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Cael climbed the jagged outer wall of his grotto, pulling himself over the lip of the natural dome and onto the surface of the golden plain that was his home. Pausing to stretch out all four of his limbs along the dirt, he ripped out small clumps of grass and dug furrows in the dirt as the stretching overtook his whole body. Relief flooded into the tight, corded muscles of his legs and back, especially where his wings met his shoulders. It was dawn on the surface, the sunlight from the east just barely flooding the world with color. Cael craned his now-relaxed neck upwards, letting that first light glint off his brassy scales. He likely should've been more cautious, but this was the center of his territory, and Cael felt invincible at the moment.

Everything he saw was his. The flat, horizon-spanning grasslands. The rocky outcroppings perfect for sunning oneself or launching into a glide before straining for altitude to patrol his territory or hunt. The thought of meat distracted him for only a moment. Though he had been roused early, it was not to catch his herds of buffalo or the occasional deer still sleeping. Today was a day for the unhappy work of a tyrant. This territory was his only so long as he could hold it from the other races and the rest of his kin.

Humanity, which as near as Cael could tell nested almost solely in the south, made brief journeys into his territory on occasion. Their persistence in the face of his rage was remarkable. It was almost every season that they would send a caravan, or prospector, or settlers, or some swarm of emaciated refugees into his land. He had made it clear to each group that he would not tolerate their presence. He had instated a rule, and told it to every human that dared cross into his land. Every third human would die. He made certain to eat them as publically as possible if they did not flee immediately. Still...driving them out of the south, razing their mines and burning their caravans were all noble activities. The humans were not the problem, however.

Cael turned himself northward as he surveyed the land, barely making out the tops of the tall broadleaf trees miles away. Their line marked the border between his territory and the female black dragon that claimed the woods. He knew little about her. She had rebuffed his advances, cried war when he tried to enter her land, but would not emerge to speak to him. Their truce, as near as he could determine it, was uneasy at best. Denizens of her wood would occasionally encroach on his land. She did not drive them out in the same way that Cael chose to. It was her perogative, he thought, feigning ambivalence even to himself. In truth it annoyed him. Why didn't she drive them out? Or kill them? Cael snorted to himself, working himself into another annoyed mood.

It was inconvenient for Cael to constantly deal with incursions. The wolves and he had a working relationship, at least in theory. They occasionally challenged his territory, and he would wound or dive them off, making clear his dominance by brutalizing their alpha...though sometimes he merely tore apart whoever was closest when the packs wandered through. He was protective of his buffalo, and the werewolves were vicious carnivores, enamored with how slow and easy his herds were to catch compared to their forest's native deer. Cael knew little of their society, except that it was violent, ritualistic, cannibalistic, and frequently attacked other mortal creatures to gain new converts. He believed they were at war with the forest's other denizens, the elves.

Cael turned in place, crawling like a common lizard back down the wall of his grotto. Elves, he thought, were the most intolerable among the mortals. They would only speak to him in threats, and he responded in kind. They valued all sorts of poisons and hollow-tipped arrows in their woods, and were among the few ground-dwelling creatures willing and capable of hitting a dragon in flight. It was still a rare talent that could find and piece a gap in a dragon's scales when firing upward against gravity, especially with the elves' often narrow frames and short bows. This was much of the reason Cael was not looking forward to trying to make contact with those that live in the woods. In the air, he was protected by gravity and the thick armor on his underside. On land, however, his wings, narrow wing-joints and other joints would be much easier to target, especially by the tree-climbing elves.

Cael thought briefly about warfare as he trotted across his cool grotto, hopping the stream with a short leap, his claws clicking against the smooth stone floor as he did so. He did not want to fight elves. He had survived this long by doing so as infrequently as possible. As infrequently as he fought with his own kin, or with packs of murderous shapeshifters. Cael did not think himself a coward...merely prudent. He preferred short violence against inferior targets. He preferred to terrify rather than rely on vicious biting, serpentine whips of his tail and the almost impossibly hot globs of flaming gelatin he could spit. His cousins preferred all those things. Cael was aware, vaguely, that elsewhere dragons engaged in proud martial traditions designed for fighting specific foes. Groups of humans. Gryphons. Other dragons. Cael had learned none of them, choosing to retire early in his life to seclusion. It had served him well so far in avoiding contact with other species.

