CHAPTER 5
THE DRAGON
I leave her sleeping in our bed, the silk sheets tangled around her perfect body. My wings fold carefully against my back as I move through the castle corridors, my tail dragging behind me on the stone floor. The sound echoes in the emptiness. Just me and her, the way it should be.
My study is in the eastern tower, three floors up. I haven't been here in months. Maybe longer. There's been no need. Adelaide is everything I need, everything I want. But now...
Now I need answers.
The door creaks open, and dust motes dance in the morning light streaming through the narrow windows. Books line every wall from floor to ceiling. Grimoires, spell books, ancient tomes I've collected over centuries. Some are older than this castle. Older than most kingdoms.
Somewhere in here is the answer to waking her.
I start with the obvious ones. The leather-bound volume on curses and their breaking. The tome of sleeping spells. My claws turn the pages carefully, precisely, even though my hands want to tear through them in frustration.
Nothing.
Hours pass. The light shifts across the floor. I barely notice.
I return to check on her once, unable to stay away. She's exactly as I left her, beautiful and still. I press my nose to her throat, breathing in her scent, feeling her pulse flutter against my scales.
"I'll find it," I promise her. "I'll find a way to keep you safe."
My wings rustle as I straighten, and I force myself to leave her again. Back to the study. Back to the books.
By the fifth day, I've gone through half the library.
My eyes burn. My wings ache from being folded so long in the cramped space between the shelves.
I haven't eaten. Haven't slept. Can't think about anything except finding the answer to why I'm feeling so.
.. off. Constantly agitated and on edge.
Why our sex has turned ravenous and never enough.
There has to be a way. There has to be.
I find references to sleeping curses, dozens of them. But none that match what I did to Adelaide. None that were cast with a dragon's magic, with a dragon's blood, with a dragon's obsessive need to keep and protect and possess.
On the seventh day, I start on the older texts. The ones written in languages that haven't been spoken in a thousand years. My tail lashes in frustration as I translate line by line, word by word, searching for anything that might help.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
I return to her that evening, climbing into bed beside her even though I should be searching. I need to feel her. Need to touch her. My clawed hand traces the curve of her hip, and I press my face against her hair.
"I'm trying," I whisper. "I'm trying so hard, my love."
But she doesn't respond. She never does. Just lies there, perfect and still and mine.
I fuck her five times before I can make myself leave again.
Rough and desperate, my wings spreading wide for balance as I pound into her, chasing the connection I can only find when I'm buried inside her body, biting her every time I come. That’s been happening more often now as well.
My body feels compelled to taste her. All of her. It worries me.
When I'm done, when I've finally had my fill, I carry her to the bath, wash her carefully, dress her in fresh silk. Lay her gently back in her bed, kiss her head softly, tenderly, and whisper in her ear that I love her. That I will return to her as soon as I can.
Then back to the study.
Two weeks. It's been two full weeks of searching, and I'm starting to lose hope. Starting to think that maybe there is something wrong, and I'll never be able to correct it.
The thought makes my chest ache. Makes my wings droop.
I'm reaching for another book, one I've already looked through twice, when I see it. A slim volume tucked behind the others, so old that the leather is cracking. I don't remember acquiring it. Don't remember ever seeing it before.
My claws are gentle as I pull it free. The pages are brittle, yellowed with age. The language is ancient, but I can read it. Barely.
And there, halfway through, I find it.
The book resists me.
That, more than the words, is what unsettles me first.
The cover is scaled hide. Old, older than the castle, older than the thorns choking the courtyard.
The candlelight flickers. Shadows crawl across the stone walls.
I tell myself this is a precaution. Due diligence.
The curse has always required maintenance.
The escalation merely means the magic is… aging.
But the lie tastes thin.
I flip past the familiar incantations. The sleeping lattice, the preservation sigils, the blood-bound safeguards. All spells I know by heart. All spells that should still be working.
They are not.
My claw pauses at a page I have never needed before.
Not a spell.
A commentary.
Written in a different hand. Thicker strokes. Dragged ink, as if the quill hesitated. As if the writer feared the words even as they set them down.
“This binding presumes the absence of fate.”
My breath stills.
I read it again.
Presumes the absence of fate.
My tail tightens unconsciously around the leg of the table as my wings unfurl slightly in agitation.
The text continues, indifferent to my unease.
“The sleeping curse remains stable only when no true mate-claim has occurred.”
True mate-claim.
The candle flares as I read the words aloud. I lean closer, scales creaking as my weight shifts.
“No,” I murmur. The word leaves me without command. “I never—”
I stop abruptly.
My mind betrays me with memory.
Protection. Vigilance. Blood spilled in her name. The words spoken in the dark. Not as spell, not as oath, but as truth.
I love you.
I will keep you safe.
Nothing will touch you while I live.
My claws curl into the page.
The book does not stop.
“Dragon magic rewrites itself upon recognition. Recognition does not require consent. Only devotion to their one true mate.”
The room feels suddenly too small.
I flip the page, faster now. Pages rasp beneath my claws, the sound loud in the silence.
There… another marginal note, cramped, urgent.
“Attempts to maintain sleep after claiming will result in decay.”
Decay.
The word lodges in my chest.
Below it, a diagram. Two interlocking circles. One marked Dragon. One marked Mate. Between them, a line of blood.
A note beside it, almost apologetic in its precision:
“Blood anchoring following intimacy does not reinforce the curse when a true mate-claim is present.”
My breath comes shallow now.
“No,” I whisper again, but the word has no meaning left.
The candle trembles as if in answer.
“It acts as a reinforcement of the bond.”
The page swims.
My mind reaches backward. Counting, recalculating. Seventy-three years. The bite, every time after. Multiple times a day. The burning, comforting relief afterwards. The temporary stillness. The way the magic settled. Not outward, but inward into my very soul. Not into the spell, but into us.
I had thought I was correcting imbalance. I should have been correcting an imbalance.
The book is merciless.
“When the true mate remains unconscious, asymmetry occurs.”
I carefully flip to the next page. “Asymmetry breeds hunger. Hunger demands proximity.”
My claws pierce the parchment. My head swims with disbelief.
Another line, underlined so deeply, the page is scarred:
“Increased frequency is not indulgence. It is starvation due to asymmetry.”
I close my eyes. The castle groans around me. Old stone, old magic, shifting under a truth it can no longer contain.
Slowly, I turn the page again, even though all I want to do is burn the damn thing. This one is written in blood. Dried dark. Dragon blood.
“No sleep may outlast fate.”
I swallow.
“At fifty years, erosion of the magic begins. At one hundred, total collapse of the mate is inevitable.”
My vision narrows. I do the math without meaning to. Fifty. Seventy-three. One hundred… only 27 more years until…
Time I do not have. I begin to breathe faster.
A final passage, quieter than the rest. Almost kind.
“What appears as preservation may in truth be consumption. To keep a fated mate asleep is to kill them slowly.”
The book slips from my claws and strikes the stone floor with a sound like a verdict.
Final.
I stare at the empty space where it was.
I have a fated mate. After over 1,000 years, I have found my one true mate.
And all this time. The bite was never keeping her asleep.
It was keeping us bound. Feeding a bond I was unaware of.
Keeping me sane. Keeping the magic from tearing itself apart while it waited for what it was always meant to have.
Mutual presence.
Mutual awareness.
Choice.
The candles go out completely.
In the sudden dark, the truth settles. Not as panic, but as certainty.
The curse is not failing.
It is fighting me. It has been fighting me.
Adelaide and I have been bound by fate, and if I keep her asleep, it will kill us both.
Slowly.
Hungrily.
As fate always does.