CHAPTER 7
THE PRINCESS
He's inside me before I can even process what's happening.
A few brutal thrusts and all of him is buried deep, stretching me impossibly wide, those ridges dragging against every nerve ending. The sensation is overwhelming. Pain and pleasure blur together until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
And God help me, I love it. I love it when he takes me like this. Rough. Demanding. No pretense of gentleness or romance. Just raw need and possession.
"That's right. Fight me. Clench around my cock like you're trying to push me out."
Yes. Yes, talk to me like that. Call me names. Degrade me. Make me feel something other than the endless nothing.
Hunger. I'm hungry for him in a way that terrifies me. Hungry for his touch, his voice, his massive cock splitting me open. Hungry for these moments when I feel real, when I exist as more than just a consciousness floating in darkness.
His words send heat flooding through me even as shame burns in my chest. What's wrong with me? Why do I crave this? Why does my trapped body respond so eagerly to his degradation, to being called his slut, his whore, his desperate little fucktoy?
I love him. God help me, I love him more than I've ever loved anything. More than I loved my family, my freedom, my own life. The thought should horrify me. It does horrify me. But it's also the truest thing I know.
My walls clench around him involuntarily, on purpose, answering for me.
Yes. Yes, I'll take it. I'll take everything you give me because it's all I have.
All I want. Because you're everything to me and I hate that you're everything to me, but I can't stop it, can't change it, can't make myself want anything else.
And here, in the darkness, in this prison of flesh and silence, I don't have to question it. I don't have to examine it or justify it or understand it. I can just feel.
"Such a good little slut for me. You'll take every inch I give you. Won't you?"
The stretch is intense. It always is. His thick cock forces my body to accommodate something it was never designed for. But my body knows him now. Seventy-three years of this, and my body has learned to soften and yield and accept every impossible inch.
More than accept. Crave.
I'm climbing toward orgasm already, my body responding with practiced ease to his brutal rhythm. The pleasure builds with each thrust, each drag of those ridges, each degrading word that falls from his lips.
"Such a desperate little whore. Your cunt clenches every time I call you that."
Three times. Four. Five. He takes me over and over, and each time I come silently, trapped in my body, the pleasure crashes through me with nowhere to go. Each time I think maybe this will be enough, maybe now he'll stop.
When he finally collapses beside me, pulling me against his scaled chest, his wings draping over us both, I feel the familiar comfort of his presence. The weight of him. The warmth. The rumble of his deep voice as it reverberates through me.
Then he speaks, and everything changes.
"Adelaide. I need to tell you something. Something I learned. About us."
His voice is shaking. I've never heard him sound like this before. Uncertain, almost afraid.
"Things have felt off for a while now. Maybe they’ve felt that way for you also? I’ve been more… aggressive… Anyway… I went looking for answers in my library. In my spell books. There isn't an easy way to say this. But… from what I can tell… you're... you're my mate.”
My mind is spiraling. What is he talking about? There are too many questions in my mind to narrow them down.
“I know it sounds unbelievable but... we're fated mates.
It's the only thing that makes sense. I didn't know—I swear I didn't know.
But somewhere along the way, my magic recognized you.
Claimed you. And the curse…" He’s breathing heavy.
"The curse can't coexist with a mate bond. It's failing. We're both failing."
No. No, that's not possible. That can't be possible.
I'm human. He's a dragon. A monster. How can fate be that cruel? How can the universe look at a girl who was tricked and poisoned and imprisoned and decide that her captor is her destined mate?
“You're... you're my mate.” That’s the part that echoes in my mind. How?
Except... except it makes a horrible, perfect sense, doesn't it? Of course fate would do this to me. Of course the universe would look at my suffering and decide it wasn't enough. Of course my soulmate would be a dragon who stole my life.
A dragon.
My mate is a dragon.
The absurdity of it crashes over me. I should be mated to a human.
A prince, maybe, like the ones who keep trying to rescue me.
Someone kind and gentle who would have courted me properly, who would have asked my father for my hand, who would have given me a normal life with normal children and a normal death at a normal age.
Instead, I'm bound to a creature of scales and wings and ancient magic. A creature who will live for thousands of years. A creature who has already lived for a thousand years.
And I'm... what? Human. Mortal. Temporary.
Or am I?
The thought sends ice through my veins. What does a mate bond mean for a human bonded to an immortal? Do I become immortal too? Is that even possible? Or will I age and wither while he stays young and strong, forced to watch me decay until death finally claims me?
"The curse can't coexist with a mate bond. It's failing. We're both failing." My mind reels, trying to process his words through the fog of disbelief.
"If I keep you asleep, we'll both die. The magic is eating itself, eating us, trying to force what it needs. Mutual awareness. Choice."
Die? We're dying? It's insane. It's impossible. It's a lie.
"I have to wake you. Maybe soon. Before it's too late."
No. No, don't wake me. Don't make me face this. Don't make me choose.
But what if it's not a lie? What if this is what a mate bond feels like? What if this consuming, desperate need is exactly what it's supposed to be?
"If I keep you asleep, we'll both die. The magic is eating itself, eating us, trying to force what it needs. Mutual awareness. Choice. Choice from both of us. Things I can't give you while you're trapped like this."