Until a mere four months ago.

He had been lust-crazed, blinded by enjoying the scent of a mortal in fear. He had found a tresspassing elf, a female, poaching in his territory. She had fled at the sight of him, and the chase, her fear, his lust...they had all mixed with his frustration into a frenzy. He had mated with her, and viciously. She did not want it. It was rape. He knew this, as a fellow sentient creature. Humans despised the act, the wolves tolerated it, but elves...they abhored it. It was inimical to their culture of discipline and purity. Or so she had mentioned in the months since. She was angry with him, especially because he had kept her after the act. Cael could try to articulate why, but they spoke so infrequently and...he was not sure what he thought yet.

In its own way, to him at least, her presence in his lair had become a game. He was full of fear when she first escaped. She could easily fall prey to a roving band of humans he had yet to drive out, or worse, return to the forest and make contact with her kin. Cael told himself the reason she must remain is that he cannot risk war with the elves, through them learning of her death or capture. "Why not just eat her?" an errant thought asked, and Cael shook it off. Their game had advanced considerably, as had their...quiet relationship.

Originally, he had chained her to a wall with an iron spike and he had salvaged from human mine tracks. She had used a rock over the course of weeks in his sleep to pry it out, leaving the spike loosely in the wall to decieve him. She saved some of the animal fat he fed her to lubricate and slip out of her shackle around her left wrist in his sleep and stole into the night. He awoke early when her smell eventually faded, and hunted her by scent, on foot. She had huddled along a shallow stream, using the water to break his trail. It didn't matter, she could not disguise her intent...she had headed due north, back to the treeline. When he returned her to the grotto, he drove her chain this time into the ceiling, attaching other chains to make it long enough to give her room to roam. She had tried to remove it whenever he left the grotto. He would watch her, sometimes. Her tanned skin was growing pale for its months out of direct sunlight, but she was no weaker for it. She would practice climbing the chain, eat anything she was given, make frequent trips to the water nearby, drink. Excercise. Sleep when he was present, he assumed to bore him. Then she would climb. He watched, sometimes. He told himself it was to intervene if she should hurt herself. He made careful watch of her curves, barely covered by the leather she had to stitch together when he tore it from her body...on that night.

He realized it was happening when she was exhausted, covered with sweat as he returned to the cavern. Scratch marks appeared on the roof of the cavern near the spike in the days after she had managed to reach the top, climbing twenty feet freehanded. He watched her do it once, saw the caution that she used. She never climbed higher than she could return safely. She could not merely drop to the stone floor without hurting herself, so she marked the chain with bits of clay each day, working past her limit, higher and higher. He wondered if she realized the day she removed the spike she would fall, possibly fatally. He wondered if she cared.

He would not let it come to pass, and instead spent time one day beating together many chains together at one point, into a single lattice he could hang from the ceiling, attaching her line to it. She pulled miserably at the chain when he attached his new network, her strength strangely noticable, though hopeless compared to his. She was growing stronger. When the four chains connected together on the ceiling to hold her forever, she became spiteful. She began skinning the parts of his kills that he left for her, weaving a leather mat that she carried up the chain with her one day and began to sleep close to the ceiling, in a nest of hanging skin and chains. She would watch him, sometimes, always looking away when he glanced back. They almost never spoke to each other.

When they did spoke it was out of necessity. She accepted that he was attempting to keep her alive, and for her own part did not want to die. She only spoke again days after he had raped her, when she informed him in a quiet way that his offerings of meat to her were not ideal, and she would require some amount of food that wasn't all muscle and fat. She tried to explain, but he didn't make much effort to understand the concept. He settled for striking out one day at some human settlers, dragging back a burlap sack of their provisions. She sorted it quietly in the corner of the cave then hung it from the wall, rationing the food, somehow making it last months. They didn't speak about her diet again.

