Page 22 of Sereis
It might as well have been seven years for how long it suddenly seemed. I'd thought the transformation was the hard part, the dangerous part. But now I understood it was just the beginning of our complications.
"Will he come for me?" I asked, though I knew the answer.
"He's already sent three messages demanding your return." Sereis's expression darkened further, those perfect features arranging themselves into something that would have been beautiful if it wasn't so terrifying. "The Dragon Council has enforced a seven-day truce, given the activated bond, but make no mistake—the moment that time expires, if we haven't completed the Pact, he will arrive to collect what he considers his property."
Property.
Even transformed, even with frost patterns marking me as something beyond human, I was still being discussed in terms of ownership. The irony of escaping one master only to be fought over by two others wasn't lost on me. Except—and this was the part that confused me, that made everything complicated in ways I didn't want to examine—I wanted to belong to Sereis. The bond sang its approval at the thought, and deeper than that, in places the magic hadn't touched, I wanted it too.
"Daddy," I said, testing the word now that we weren't in crisis, now that I could think past the desperate need for comfort. It still felt right on my tongue, still made that place in my chest that recognized him pulse with warmth.
His entire demeanor shifted at the word, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. He turned back to me, and for a moment, the ancient dragon was just a man looking at something precious he'd almost lost.
"Yes, little one?"
"We'll complete the Pact in seven days," I said, making it a statement rather than a question. "I'll be ready."
He crossed to me in two strides, his hand coming up to cup my face with gentleness that seemed impossible from someone who could reshape reality with a thought. "You are already everything you need to be," he said softly. "The rest is simply paperwork for the universe."
His arms slid beneath me with the same careful precision he'd used to apply the oil, one supporting my back while the other hooked under my knees, and when he lifted me from the Dais, my transformed body registered the movement in ways that made my head spin—not from disorientation but from the sheer volume of sensory input my new nervous system insisted on cataloguing. The shift in air pressure against my naked skin. The way his heartbeat resonated through his chest into my ribs. The subtle adjustment of his grip that anticipated my weight distribution before I'd even settled properly.
"Close your eyes," he murmured against my temple. "The dimensional folding can be overwhelming with new senses."
I didn't close them. Couldn't, really, not when the world had become so impossibly detailed that blinking felt like voluntary blindness. He sighed—I felt it more than heard it, the expansion of his lungs creating minute pressure changes I could track—but didn't insist.
The first wall we walked through made my brain try to turn itself inside out.
Not painful, exactly, but like trying to see all sides of a cube simultaneously while also being the cube. My human memories insisted we'd just passed through solid matter, but my new perception understood the truth: the wall existed in seventeen dimensions, and we'd simply stepped through dimensions four through eleven where it wasn't solid at all. The mathematicalelegance of it was so beautiful I might have cried if my tear ducts still worked the same way.
"You're seeing it," Sereis said, and there was something like pride in his voice. "Most transformed beings take weeks to perceive dimensional architecture."
"It's like . . ." I struggled for words to describe what my enhanced vision showed me. "Like the space between spaces has its own geography."
"Precisely." Another wall approached, this one rippling with trapped lightning that my human self would have feared. Now I could see it was merely aesthetic, the electricity following predictable patterns that we slipped between like threading a needle. "Your mind is adapting remarkably quickly."
Three more transitions, each one easier as my consciousness learned to process reality's flexibility. The corridors weren't just passages—they were equations made manifest, shortcuts through existence that my mathematical training helped me grasp even if I couldn't have calculated them myself. By the time we reached my chambers, I understood why he'd designed them this way. Not for efficiency, though they were efficient. For beauty. For the sheer artistic joy of making space dance.
The Sensory Bath drew us with humid air that tasted of mineral salts and lavender, though I could detect seventeen other scent notes my human nose had missed—crystallized moonlight (apparently that had a smell), powdered pearl, essence of deep winter. Sereis lowered me into the water with the kind of care usually reserved for ancient manuscripts, and the temperature hit my transformed skin like silk made liquid.
"Don't move," he commanded softly, and my body obeyed before I could form the thought to comply. The bond between us hummed its approval at my automatic submission, sending warmth cascading through places that had nothing to do with the bath's heat.
His hands were methodical. Clinical, almost, except for the way his fingers lingered possessively on each part of me he cleaned. He started with my hair, working out the tangles our activities in the Grotto had created, massaging my scalp with pressure that made me want to purr. The oil came away in rainbow sheens on the water's surface, dissipating into nothing as the bath's magic consumed it.
When he moved to my shoulders, tracing each frost pattern with a soft cloth, I shivered despite the warmth. His touch was completely asexual—I could feel his focus through the bond, intent only on my care and comfort. But it was also absolutly possessive, claiming every inch of skin he cleaned as territory under his protection.
"Arms," he said, lifting each one to wash from shoulder to fingertip. He paid special attention to my palms, as if erasing any memory of when they'd been damaged, when they'd bled. "Your transformation preserved your scars," he noted, thumb tracing a thin line on my left hand from a childhood accident. "Interesting. The magic usually erases such imperfections."
"Maybe it knew they weren't imperfections," I said without thinking, then tensed at my own boldness.
But he only hummed agreement, moving the cloth down my torso with the same careful attention. By the time he'd washed my legs, my feet, even between my toes with disturbing thoroughness, I felt cleaner than I'd ever been. Not just physically—spiritually, somehow, as if he'd washed away every moment of fear and servitude that had clung to me.
He helped me stand, water streaming off my marked skin, and wrapped me in towels that materialized from the humid air. The dressing came next—a pale blue day dress that felt like wearing clouds. The color wasn't accidental, I realized. Not the white of his robes, which would have suggested equality. Not the jeweltones that might imply seduction. Pale blue, soft and yielding, the color of morning sky seen through frost.
The Nursery Nook called to us—or maybe just to him, and I followed because the bond made his desires feel like suggestions I desperately wanted to fulfill. The rocking chair carved from ice radiated warmth, another impossibility I just accepted now. When he sat and pulled me onto his lap, I fit against him like I'd been designed for this exact position.
The weighted blanket settled over me like a gentle command to be still. Cloud-silk exterior, but filled with something that pressed down on my hyperactive nerves just enough to quiet them. I found myself relaxing despite everything, my head finding the hollow of his shoulder without conscious thought.
"This wing is your sanctuary," he began, his voice shifting from gentle to authoritative so smoothly I almost missed the transition. "But survival requires structure."
