14. Flavia
Flavia
S leep never found me. I listened to the steady sound of Ysu’s breathing, as night crept towards day, but my mind never stilled. I kept hearing the whispers of the forest in every fluttering leaf, in every drop of morning dew.
Come to me. Come to me and devour them all.
Ysu had wrapped me in his silk, but he had been right before. I broke out of the restraints easily, my body now far stronger than any human’s. I moved across his web like it was my own domain, not causing a single vibration. Perhaps he had taught me too well.
I dropped to the forest floor without a sound, and I looked up to see him still curled up, sleeping soundly.
I would return, there was never any doubt of that in my mind. Ysu was mine, as much as I was his. But I needed to see what I could be on my own.
I wandered deeper into the wildwoods, not following any path or game trail, but purely my instincts. The wind pulled me forward, and I swore I could feel the forest’s delight with each step I took closer to its heart.
The trees closed in around me, and I was reminded of the first night I entered this forest. But I was not the small creature I was then. No, I was something that belonged in these ancient woods.
But I was still being hunted. I sensed the movement overhead, attuned to the vibration of the forest. I wondered if he would ever be able to sneak up on me again.
I dashed forward, and heard crashing from overhead as he tried to keep up with me. I was fast now, but he was still faster, as his shadow descended. We tumbled to the ground, his weight pressing me into the soft earth.
“Going somewhere without permission?” His voice carried no sleep, no surprise. He'd been awake. Watching. Waiting.
I twisted in his grip, testing my new strength against his. “The forest calls. I told you?—”
“The forest.” He flipped me onto my back, pinning my wrists above my head with his human hands while his spider appendages caged me against the ground.
“Always the forest. Tell me, does it whisper sweetly to you? Does it promise you power? Freedom?” His face lowered until his breath brushed my cheek.
“Does it make you forget who gave you the revenge you craved so deeply?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
One chitinous finger traced the location on my neck where he had first pumped me full of his venom. “You’ve forgotten that you swore yourself to me, or were those just pretty words to get what you wanted?”
I met his eight eyes steadily. “I need to know what I can do alone.”
“Alone.” The word dripped venom. “There is no alone for you anymore. I am in your blood.” His grip tightened. “Do you think I spent centuries in solitude just to watch you wander off the moment you grow strong enough to break my silk?”
“You can’t keep me trapped forever.”
His mouth stretched into that too-wide smile. “You should have thought of that before I carved our names into the roots of this world. Before I pulled the threads of fate and wove them into a web from which you could never escape.”
That smile broke his face as his dark hair fell across my cheeks.
“But if you want to run, by all means, run. It’s been so long since I’ve had a satisfying hunt. But know, when I catch you, I may not feel as merciful as I do now. I want to see just how far I can push this new, strong body of yours.”
My heart raced with anticipation. I wanted that too.
The prey in the woods, it wasn’t an adversary. It wasn’t a creature of nightmare and shadow, that I could unleash everything writhing inside me on, without fear of permanent harm.
I would wind myself around him, squeeze him until he couldn’t stand it, and have him fill me completely.
I traced my hands up his broad form, across the dark whorling marks that extended over the tight tendons in his neck, until my nails raked over his scalp. I raked them into his flesh until all eight of his eyes rolled back in pleasure.
“Then catch me if you can.”
I tucked my knees to my chest before slamming my feet into his torso. In a testament to my new strength, he flew back, crashing into a tree as I struggled to my feet.
I ran.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, but it was a steady rhythm now, not the frantic hammering of something being hunted.
I felt my eyes shift, and the darkness peeled away like shed skin.
Every root, every stone, every low-hanging branch revealed itself in sharp relief.
My bare feet found purchase on moss-slick stones without thought, my body flowing around obstacles easily.
Behind me, I heard nothing—which meant he was already hunting. The silence of his approach sent thrills down my spine that had nothing to do with fear. Everything to do with anticipation.
His venom and the creature I was becoming sung through my veins with each stride. My muscles lengthened, strengthened, propelled me through the undergrowth faster than any human could move. I tasted the air with a tongue that was now split, tracking his scent.