He turned the corner in his grotto where he hid his horde, and more to point where she lay in her nest on the ceiling, chains clinking as the hammock swung quietly, that soft swaying the only indicator of her presence. He snorted to announce his own, but she did not respond. He wandered over to his horde, a shifting pile of precious and base metals, most of it salvage or coinage stolen from humans. He tended to pick at, but never eat the gold and silver. He preferred brass, copper and the occasional piece of quartz that he dug up himself from the shallow rivers that ran through his territory. Eating all these hard metals is what allowed dragons to grow the thick plate-like scales that covered them. The smell of it all, however, occasionally drove him into a jealous frenzy in the presence of others...or an intoxicated haze. He could smell it now, an imperceptible miasma that filled his lair and was the truest reminder of home. He was still somewhat stunned that the mortal races seemed unaffected in such a way. Surely if they had scales...

Cael walked over to sit on the floor under the elf's nest, bending his neck upward to watch it. "Elf." he said, after a time. There was another pause before the chains rattled in response and she peered over the edge. Her face was paler, now, her chestnut hair in a messy ponytail rather than the neat braid she had the day they first met. Four months they had lived in the same space, and he had only touched her to move her chains or recapture her. He asked nothing of her, and she asked nothing of him. Until this moment. She stared down, the skin of her face still perfectly smooth, and locked in a neutral expression of ambivalence. She said nothing, of course, waiting for him to speak again in her language, a task he accomplished with little grace.

"I go now to your forest, Elf. I said to you months ago that I may negotiate your presence here, and I choose to do so now." Cael told her, wondering to himself why he chose now and not sooner. What had he expected would change, except that she may be forgotten? "I will return before the sun sets. Where do your kin live?"

There was a flash of anger across her face, the elf he had first known there for a moment before she hissed at him in her lyric tongue. "I will not tell you that, monster. My people may not have come for me, but nor shall I ruin them with your presence as you have ruined me." The implication of her words was there. They had not discussed her violation, neither his frenzied rape or her shamed, eventual acceptance of it. She stood now, balancing magnifiently on her nest of chains and leather, in the tattered furs she wore. Her gaze was imperious. To Cael, the words "last stand" sprung to mind. Perhaps she wanted him to devour her for her defiance? He wouldn't, of course. It would...it would eliminate the point of the whole trip. That was the reason.

"Then fine, Elf. I will not ask again. I go instead to my own kin, who will lead me to yours. Or perhaps I will decide your fate without the input of your own people. You, elf, will remain here." Cael retorted, suddenly frustrated with her as she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. That was her intent: to frustrate him. He was almost certain of it. He turned in place, leaving her as his last words were spoken, making his way to the grotto wall to climb out.

She screamed after him, sounding just as frustrated, as far as Cael was any judge. "My name is Ahani!" She seemed accusatory. He called her Elf, she called him Monster, that was how they had always spoken.

"Cael." The dragon said, using the inflection of his own language to offer his name, mumbling to the wall and floor rather than directly addressing her. He gripped the walls of the grotto in his powerful limbs and heaved himself up, out of his home. Ahani, arms still folded, dropped backward into the nest of furs, letting out one shuddering breath.

In truth, neither had forgotten the other's name.

---

The flight overland to the border of the Greywood was uneventful, which only served to annoy Cael further. If he saw some roving band of humans, or even werewolves, he would have had a distraction, a means to take his mind off the task ahead of him. Perhaps, exhausted from combat, he would have retreated back to his grotto and chosen a different day for diplomacy. Cael could not even find himself revelling in the warmth of the early morning, as he so often had when he lived alone. Even in fall his lands still had enough heat to let him soar lazily towards the treeline, given far too much time to think.

When he first captured the elf, she had screamed at him her fury for his existence. He had not realized he could be hated by those the had not directly harmed, but the hatred was there all the same. She accused him of driving the werewolves into their woods by forcing them from his plains. She said that his presence was ruining the balance of power in the Greywood. Too many sentients, driven from his territory, fought over too small a woodland. She said the elves were losing, that desperation had driven her to tresspass.

He hadn't cared at the time. Now it seemed like he should have asked more questions.

Cael knew his skill with the sylvan language, taught to him by his reknowned aunt in his youth, was lacking. He had thought, initially, to speak with the elves directly about Ahani. "The elf, you mean." the vicious part of his mind reminded him. He shorted, shaking the conflicting thoughts out of his head. He could not ask the elves about her. He was certain he would not express himself well. They were also notoriously hostile toward most dragons. No, he instead decided to make contact with his own kin, the nameless, female black dragon that claimed to hold dominion over the entire woodland. They did not, by any extrapolation from their growling interactions, like each other. Cael wasn't afraid. She at least talked back, and she would tell him the situation in the woods more truthfully than any other.

