Page 41 of Fated to the Dragon Warlord

My heart slows in my chest. I am hisfirst? Darax was a virgin before me? The revelation strikes me right in my stomach.

“Help me shed. Let me show you how much I trust you, how much I will always trust you and how I can protect you forever,” Darax rumbles, lifting my hand to his neck. I feel the skin there. It’s hard even when wet. He uses his claws to pull at it, making me hiss in response at what he’s doing to himself. But as he scratches, rasping at the scales, their texture changes, becoming papery, soft, and almost delicate.

“Help me,” he purrs.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Darax dips below the surface, spinning a somersault. I reach out for him, touching his skin. He grasps at me, and I feel it come loose. His skin is slipping away, slowly, easily. He wriggles, bright eyes looking up at me from the depths until for an instant, there are two Daraxes before one slowly drifts into a shape I don’t recognize and slides away from me. My Sarkarnii rises, water flowing from his hair and his new skin.

I thought it was beautiful before. But fresh, the scales have an iridescence which catches the light. Darax’s dark eyelashes seem longer, his claws like the night as he takes hold of my hand and places the palm against his chest.

His skin is like silk under my fingertips.

“Oh, you are soft.”

“My scales will harden in the next nova-hour, but until then, I am vulnerable. The aquium helps,” Darax rasps.

“What are you vulnerable to?”

“Having my heart stolen.” His fiery eyes study me, one hand wrapped around my waist as we bob gently in the water. “Or being envenomated.”

“I don’t bite. It’s not something humans do, mostly.”

“Themostlypart is your unknown, Kerra. I like the unknown.”

“But you wouldn’t want me to bite you.” I reveal my teeth.

Darax shudders, his eyes half closing with a kind of pleasure. I feel something pressing against my leg and abdomen. It is his cock, hard and exposed, pre-cum staining the water white.

“I would submit to your bite, my mate, if you deemed me unworthy,” he says, his voice a mere hoarse whisper.

Everything churns within me, all my worries, all my concerns. The thought that once Darax finished hisruthe would be done and I would be vulnerable seems almost laughable, given he is here, recently shed and aroused about me doing something which seems to be singularly a Sarkarnii move.

None of it seems impermanent. All of it seems like he has no intention of letting me go. His growl ofminereverberates in my head.

Can belonging to Darax be forever after all?

I reach down, my fingers brushing the head of his cock. It’s still hooked, but like the rest of him, it has a silky smoothness which is soft and yielding. Darax sucks in a breath as I swirl my fingers over the tip.

“Can I sheath myself in you, little mate? Can I fill your belly? Mate you, breed you?”

My core clenches in response to his words.

“Breed…me?”

“The rut serves many purposes, my Kerra, but it is triggered by a fertile mate. My seed needs to come to rest in your womb, to create a sarkarnling, as I claim you with my bite.”

“So, I can’t bite you, but you can bite me?”

“My bite is my bond,” Darax says, his voice far away. “It has healing properties and binds me to you forever.”

“And if I bit you?”

“So much pain.” Darax goes back to trembling beneath me, although yet more clouds of pre-cum fill the water around us. “Maybe days, as I’ve shed. But it would be worth it.” His eyes rest on me. “If I have displeased you, I deserve it.”

“You would want me to…envenomate you…if I wasn’t happy?”

“I would. It would make me want to be a better mate.”

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