Chapter 17
AURA
My body is stretched and sore, flushed and swollen, but thrumming with wild, inexhaustible energy.
Pleasure lingers like heat in my bones, and yet it doesn’t ebb.
It builds, coiling deeper inside me, beneath skin etched in silver and gold, where runes still glow like starlight painted across my flesh.
Darial and Ronyn are still locked inside me, each one gripped so deep I can barely breathe without feeling the twin pulses of their cocks, thick and ridged and buried past the point of reason.
Their bodies bracket mine, one golden heat and playful devotion, the other searing strength and primal possession.
I can feel them everywhere: in my womb, in my spine, in the dizzy flutter of my heart as my body tries and fails to settle into rest.
Kelan’s release still slicks my skin in molten trails, and every place it touches tingles with a low, magical hum that keeps me straining for more even though I’ve been wrung out over and over again.
My clit aches, swollen and flushed, exposed between my folds like a wound that won’t close…
but it isn’t pain that makes me whimper. It’s want.
When I roll my hips, barely the smallest movement between Darial and Ronyn, it sends shockwaves through me. I clench helplessly and instinctively, and the reaction is immediate.
Darial groans low in my ear, his breath hitching as his knot swells tighter.
“Careful, mate,” he murmurs, voice ragged but full of wonder. “You keep doing that, and I’ll fill you so deep you’ll taste it.”
Ronyn snarls against my neck, his fangs brushing my skin. “She’s doing it on purpose,” he growls. “Greedy little flame.”
I moan softly, relishing their soft words that tease, but I am unable to stop myself.
I tighten again, and both of them twitch deep inside me. Heat flares along my abdomen as another pulse of seed spills into me, thick and scalding. I gasp, staring down at my body in disbelief.
My belly is round. It’s so full and heavy with everything they’ve given me, and still my body begs for more.
I’m drunk on them. High on some dragon magic I don’t fully understand; a heady intoxication that makes my skin shimmer and my muscles clench in time with every beat of their hearts.
I’m more alive than I’ve ever been. My body hums with warmth and wonder, with the echo of their touch and the quiet certainty of what we’ve become together.
For so long, I existed in fragments, hunted and hardened by survival.
Now I’m gathered back into myself. Beautiful and owned and yet free.
The paradox should frighten me. I’ve spent my life fighting against cages, but this isn't a cage. It is a circle drawn in fire and devotion, and I stand at its center not as a possession, but as the core of their existence.
And I’ve chosen them for so much more than the beauty and power they exude on the outside.
I know them in a way that’s so much deeper than should be possible.
Kelan with his iron control and molten eyes, Ronyn with his restless heat and barely leashed hunger, and Darial with his steady warmth and gentle humor.
Their magic threads through me now, and we are tangled together, breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat. Their echo is in my skin and my blood, and it’s terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
I’ve never been held like this and certainly never been wanted without condition.
I draw in a slow breath and let it out, aware of the way they watch me with longing and gratitude.
And I'm not alone.
Kelan crouches before me, his molten steel eyes focused between my thighs like it’s a treasure kept from him for too long. His tongue flicks out, forked and inhuman, and he licks a lazy line from my nipples to the top of my slit, where my pulsing clit still aches for contact.
The instant he touches me, I cry out, a sound torn from the root of my soul. His tongue moves slowly, the split tips dragging along either side of my clit with maddening precision, holding me hovering on the edge.
“You’re still hungry,” he murmurs, his voice a dark purr against my soaked flesh. “Even after all of us, you still want more.”
I don’t answer with words. I can’t. I tilt my hips instead, a wordless plea for the more he’s talking about, and he gives it.
Ronyn growls, seizing my jaw so he can kiss me in a way that leaves marks deep in my soul. “You love this, don’t you?” he breathes against my mouth. “Being filled. Being owned. Being ours.”
I sob into him as another orgasm hits, too bright and too sharp, and both of the dragon men inside me moan as I clench again, squeezing their cocks with rhythmic pulses that make their breath catch and their bodies buck.