Banking in the air as he reached his borders, he tried to remember where in the woods he had seen The Black fly towards when they first met. The damn trees all looked the same. He knew, abstractly, that creatures that lived on the forest floor created trails and landmarks, but he did not want to be in unfamiliar territory with no chance of launching skyward in case of danger. He would find her from the air. It couldn't be hard, there must be clearings or gaps in the trees where she could land after her own flights. He would check these for the furrows and markings that dragons made when landing. It was almost impossible to diguise their weight and force.

His plan made up, Cael banked in the air and turned northward, over the trees. He kept his lazy pace, wings outspread. He did not want anyone watching to think his incursion was an attack. He began to circle the miles of woodland, high enough that even an arrow fired in warning could not reach him. He stayed that high for an hour, picking out landmarks. A cluster of bent trees indicated the elves' treetop houses in the western wood. They cooked with fire, but were careful to only let out thin streams of smoke. The eastern wood, by contrast, posessed a silence that was only broken by the occasional howl, which could be heard even as high as Cael was. They were not mere wolves that posessed such prodigious lungs. Between the clearly divided wood, however, was a stretch of open clearings, cut by a narrow ravine and a slow flow of water. The grim ivory of bleached, unretrieved bones could be seen in the clear water by Cael's clean eyes. Whatever happened in the forest below, no reverence was being paid to the mortals' dead.

Near the end of that long clearing, Cael picked out what he sought. An unmistakable series of streaks in the grasses of the clearing, five wide, the claw marks of a dragon making a landing. He would begin his hunt there. He folded one of his wings into a sharp, angular descent, and drove for the ground. He dropped with enough speed to startle anyone that may be watching him at the point of landing. Nobody burst from the foliage, fleeing in terror, so Cael presumed he was relatively alone. He picked up the scent of The Black, sniffing the ground quickly as he trotted upriver towards what appeared to be a stony hill. He paused as he made out the large, stone door carved into its surface. Large enough to give passage even to a dragon. It was ajar, which Cael found strange, as it looked more apt to seal away some ancient horror than be forgetfully left open. The Black's scent, unmistakably dragon, led right inside, so Cael braced his claws on the door's heavy edge and pushed it open.

His pulse raced as light from outside revealed what was within.

The inside of the stone cave was solid granite with rivulets of obsidian running through it, perhaps the result of some volcanic activity before the forest grew here. That was not what was so shocking in the smooth, domed chamber. Cael rushed forward to the center of the room, where ash had been drawn in great circles around two bodies. One was clearly a werewolf, apparently unharmed in death, lying serenely with its gray pelt unmarred by violence nor its blackish skin by poison. It was naked, as the wolves tended to be, its massive claws curled across its chest almost purposefully. Its digitigrade legs were bunched together. Cael noted absently it was female...just like the other corpse.

The body of the black dragon of the Greywood lay next to the werewolf's corpse, equally as unharmed, all four legs curled under her in a calm stance of peace. She neither breathed or roused as he approached, sniffing to see how long she had lain there. His nose detected her scent, but none of the decaying smells that come with death. He was confused. It was more like she and the wolf had been perserved than truly slain. He had little time to contemplate what had happened, however, as his hearing picked up soft, padding footsteps by the door.

Cael, startled, spun in place, lowering his neck and resting his weight backward to leap offensively if the situation called for it. It did not. The creature entering the room was a single, black-haired elven female, striding purposefully across the stone floor towards him. She wore simple, flaxen clothes of green and gray, splotches of color placed randomly around them...perhaps camouflage? She strode across the room toward him, details becoming clearer as she did so. Her skin was a dark brown, her hair black and short, spiky in places. She carried a bow, a quiver of arrows resting at the small of her back. Her first move, however, as she approached, was to remove both of those and toss them aside. The wooden case and bow clattered to the ground.

"Cael." She spoke first, even as he opened his mouth to do the same. Her draconic pronunciation was perfect. It was not impossible that an elf knew his language, but such practice...he found that more disquieting than her knowing his name.

