. “For centuries. I hated that. Dragons do not pine. We claim. We conquer. We take what is ours and dare the world to object.”
I kissed her. Softly this time. She accepted it like something precious. When I pulled back, she followed for half an inch before stopping herself. That tiny movement nearly killed me. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “No.”
“Tiamat—”
“No apologies tonight.” Her hand settled over my mouth. Her smile returned. I felt her hips shift beneath mine.
My body, traitorous dragon-enhanced thing that it was, responded immediately.
She rolled us again, pinning me beneath her on the broken bed with terrifying ease. Her breasts pressed against my chest. Her pussy clenched around me, still full, still hot, still very much interested in ruining my ability to walk.
She leaned down until her lips brushed mine. “I waited nine hundred years,” she whispered.
I swallowed.
She smiled against my mouth. “We have a lot of missed time to make up for...”
XXX