Page 261 of Scorching the Alien Empire
The fingers close tighter, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father slipping away again. “Will we speak again?”
“Oh, not for some time, I’d hope,” he chuckles, amused. “Remember this, young Dracoth: glory can take many forms.”
Arawnoth’s fingers slam shut. A molten fist crushing my heart.
But the hand resumes its fall. World-ending flaming gales and pelting lava crash into me, searing my skin and boiling the blood in my veins. I should be in agony—but I feel only purpose. My soul ignites, flaring higher and higher.
Until I am nothing.
Only ash, a single speck among billions of others.
“The cycle burns eternal,” Arawnoth’s voice booms like the dawn of creation, echoing through the inferno of my skull.
“Arawnoth!” I jolt upright in the tiny bed, skull slick with sweat, arm scraping the low ceiling of my quarters aboardImperator’s Fist.
“Ahh!” Princesa shrieks, half-asleep, her sheen-blonde hair whipping about as she thrashes. “Murder-bots?” She blinks wildly, as if expecting a swarm of Seeker drones to burst through the walls.
“You’re safe,” I murmur, stroking her back, still marveling at the impossible silk of her skin.
“Huh?” she murmurs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Then why were you screaming like banshee?”
Banshee?
“Poor Todd’s little sugar-plum heart nearly exploded with fright,” she sighs, patting the bloated, comatose creature curled across her belly.
“Don’t let big meany-weany Daddy upset you,” she coos, as if the oblivious cyloillar were sentient. Todd blinks a single black eye... then promptly shuts it again.
The insect clings to her as she clings to me.
Since the clash with Krogoth and Rock’s, something in myMortakin-Kishas changed. A welcome return. A flicker of the female I once knew—before the Divine Daughter. Before I lost Arawnoth’s fire. Before she tried to seize what was mine.
It warms me. Kindles a fragile hope. But a question gnaws like a burrowing wyrm:How long will it last?
The tendrils of betrayal still coil in my core—bitter and icy. A nausea that webs through my chest, robbing desire. Her gaze. Her voice. Her touch. Each feels... altered. Tainted.
Relentless thoughts torment me, a maddening pull between yearning and revulsion, devotion and doubt. A contradiction that shouldn’t exist. I teeter at the edge, staring into the abyss of what we might become. The weight of it—honor, doubt, grief—presses down like the peaks of Scarn.
And yet... I returned for her. I saved her—again—from herself. Reshaping the course of history. Was it mere happenstance? Her clever manipulations? The will of the Gods? Something else?
These questions will haunt me for centuries—if I have the strength to survive. I thought I’d severed our bond. Cast off my duty. Released her. But it struck back—violent, divine, unrelenting. A need. A fury. A collision of soul and fire. I stormed through the ship like lightning incarnate, body aflame, mind overtaken.
Afterward, her regret and sorrow poured through our bond in waves—wild, frantic, aching to mend what might always be maimed. She swore on the Gods, her treasures, even on Todd—never to betray me again. Her voice trembled with desperation so raw it would bring shame were it not so utterly heart-wrenching.
She collapsed at my feet. Into my arms. Her warmth melting into mine. Her body. Her scent. Her need. Intoxicating. Unbearable. Our bond ignited.
And I caved.
The fortress of my resolve crumbled in seconds. She offered herself like a prayer of penance—desperate, devouring, unhinged. I nearly surrendered. But the path ahead demands strength. Focus.
Now, her breath curls against my skin, her bare body pressed to mine.
“Was it a nightmare?” she asks, lips brushing my shoulder. Her fingers trail a teasing path from my abdomen down. “Do you need help...” she purrs, “relaxing?” she smirks, eyebrows bouncing, tugging at my rapidly expanding male-hood.
I groan despite myself, catching her wrist and pushing it away. “No,” I growl low in my throat. “I must preserve my strength.”
“Pfft,” Princesa scoffs, “I know Cringe-Eyes is big, but compared to you...” She burrows closer, all sunbeams and silk dancing on my skin. “He’s nothing.You’rethe strongest,” she moans into my ear. “The biggest.” Her lips spark along my neck. “The hardest—my Red Dragon.” Her hand wraps around my full erection, smirking beneath hooded lashes.
Gods, I want her.