"Who are you?" he answered cautiously. She was close enough to smell now, but there wasn't even a hint of fear on her. He did, however, smell the struggling rabbit that she kept clutched in one hand, the small brown creature kicing its legs to escape as it was held by the skin on the back of its neck. Cael wasn't certain what to think, flattening himself, considering the merits of just killing this elf. Why wasn't she afraid? Cael was much larger, and she could not have expected him. She may, however, have seen him land in the forest and rushed here. Was she a sentinel?

Approaching Cael and the two corpses, the black-haired elven woman drew a dagger out of a sheath at her side, quickly plunging it into the chest of the brown rabbit, sheathing the weapon in one fluid motion. She didn't seem to care about the blood that flecked her clothing as she touched one hand to the rabbit's blood, one to her own forehead...and then reached out and touched the corpse of the black dragon.

There was a moment of vaccum in the room, as though someone had sucked out and replaced the air with stale, acidic gas. The elf straightened her back, staring at her as he rushed toward her, expecing a trick or some illusion to strike out against him...

He was quite startled when she dropped dead.

Cael skidded to a halt over her corpse, flipping it over quickly with a claw. What had happened? She was staring at him and...

He didn't have much time to contemplate things as a powerful strike from the black dragon's muscular tail struck him across the flank, sending him reeling back a few steps. Cael used the momentum to put some distance between himself and his assailant, thoughts still confused as he scraped long, shallow grooves in the stone turning around.

Emasa, that was her name. Emasa.

Before him was the grinning visage of the black dragon Emasa, her neck and back straightened upward as she looked down at his combat stance. She seemed amused, but there was an edge of cruelty to her amusement. The upper lip of her snout curled back to bear her fangs as Cael took a cautious step backwards. "I told you to never enter my forest, Cael Avengard. Have you finally grown tired of lazing about in your golden expanse? Come to claim my territory?"

"I have come to take nothing from you, Emasa." Cael responded, but he could feel the blood rising in his neck and crest. She was challenging him. This is why dragons could so rarely live together. The very thought of her being near made him want to fight, to dominate, to kill or rape or drive her away bleeding and broken. He saw the same thoughts racing behind her eyes. Draconic society survived, however, by repressing these instincts, and by straightening his back and staring down Emasa, he chose to do just that. "I have come to learn of this war between wolves and elves that spills from your territory into mine. I would also..." he hesitated, "I would also like to know how I found you dead and alive again." Cael sat, the gesture one of peace, but his blood was still racing.

Emasa, after a moment's consideration, lowered her imperious stance somewhat and began to drag the elf's corpse back along the stone floor of the dome, lifting it over the circle of ash and placing it where she had lain only a minute before. "I never died, Avengard." Cael repressed the desire to flinch as his lineage's name was used again. He was willing to forget it, why not she? "I use these bodies as I have to. I control this forest, through means other than making myself a terror to all living things in my domain...though you may not understand."

"I may yet." Cael said neutrally. He watched her ebony flanks as she paced around the elf-body, adjusting its limbs and returning its equipment to lie next to it. He tried to concentrate on the stinging in his own side where she had struck him. Sunlight from outside the cavern made her scales glossy and reflective in the dim light. Cael briefly wondered if he shined in the same way.

She watched him, one claw raised mid-step as she made her way to inspect the corpse of the werewolf, likely for tampering. "You think you will, Avengard? Fine. I will explain some things, and then you will tell me why you have truly come here."

She finished inspecting the wolven humanoid, looking back up at him, then sat herself. He could see the way her foreclaws curled at her front, scratching the stone. She was restless then, too. Good. He didn't like to think he was the only one. "I have called this forest my territory for near twenty years, Avengard, before you ever began to hunt the plains, much more terrified every living creature away from your precious 'home'." Cael curled his own claws at her casual dismissal of him. What of it? He preferred to live alone, yes?

"You don't since you began collecting elves." his vicious, inner voice said. He shook his head out.

Emasa continued speaking, apparently not noticing. "When I came here, there was a small population of elves, and smaller population of werewolves driven from their homes in the south. They barely knew of each other, though they were becoming more aware. I strove to be neutral early in their conflict, learning to hunt away from their lands and rebuffing all attempts to draw me into their lives, much as you do, Avengard. I watched them, however. I moved in the night and the shadow to watch their camps. I captured and tore secrets from the skins of their people. They, in fear or uncertainty, thought me an enemy. I approached them instead as an ally."