I don’t know who comes first this time. It doesn’t matter.
They both shudder, and their cocks jerk inside me. Another thick wave of heat floods me, making the fullness in my belly swell impossibly larger.
I blink dazedly, and the runes across my skin pulse brighter, radiating with magic. My fingers shake as I brush my own belly, awed at the bloat of seed that makes my core throb with overstimulated bliss.
My hair slides over my shoulder, and I touch it, confused by the color. It’s now a rich brown with auburn and gold undertones. Transformed from the red I'm used to.
Darial brushes it back from my face. “You carry our essence now, Aura. The marks on your body… and this.” He caresses my hair gently. “So beautiful”
Kelan straightens slowly, his hands stroking my thighs, his expression dangerous and devoted.
“I’m full,” I say. “There are two of you now. How—how are you going to…?”
Rather than answering, they move. Somehow, impossibly, they rise to their feet with me still impaled between them, and my breath catches at the new angle, the deeper stretch, the overwhelming pressure of being carried this way.
My legs dangle, and I clutch at Ronyn’s arms as Darial steadies me from behind.
The cave spins.
Magic crackles.
We move toward the rock fissure at the far side of the cave, and I know what’s coming.
Still joined, but no longer knotted, they withdraw together, and I cry out at the sudden emptiness and the shock of air against wet, stretched heat.
And then—
It pours from me.
Their combined release drips in thick, molten streams, sliding over my thighs, down my legs, steaming where it hits stone.
I groan, unable to stop the sound. My body’s raw and open, barely my own anymore, and it’s the most beautiful thing because it means I belong to them.
To Kelan, whose command anchors me. To Ronyn, whose hunger strips me bare. To Darial, whose sweetness fills hollow places.
I never imagined how perfect belonging could be.
As I rise on shaky legs, I look between the dragon men who have inexplicably become my world and ask, “What happens now?”
“Now?” Kelan smiles wolfishly. “Now you've been claimed, we take you home.”
“Home?” I ask.
“Yes. To the city,” Darial says. “Far away from rogue bears and feral wolves and dragons whose intentions are unknown.”
“We’ll take you home,” Ronyn growls. “Where no one else can touch you.”
Darial smooths my hair from my cheek. “This cave isn’t secure. You understand?”
I nod. Outside this cave, there’s nothing but danger for me. The forest has been my home, but it hasn’t been kind. I owe it no allegiance or loyalty.
While they wait, I pull on my discarded clothes. When I’m dressed, I glance around. “What about all this stuff?”
Ronyn shrugs. “We won’t need it where we’re going.”
“But we can’t waste it,” I say. “The furs. The food.”
They share a glance, then begin to gather some of the items.
“The food is spoiled,” Darial says.
I think about the food I ate when I was alone in the forest, and how desperately hungry I was. It’ll take a long time for me to forget that feeling.
“We’ll take your nest,” Ronyn adds gently.
“Our nest,” I say with a tender smile, earning a groan of appreciation from them all.
Outside, the sky yawns wide and open, and the forest spreads below like a carpet of moss.
“How do you fly without anyone seeing you?” I ask.
“We are cloaked in our dragon form. You will be too.”
“So, they won’t see me leave?”
I imagine Bruno’s and Anatol’s necks tipped to the sky, watching me fly past. What would they do if they knew all that had happened to me since they chased me to the verge of death and caught me in their clutches?
If anything, I’d relish them trying to come for me, only to be incinerated by my dragon mates.
Darial drapes a large fur around my shoulders and binds it at my waist with the cloth from around his hips. Kelan shifts first, his form erupting into a behemoth of black and silver obsidian, wings extending wide enough to blot out the sun.
Then Darial shifts into a blazing flare of gold beside him.
Ronyn grips me around the waist as he shifts, lifting me against his body. His talons curve carefully around my body, and the vibration of his power makes me shudder.
We swoop in a roar of wind and magic, cutting through clouds, soaring above distant city lights, the wind wailing past us. Ronyn’s wings beat in a slow rhythm, casting no shadow on the earth below.
