Chapter 30 #2
“Just breathe, breathe with me and open the bond. I can help with the pain and balance your source magic. The less you fight it, the quicker it will roll through you. It’s going to feel strange, heavy, like your bones are trying to escape your skin—it’s all normal.
It’s part of linking you to your dragon. ”
I grit my teeth and press my face into Aeson’s neck as the tingling morphs into an intensely painful pressure.
“Open the bond, Ever, I can help.”
“I can do it,” I grit out against the mounting anguish.
I’ve survived worse, I can do this.
“I know you can, but you don’t have to,” he whispers gently in my ear. “Let me in. Let me help.”
The ache in his voice sinks into my depths and burrows through me. I hold tight to the unspoken vow in his words. It’s so tempting to knot them around my soul, but it can only end in disaster.
“Please, Ever,” he begs, and those two words shatter my resolve.
I rip away the barriers guarding our connection and fling it open. Relief, triumph, and need slam through me.
“That’s it, My Soul, give me everything, I’ve got you.”
Like acid, agony eats through me. Aeson tightens his hold around me and somehow I can feel him tightening his hold inside of me too.
A cool tide of relief fights back the pain, and Aeson whispers assurances in my ear as I surface through the hurt and pull in deep gasping breaths before I’m pulled back under.
“It’ll be over soon. You’ll never be at anyone’s mercy again. You can do this, Ever. I know you can.”
With one last desperate breath, I’m pulled back under into a haze of suffering.
All at once, Aeson’s voice cuts out, and the torment slicing through me abruptly fades.
A rush of something tangible yet invisible encases me, and the floating flames surrounding the tub explode into a thousand sparkling specks.
They rise like stars all around me, and I’m swimming through galaxies and worlds as they start to spin and coalesce.
A warmth like I’ve never known settles in my bones, and out of nowhere, a glittering dragon made of endless possibility and ancient magic stares me down.
She’s infinite and yet somehow she fills every part of my existence.
I am her, and she is me, and together we are a reckoning.
With a roar that quakes the very cells I’m made of, the glittering dragon soars into me.
With a gasp that both empties my lungs and fills them, I sit up, and I’m once again in the water with Aeson, shrouded in shadows and surrounded by a thin ring of dancing flames.
“Holy fuck,” I breathe, my lungs inflating and deflating faster than they ever have before, and yet somehow I’m not getting enough air.
“It’s over, My Soul, you did it! You bloody did it!” Aeson shouts, and then he’s cupping my cheek and kissing me.
I barely have time to taste him before he’s pulling back, a beaming smile on his face and his blue eyes glinting with pride and excitement.
“Look,” he encourages, grabbing my hands and holding them up until I can see my arms.
I glance down, unsure of what to expect, and there they are, scales painted the lightest shade of gray, gleaming, and lining the full length of my arm.
I pull my hands from Aeson’s grasp and slam my palms to the hard plates and scales covering my chest and shoulders.
I look down, taking it all in, and then I’m rushing to get out of the tub, splashing water everywhere, as I race for the tall mirror mounted in the corner of the bathroom.
Aeson orders the lights on, and I wince at the flash of blinding brightness. I have to blink spots out of my eyes as I scramble to find my reflection. My vision clears, and suddenly there I am.
My light green eyes are wild. Water drips off my face, and my hair is sopping and plastered against the scale armor covering my back and chest. Brushing the wet strands aside, I take everything in.
Large scales cover my forearms like vambraces.
The pattern gradually gets smaller as it moves up my arm leading to overlapping scales on my upper arms and shoulders.
Small scales cover my chest and protect my neck, leaving only a few inches of my dragon mark still visible at the top of my throat.
Rock-hard armored plates mold to my chest, and V down in segments of corset-like armor that flares at my hips.
The plates give way to smaller scales that line my hips, ass, and outer thighs.
More plates cover my inner thighs, calves, and shins, and my feet are covered in booted armor that resembles new-age sabatons.
I study the light gray color and consider what it means.
I always pictured a hue more in the middle of my father’s smoky gray and my mother’s ivory, but my armor is a lot lighter.