"Approached which?" Cael asked, his neck swinging to track her progress through the dome. He wondered briefly where her hoard was. The room seemed to have no hidden spaces. Perhaps it was buried somewhere? He had heard of the practice, but preferred to sleep closer to his own wealth...

"Both. It has been my great privilege to know something of a technique. A means by which mind may be transferred to bodies. A matter of blood. Something that our kin in the south despise, but retain knowledge of nonetheless. There was a time when dragons used this secret to flee and live among mortal creatures by stealing the bodies of their most valued members. I have done the same...but I am not so foolish to merely steal a body and let mine lie dead. I travel between these." she jerked her snout at the two bodies lying before them. "I am the most valuable ally of both the wolves and the elves. They believe me to be fighting their war for them. Their most precious scouts have the faces of these bodies you see before them...their knowledge of their enemies' plans is peerless. I know everything that happens in the Greywood...for I dictate it." She grinned at him, the open-mouthed grin of a dragon proving her dominance.

Cael couldn't deny what he had seen, and could not ignore its power. If all these bodies could be puppeted then she did control this territory, more so than he had first believed. His mind whirled with the possibilities. Cael attempted to appear detatched. "Then your control is not complete, for a single elf did invade my territory, to poach my herds. I suspect more will be driven south as your two clans of mortals tear each other apart...or starve after feeding themselves for war. I already suffer enough refugees from the south. If you truly have control, you will end this conflict, let one clan win. Or you will drive them to annihilate each other. Your life would likely be more peaceful if you did not tolerate so many mortals in your home."

Cael shook himself out, hoping to indicate nonchalance, but he suspected that some quantity of nervous energy was readable from the gesture. Emasa, still grinning and imperious, began to stalk towards him. "You come, then, to dictate to me the affairs of my territory? Is it not true that some of your cousins live among the same mortals you would have me destroy? What makes you so desperate to be rid of my clans? They serve me, Avengard. They are my servants. Do you feel threatened by the power I have over them? That I would take your plains if I would merely unite rather than divide them?"

Cael crouched low again, his fighting stance returning on instinct. He did not like how this leering black looked at him, with her glittering obsidian eyes and aggressive approach. "I would know if that was true, yes. I had hoped you would aid me in contacting the elves. It was their people that made the incursion, after all..." he trailed off as she came closer. He could smell her now, and she clearly was taking in long draughts of his scent, now inspecting his scales with an uncomfortable closeness.

"There is no other reason? Did you not perhaps steal away an elf for your own?"

He flinched, hissing sharply at her, but she only gave a snort of draconic laughter in return. How did she know? He had driven all thinking things out of his territory and still there was no privacy? He wasn't sure how to respond. Was he to be embarassed? He wasn't, though, merely...confused. She saw his look of confusion and continued, "Ahani never did return after leaving the village so angrily. She was always hot headed, but to drive south and never return? Their most faithful scout would follow, wouldn't she, to make sure their kin made it back safely? Of course."

"You...saw me." He stammered out. The heat was rising in his neck and crest again. How much had she seen?

"I saw you take her, yes. I watched from the treeline, only to relay the sad story of Ahani's capture and certain death at the hands of the brass dragon of the plains. I told them there was nothing I, a lone elf, could do against such a powerful beast." Emasa cooed, perhaps cheerful now that Cael was panicked, fearful. She was gaining dominance. He could hardly deny it. It was the heart of her territory, he had come with no idea of what to expect except perhaps conversation...some understanding. Now he felt he was too ill-prepared. What else had others seeen without his knowledge?

"I returned, you know, after a week's time. Where Ahani was impetuous and stupid, I was quiet and subtle. I moved only at night and checked your lair. I gather information, you see. I watch all my neighbors, mortal and draconic alike. I saw the way you keep her. She is still alive, yes?" Cael thought he didn't have to answer the question, thought it even as his head nodded yes. "Why do you keep her, dragon? Is she ransom? A delicacy to be aged and eaten later? Or do you just like the smell of elf-flesh in your home?"