A branch cracked to my left. Deliberate. He was herding me.
I veered right, laughing as I leaped over a fallen log that would have tripped me days ago.
The forest blurred past, but my enhanced vision tracked every detail.
The spider webs that trembled at my passing.
The small creatures that fled our passage.
The way moonlight reached for us between branches.
Then—impact.
He struck from above, his body wrapping around me as we crashed to the forest floor. The landing should have hurt, but my body absorbed it, rolled with it, even as his weight pressed me into the soft earth. He pinned my wrists above my head, and his teeth found the shell of my ear.
“Caught you,” he growled, and I could hear his smile.
His serrated claws traced over my skin, and where once there might have been pain, all I felt was elation.
The last shreds of my clothing were torn away.
I struggled against his hold, but he held fast, his other hand tracing down my spine.
As he passed over each vertebrae, I felt them pop, my whole body trying to grow into something longer.
“My beautiful neidr.”
With one swift motion, he flipped me onto my back, his hands sliding down to spread my legs. I pressed my palms into the forest floor, feeling the earth pulse beneath me. His weight shifted, and I heard the soft clicking of his additional arms adjusting their hold.
He leaned back, releasing his grip. “Time for you to understand the monster you’ve awakened.”
He started to shift, his legs merging into that huge, armored thorax, his chest growing even broader. The thick muscles of his arms twitched as his fingers elongated with sick pops. I watched him transform, and wasn’t surprised to find that his true form only made me want him more.
“Why are you looking at me like you are scared?” His face split apart as his mandibles emerged. “You love me pushing you to your very limits, seeing just how strong you’ve become. Knowing that I could break you, but that you could take so much more.”
He was right. I struck, faster than I could even comprehend.
I was on him, and despite his massive size, I felt my body growing to match.
My fingers screamed in pain as they grew, just like his, into long, knotted digits topped with claws.
But mine weren’t curled like his, but straight and razor sharp, iridescent in the moonlight.
My spine popped as I grew taller, into something far beyond human.
We struggled with force that would have shattered human bones. My claws raked furrows in the earth as I twisted beneath him. His spider legs gouged deep trenches as he fought to pin me, ancient roots snapping like twigs under our combined strength.
A young oak groaned and toppled as I slammed him against it, the trunk splintering from the impact. He retaliated by driving me through a wall of undergrowth, branches exploding around us in a shower of leaves and broken wood. The forest floor churned to mud beneath our thrashing bodies.
We were no longer human and spider, but two forces of nature colliding, and such forces always caused destruction.
I knocked him onto his back, so all his limbs curled up into the air, and he was laughing, that deep, slow laugh.
“Yes that’s it. Show me everything you have become.
” My pale skin was changing, my scared flesh being replaced by scales the color of moonlight.
My tongue flicked out, and I could taste the air around him.
His excitement, his hunger, and a deep pride—they all merged together as I wrapped my much larger hands around his throat.
“Do you wish to consume me?” His grin was wide. I could smell his arousal deepening, but there was no fear. I locked my legs around his waist, muscles bunching.
Yes, I wanted to crush him.
Yes, I wanted to consume him.
He was mine. My guardian, my creator, and my monster. But now I was one too, and I didn’t want to fear that part of myself.
I slammed my mouth to his, and rolled my core against the ribbed surface of his thorax where it merged with his more human body. Sparks of pleasure lit through me as each ridge caught on my already throbbing clit.
But then, the armor beneath me split, and the two heads of his fully-monstrous cocks started to emerge. Before, they had been mostly human. Large, but not so different other than their quantity. This was not that.
My mouth watered as they emerged, a dark pink that bordered on purple, the heads sharp and curved at the end like his claws. The shafts twisted like the growing vines of the forest, and every inch was covered in tiny, spine-like protrusions.
He grabbed them in his large hand, spreading them with a finger in between. They were already slick with whatever fluid had kept them safe inside his body.
