Page 27 of Chained

Her small sanitary area has a couple of cloths I use to clean her gently, her legs shaking and her cunt glistening with the evidence of my seed.

One day it will be my seed which fills her belly. In the meantime, I get to enjoy her changing body until she births.

I cannot wait. Whatever happens, I will be with her. I will be there for my mate and her young, every step of the way.

I lay beside her, slowly tracing my claws down her shoulder as she faces me.

“You’re not supposed to be here, are you?” Cleo says, her bright eyes studying my face.

“I have no pass.” I tuck my arm behind my head.

She slides her fingers into my feathers where they come to rest against my skin. I feel as if all the speech has been taken from me as she slowly works her way through them.

“So, what happens if they discover you’re not there?”

“Panic, alarms, mass searches,” I slur.

“Really?” Her fingers stop, and I’m able to concentrate on her face, her mouth hitched in an amused smile.

“They won’t notice I’m gone. Not before I get back.”

Her fingers start again, and I can understand why Sylas used to drool. Or at least I can understand why he had such a reaction, even where I do not.

My mind clears in a way it has not been for a very long time.

“So many of us were stolen away, taken from our planet, placed in facilities and experimented on, because we were seen as an asset, a potential warrior army to be controlled.” I turn my head to look at her as all these thoughts crowd in at me. “My former master wanted to expose this cruel, terrible trade. He knew who started it. He wanted all the Gryn freed.”

It’s becoming hard to breathe.

“He wanted to get the Council to intervene.”

Cleo’s touch goes deeper. Clarity comes.

“My head,” I murmur. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“It used to hurt?” she asks.

“I was injured. It hurt and it made everything bad.” I can feel my eyelids drooping, the need to sleep overwhelming me. “And then you came. And it hurts less.”

“I don’t think so.” Cleo laughs softly. “You just got better.”

“I am better because of you, myeregri.” I roll onto my side, onto my wing, in order to take her face in my hand.

It means her fingers are no longer in my feathers, and I ache at their loss.

“I am better because I remember why I ended up in the dome. I let it take me. I let it take what I needed to do here, what Vernun sacrificed himself for.”

“Vernun?” she queries.

“The council member who bought me for his security, who found out what had been done to me, who vowed the trade could not go on.” I put my hand to my head, to the scar which burns there. “All of this was robbed from me when they killed him and framed me for his murder, but you have…” I pinch her chin with my thumb and finger. “You have brought it back.”

“I never thought you were a murderer,” Cleo says quietly. “I understood what you were in the dome, what you were forced to do, but not murder in cold blood.”

“That is the reason you belong to me.” I place my hand over her stomach. “Both of you.”

Cleo covers my hand with her tiny pink one, her eyes lifting slowly to my face.

“What are you going to do now?” Her voice trembles. “These are forces we can’t fight.”

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