Cael was furious. What right did this...dragon witch, playing with blood and mortal flesh, have to judge him? He flattened out and brought his tail up over his head like a scorpion in one movement, a trick his cousins had once taught him when they play-fought in his youth. His tail lashed her between the eyes, sending the stunned black hissing back a few steps away from him. "She is mine! A prize claimed from a trespassing clan and kept for my own reasons!"

Emasa grinned again, despite what was undoubtedly a stinging snout. She spoke slowly, menacingly, "Look at you, Cael Avengard. Look how the blood rises in your crest and how you shake at the thought. You reeked of lust when I found you you came to my forest, and there I was thinking it was because of me. You had finally decided to try and take me. It is, isn't it?"

Cael was beside himself. Now? Now the dragon-witch propositioned him? If he thought her weak he would have taken her years ago when they first met. He grit his teeth, battle frezny and blood lust both playing at the edges of his consciousness. "Fine then, witch. You will not aid me, or lead me to these elves? I will tear the knowlege from you as I take you and your territory." Where were these words coming from? He thought of himself. Why do I defend myself in such a way? We could still part without blood or mating. We could...

She hissed, her tongue slipping out for only a moment, before she lept at him.

When dragons fight it is a complicated affair. Mortals are of the opinion that a dragon is some sort of perfect, natural weapon. Its claws are razor sharp and diamond hard, its maw can swallow a man whole, its tail can crush a ribcage with a single swing. All those could be true, but they required ideal circumstances that so rarely came up. It took incredible work to keep draconic claws at flesh-tearing sharpness, much more the difficult-to-reach rear claws. They were hard, almost impossibly so, but better suited to digging or gripping than slitting throats. Emasa proved this by lashing out with one claw, scoring but not breaking any of the scales on the side of his neck. He skittered backward, keeping himself between her and stone door that marked the only exit. Blood rushed through his body, his heart racing. A claw fight, then? Cael would not play along with such a drawn out conflict.

He turned his flank towards her as he moved to circle. It was bait, but she didn't seem to know. She dove for him, trying to get her claws into his scales, to pull and rend, or perhaps just cause him enough pain to submit. It was still up in the air.

Sex was often a violent sport between dragons. Happily mated pairs in the civilized south may talk over the merits of mating flights and calm courtship. Cael had never known any of that. His cousins had always been violent, and between that and the frontier territory that he had claimed, Cael had only instinct to go on. Instinct was telling him she was a perfect mate, powerful and vicious. One or the other of them would claim dominance. Cael was desperate to make it him. Her claws came down on his flank and he pushed off with his back legs. She was shocked as her front half was pulled up into the air as she tried to pull down. His legs were more than capable of lifting the weight she had tried to put on him. He twisted his body in mid air, bringing his own claws around to grab her neck. It was an acrobatic trick, an old one, but it worked. The still barely-cogent part of Cael's brain thanked his cousins...then the lust was upon him.

He had his claws on her neck, pushing her body into the stone. His grip tightened, and her rear claws that had come up to attempt to disembowel him...though likely with little luck given his underbelly's thick scales, relaxed. It couldn't be that easy could it? Cael thought, keeping his grip tight in fear of duplicity. She had gone slack, and he briefly feared that the dragon, lying on her side with him pinning her neck, had jumped into another of the bodies in the room. When his grip relaxed somewhat and she took a deep breath, he realized that wasn't the case. "Submit." he growled. The word sent shuddering pleasure through his body. He had bested a female. So quickly, too! Perhaps she had forgotten how to fight dragons? The pleasure flooded through him again as she turned her legs downward and lay flat. She was grinning. Why?

Cael could barely focus. She was grinning, but she hadn't won? He felt heat flooding his groin, the length of his shaft shifting in its pouch. He was hot, hotter than he had been in months. It was wonderful.

It was wrong.

Cael braced his rear claw against Emasa's belly, shoving off as he disengaged. She hissed as he did so. He could smell it now, her lust. She wanted him to take her.

He wouldn't.

She scrambled to her feet. "What do you think you're doing, Avengard? Didn't you come to this forest to dominate? Where is your strength, frontier-dragon?" She was not grinning now, her lips were peeled back in a far more vicious snarl. She had been rejected. He was stronger. Why did she want him?