“I told you, you can’t run from me now.” He dragged a hand down one long shaft and the base throbbed, swelling slightly. “I’ll knot inside you, and we’ll be connected in a way most would not survive. Are you ready?”
I didn’t hesitate. Every part of me craved him, wanted to see just what he would feel like. Preparation was not something this new body needed. In fact, I clenched at the thought of the pain that might accompany the pleasure.
I ran my cunt over him, feeling all those small spikes catching, a sting that stimulated, but was not strong enough to cause me to pull away.
“Ysu…” The next words died in my mouth. I couldn’t say them, but I could show him, claim him with my body even if my words failed me.
At the sound of his name, the hunger in his eyes softened, and he leaned forward, wrapping multiple arms around me.
His lips found mine, gentler this time, and tongue swiped over my lips, asking that final permission. I opened for him, opened what I could of myself. The curved point of each of his cocks pressed just the smallest amount against both of my entrances, the larger testing the tightness of my ass.
But I wasn’t afraid.
I wanted it all.
I sank down, the lubrication of his precum and fluids easing him into me. There was a deep burning as I spread for him, but just as my spine and legs had grown to make me a match for his strength, the deepest part of me changed to fit him, to match him.
The hunger in me had grown to match the hunger in him, and we had finally found a way to satiate it.
“My neidr.” His eyes rolled back with a deep groan as I took every inch of his length into my ass and cunt. His body heated like it had after his massacre, and his heart beat erratically in his chest. “Mine. Only mine.”
I rose up and slammed back down onto him, filled so perfectly. Each stroke dragging those spines against my inner walls until I buzzed, the twist of his shafts adding a delicious inconsistency.
Then we were both lost to the hunger. More trees fell as he slammed me against them, the wood splintering with every thrust. Teeth and tongues clashed as claws and hands gripped every part of my body.
My fangs traced over the still soft flesh of his neck, my long tongue following the black marks.
The hunger in me transformed into pleasure that threatened to take my mind with it when it finally released.
My back hit the soft earth as he rutted into me, and then the burning returned, as his knots started to swell, stretching beyond what this bond could handle. I sunk my nails into his shoulders, the pain finally overcoming me.
“You were made for this, my neidr. Made for me.” He ran his tongue over my jaw, licking up sweat and tears. “Let me knot your perfect cunt and ass, fill you to bursting, and let the whole world know you are mine and mine alone.”
“Yes! Ysu, please!” I said I wouldn’t beg again, but I needed him now like I had never needed anything before.
I needed his strength, his endurance. I needed to give him everything I had, and for him not to flinch. I needed to know he would never fear the monster that I was, but would revel in it.
“Come with me, my neidr.”
I cried out as he stilled, his knots swelling until I was sure he would rip me open.
I felt him pulse inside me over and over again, as even his knot couldn’t keep the amount of cum he poured into me contained.
The bulge in my stomach grew and every bit of me was overwhelmed as that dark hunger consumed it all.
My vision darkened to nothing but the glow of his eyes as I came, clenching down on him even tighter, holding him close as he had always held me.
Mine. The word ghosted over my lips, a sacred vow. But as the world unraveled around me, unmade by the waves of pleasure still racking through me, I knew I wasn’t that monster yet. I was incomplete, and my human heart was the coldest thing of all.
I slowly came back to reality, and found Ysu watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. His claws traced down my back and pushed my sweat-drenched hair out of my face with exceptional gentleness.
I smiled at him, and my heart broke a bit at the affection that lit his eight eyes.
I placed gentle kisses across his cheeks.
No biting, no claws. A silent plea for forgiveness, that I still wasn’t strong enough for the one thing that he really needed from me.
That he saw every bit of me and accepted it, but that I couldn’t voice the feelings in my heart. Not yet.
We were still knotted together, so he wove me a web to support me gently as he curled around me.
I curled against his chest as my transformation slowly receded, and exhaustion from everything overcame me.
He kissed my forehead with such tenderness, cradled me as he always did, kept me safe.
And I had the horrible realization I might have been more of a monster than he was.