"I have to wake you. Maybe soon. Before it's too late. But Adelaide, treasure, I'm so fucking scared. Scared you'll hate me. Scared you'll try to leave."
His voice breaks, and something in my chest breaks with it.
The bond just made it official.
"I didn't know. I thought I was protecting you. Keeping you safe. But I was killing you instead. Killing us both."
I could never leave you. Don't you understand? I'm yours. Completely, irrevocably yours. The bond didn't do that, you did. You made me love you, made me need you, made me into this broken, desperate thing that can't exist without you.
The words wash over me, and I want to reject them. Want to call him a liar. Want to believe this is just another manipulation, another way to justify what he's done to me. He talks about hoping I hate him. Hoping I kill him while wanting me to choose him.
I know when he's asleep. When he's awake. When he's agitated or calm or consumed with need.
I thought I was going insane. Thought maybe it was part of the curse, some side effect of being trapped in my own body for so long. My mind creating phantom sensations to fill the void.
The awareness. I can sense him now, even when he's not in the room. I know when he's in his study, when he's in the courtyard dealing with another prince, when he's pacing the halls. I can feel his presence like a constant hum beneath my skin. The farther he goes from me, the more panicked I feel.
But it wasn't madness. It was the bond. Connecting us in ways I didn't understand.
And the hunger. God, the hunger. That desperate, clawing need that's been building for years.
I thought it was trauma bonding, thought it was my mind breaking under the weight of captivity.
But it was the bond all along. The bond recognizing him as mine, demanding that I claim him as thoroughly as he's claimed me.
Except I can't claim him. I can't move, can't speak, can't do anything but lie here and feel and want and need.
The bond must be going insane. Trying to force something that the curse won't allow. Trying to create mutuality, reciprocity, choice, all the things a mate bond requires, while I'm trapped in this prison of flesh and silence.
No wonder we're dying. The magic is tearing itself apart trying to reconcile two incompatible forces.
And it's his fault. All of it. The curse, the bond, the slow death we're both facing. He did this. He poisoned me, trapped me, and then somehow, through proximity or magic or sheer possessive obsession, he bonded us together.
I should hate him for it. Should rage against the injustice of being bound forever to my captor.
But I don't. God help me, I don't.
I love him. I've loved him for years, maybe decades. The bond just gave that love a name. A purpose. A permanence that terrifies me.
Forever. That's what a mate bond means, doesn't it? Forever. Not just until death, but beyond it. Souls intertwined for eternity.
I'm stuck with him forever. The thought should fill me with horror. With despair. With the desperate need to escape.
Instead, it fills me with a dark, twisted relief.
I don't have to choose. I don't have to decide if what I feel is real or trauma or madness. Fate chose for me. The universe looked at both of us and said, "These two belong together."
Even if one of us is a monster. Even if one of us is a prisoner. Even if everything about this is wrong and twisted and broken.
But what does that mean for me? For my humanity? For my mortality?
The thought is horrifying. An eternity of this darkness, this silence, this prison. An eternity of wanting him and needing him and hating myself for both.
But at least he'd be there. At least I wouldn't be alone.
He pulls away, and I feel the loss immediately. The absence of his warmth, his weight, his wings. He's leaving now. So I can have space he says.
No. No, don't go. Don't leave me. I need you. I need you so much it's killing me. The bond is killing me. We're dying because I can't reach for you, can't claim you, can't complete what the magic is demanding.
Part of me is relieved. I need space. Need time to think, even though thinking is all I ever do in this darkness.
Maybe I was always insane, and the bond just gave me an excuse.
The bond writhes inside me, angry and frustrated and demanding. It wants him back. Wants him inside me, around me, covering me. Wants his bite, his claim, his possession.
His bite.
Oh God. His bite.
That's when it happened, isn't it? That's when the bond formed. All those times he's bitten me during sex, his fangs sinking into my shoulder, my neck, my breast. I thought it was just part of his possessiveness, his need to mark me as his.
His footsteps fade but I sense him moving in the castle. Just like I have been except now I know I’m not imagining it. Down the corridor. Down the stairs. Down and down until I can barely sense him anymore, just a faint presence at the very edge of my awareness.
I wish his mouth was on my throat, pumping more of that claiming magic into my veins, strengthening the bond that's already strangling us both.
I wish I could drift off into actual sleep, real sleep, wrapped in his embrace, knowing that I'm his and he's mine and nothing will ever change that.
All I know right now, all I can focus on, is that I wish he were still inside me. I wish his cock was still stretching me full, those ridges dragging against my walls, his body covering mine. I wish his wings were draped over us both, cocooning us in warmth and darkness and the illusion of safety.
I want him inside me, claiming me, biting me, binding us together even more tightly.
Soon I'll have to wake up.
I want to be his forever, bound by magic and fate and this terrible, consuming need.
Soon I'll have to choose. Except I've already chosen. The bond chose for me. Fate chose for me.
I'm his. Forever. For eternity. Until the end of time itself. And that thought, that terrible, inescapable truth, fills me with a dread so profound I can barely breathe.
Soon I'll have to choose.
And I have no idea what that choice will be.