This time, I'm relaxed, but the experience of flying is still unreal. By the time we land on the rooftop of a tower so tall, it seems to slice through the sky, I’m breathless with awe.
The building gleams with mirrored glass and steel, crowned with a glowing spire. The rooftop itself is wide and flat, perfect for dragon landings, and their claws scrape softly over the stone as they descend.
They shift before my eyes. One by one, dragon becomes man again.
Kelan first, tall, commanding, every inch the onyx alpha, his silver eyes molten with hunger and protection as they scan for my safety, his muscular form naked and spectacular.
Ronyn next is scarlet heat and muscle, his body still coursing with restrained energy, clasping me to him as we drop to the roof.
Darial is last, a gleaming god in gold, tousled hair catching the wind.
Ronyn carries me down the rooftop stairwell, each step reverberating, until we reach a wide, glass-paneled door. Kelan uses his thumbprint to enter, and inside… is another world.
The penthouse is impossibly huge, styled with marble floors and velvet drapes. Walls of glass overlook the expansive city beneath. Furniture that appears hand-carved and ancient is contrasted by modern, sleek pieces. The fragrance of polished leather and citrus drifts in the air.
“This is… yours?” I whisper.
“Yes,” Darial says softly. “And that means it’s yours.”
I gulp, pressing my hand to my mouth, stunned at the kind of luxury I have never seen in person.
They show me everything: A state-of-the-art kitchen and open-plan living and dining area so spacious I could get lost, a bedroom so large it defies reason, the bed bigger than anything I’ve ever seen, a walk-in closet, a bathroom with a sunken tub carved from black stone that’s deep enough to swim in.
Darial and Kelan drop the furs onto the bed, spreading them out into a formation like the nest in the cave. Ronyn says, “You’ll sleep here, where it’s safe. This is your den now.”
Kelan disappears while I stare out the window.
I’ve never been to a city this large, and it’s as scary as it is freeing to understand how much bigger the world is than the small place I grew up in.
Kelan returns carrying a velvet box. When he flips it open, I gasp.
Inside are chains of gold, a collar of delicate rubies, rings and gems the size of swollen raindrops, the color of blood.
“Every queen needs treasure,” he says with a crooked smile. “Let us spoil you.”
“I don’t… I’ve never…” I trail off, overwhelmed.
Ronyn steps behind me, nuzzling my neck. “There are a lot of things that will be new. You must understand that you deserve everything that we will give you.”
Overwhelmed, I finger the jewels, admiring the coolness of the metal and the warmth of the stones. “It’s too much,” I say.
“It isn’t enough,” Kelan replies.
He lifts a chain from the box, but I shake my head. “I’m filthy.”
“You smell like us,” Ronyn smiles.
“I smell like sweat.”
He licks my throat, as if to say, I don’t care, but Darial laughs.
“It’s okay, Aura. We’ll prepare a bath. Our assistant will return with clothes to fill your closet, until you can go out to choose for yourself.”
Assistant? Clothes? It finally registers that these dragon men are wealthy in a way that’s unreal.
I’ve spent so long surviving on scraps and second-hand everything that the idea of a closet waiting to be filled for me alone seems impossible.
A strange, almost guilty warmth spreads through my chest. I don’t know what to do with it yet.
I don’t know how to be a woman who relishes being spoiled.
But for the first time in a long time, the future isn’t something I have to outrun.
The next thing I know is that I’m stepping into the sunken tub, hot water enveloping my sore limbs, steam drifting into the air. Kelan slips in behind me, cradling my back against his broad chest. Ronyn slides in next, soap in hand. Darial dips a golden cup and carefully pours water over my hair.
They wash me like I’m both helpless and sacred, shampooing my hair and sponging my shoulders and the soft inside of my thighs. I tilt my head back, eyes shutting, and let myself drift into their tender touch.
This is my life now.
This is my life now.
Can I let myself believe that all the hurt and pain in my life is now relegated to my past?