Instead of trying to decipher what that means, I test my mobility.
I twist and bend familiarizing myself with the scales, plates, and ridges now encasing me.
Shocked by how easy it all feels, I spin in search of Aeson, and find him leaning against the vanity, watching me with a wide smile fixed in place.
“It’s not heavy, like I was expecting,” I tell him in awe. “I can move just like always.” I wave my arms above my head, proving my point, and Aeson laughs, like my glee is contagious.
“Come here,” he orders gently, and my booted steps are loud against the stone floor as I give in to his command.
He studies my advance like a hunter searching for a weakness, only to be delighted by the challenge when he can’t find one.
“Feel,” he tells me, once I’ve stopped right in front of him.
He straightens from where he was leaning against the counter and runs a finger lightly over the armor covering my collarbone.
It tickles where he’s touching, but it also sends a ripple of sensation through the rest of my armor. I reel back, surprised, and a pleasurable shiver climbs up my spine.
“Your scales will feel sensitive for a couple of months, then it starts to diminish,” he explains, his finger now rising to the place on my neck where the armor ends and my dragon mark can be seen. “Can you call it back? Do you want to try?”
“How?” I ask eagerly. His eyes lock onto my dimple, and something flashes through his gaze before he strokes the pad of his thumb over it almost reverently.
“Search for the current of your affinity. You should feel it sitting just below your layer of armor. Sometimes it’s a buzzing sensation; sometimes you can hear a very quiet hum.
It can be different from drake to drake.
Once you have it, you kind of tug in one direction or another.
One way will call your scales into place, the other will retract them. Do you feel it?”
I close my eyes and center myself. It takes a minute to wade through my excitement, and then I sense it. Only, it doesn’t buzz or hum, it glimmers like a strand of tinsel catching the light. Mentally I tug on the fragile filament, but I’m afraid to pull to hard and break it.
“It’s stronger than it looks,” Aeson encourages, like he just read my mind.
He chuckles lightly and uses his fingers to smooth the furrow in my brow.
“Our bond is open, I can feel pieces of what you’re feeling,” he reminds me.
Alarmed by that revelation, I fight the overwhelming urge to close the connection. I’m too vulnerable, too exposed. Yet, there are parts of me that crave this connection, that need it. I’m at war with myself, and it’s a very jarring and confusing reality.
“Try again,” Aeson encourages, ignoring the battle he must feel waging both for and against him.
Once again I find the gleaming thread of tinsel that is my affinity. With a deep breath, I ready myself, and then I tug on my magic, harder this time. A distinct prickling sensation passes through me, it feels odd but doesn’t hurt, and then all at once, my armor retracts.
My eyes snap open and I look down, and sure enough, I’m naked again. “I did it!” I murmur, shocked. My face flashes up to Aeson, my grin wide and beaming. “I did it,” I squeak again, like he can’t see the proof right before his eyes.
“Of course you did,” he assures me softly, and then my mind catches up with my eyes.
Aeson Noctis is butt-ass naked. Not only that, but he’s staring at me like I’m some priceless treasure, and I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that I don’t ever want him to stop.
I step closer, my gaze surveying his face.
Another half step, and my nipples bud and begin to beg for attention.
His nostrils flare, and his gaze heats. His cock grows longer, thicker, and I take one more half step and trap it between us.
My breasts grow heavy as they graze his chest, and he lifts a hand and brushes back the wet hair that’s blocking his view.
“So fucking beautiful,” he declares, almost pained. “Tell me you’re mine,” he commands, cupping the back of my head. “Tell me you’re done running, done hiding from me.” His other hand slides to the small of my back, and he pulls me even closer.
I press against him. Fevered skin against fevered skin as his needy gaze sucks me in until I don’t know which of us is orbiting the other. He palms my ass and then spanks it hard, and I bite back a moan.
“Fuck, I need to be inside of you. Tell me,” he pleads, and there must be something about this big, tough drake begging that does it for me, because all at once I want to give him anything.
I stare up into his eyes, and then I load our bond with what I’m feeling and launch it at him.
“I can tell you, Aeson, but I think it’d be a lot more fun if I showed you instead.”