"No." Cael responded, as he backed out the doorway away from the Dome. "Not yet."

Cael Avengard turned and fled the witch's den, heat still burning in him, and took to the air. Fleeing south. Back to Ahani.

"If you will not have me, then you are weak, Avengard!" She shouted after him, her voice echoing from the obsidian dome that was her lair. "If you will not take this land from us, then I will take you and yours!"

He flapped harder.

---

The manipulative witch. Cael had no other name for her now. She had control over the mortals of the wood, yes. She was crazed, though, it was not clear by what. Lust? Dominance? Power? True madness? He didn't know. His kin had been right to drive her from the south, he decided. They had been right to despise her for her experimentation with blood and the bodies of other races...

"Like yours?" his violent core asked. Cael did not answer, but did not shake his head.

He had flown hard and fast southward, a beeline to his grotto. She knew where his grotto was. She could bring her clans to bear against his territory. He could handle an elf, or a group, ill-prepared to fight him while he was on wing in the open plains...but with the support of a pack of werewolves? Dozens of them? With poison and bows? Claws and swords? He wasn't so sure. She controlled all of them, wolves and the elves...

Almost all of them.

Now he was fleeing south, running from a female of his own species, back to an elf that had shown him nothing but hate, and for good reason. "Not nothing. She accepted you once." His feral mind told him. Couldn't it allow him one self-delusion? Perhaps it was time to talk to the elf. To Ahani. He had run off to ask the only other dragon in miles for advice, rather than speaking with the one affected most. But ultimately when Cael, exhausted by his desperate flight, arrived back at his Grotto, he could do little more than flop to the cool stone floor, letting it soak up the heat of his long travel across the mid-day while he lowered his head to lap at the cold stream of water that flowed through the cavern.

He heard, somewhere beyond his rushing thoughts, the clinking of a chain, and looked up to watch Ahani descend from her nest, hand over hand, using nothing but the now prodigious strength in her lean arms to drop to ground level. With a light tap her leather boots hit the floor and she walked cautiously towards him, approaching as near as her chain would carry her. They watched each other for a moment.

She spoke first.

"Did you find my people, dragon?" she asked, one hand crossing her chest to hold her other arm. She seemed uncertain of something. What did she suspect?

She had called him 'dragon' instead of 'monster'. Cael wasn't certain why he noticed, or cared.

"No." he said simply, dipping his head into the river to drink again. The water flowed out of the edges of his mouth as he tilted his head back. He was trying to avoid talking more, but she merely watched him silently and he felt compelled to speak. "Your people war with the wolves at the behest of my kin. Emasa, the black dragon of the Greywood, has found a way to manipulate both of your clans. They war because she wills it."

Her arms dropped to her side, suddenly clenched in anger. "This is true, dragon? Why would you tell me this?" She began to walk towards him again, maybe to close the gap she was practically forced to shout across. Her arm was jerked into the air as her chain prevented the movement. She sighed. "What would it matter to me? Even if you had met them, they would not have me. You have ruined me." There was the accusation again, Cael thought.

Cael rose to walk past her, towards his hoard, hearing her follow with the same quiet clinking sound. He spoke as he went, "She has threatened to end their war. To turn them against me, to take the south. She wanted something from me...she made a proposition." Cael's sentence trickled off as he reached his hoard, slowing to sniff at it. The aroma relaxed him, all iron and gold...just a hint of silver.

"What? Your own race wants to mate with you and you come fleeing back here as soon as the act is done? You are not so adorned as you were when you had me, are you dragon? Did you find a place to wash, or merely deposit all your seed in her rather than on her?" She was angry. She always was. Cael, for once, did not rise to the insult. Maybe he only felt threatened by other dragons? Here was another female, now feet from his face, insulting his sexual deviancy...and he didn't mind.

Maybe it was just her?

"I did not take her, elf. I left." Cael responded, sitting before his hoard, looking slightly down into her eyes. He tried to keep eye contact, but the way she shook with anger was making it somewhat difficult. "I returned here. I hoped to talk to you, instead of her. She had nothing worth saying." She told you much, though, didn't she? You didn't like it, that's all.

Ahani stopped even as she was opening her mouth for another spray of invective. She seemed surprised, then sneered and went on. "So what, you only take those that don't offer themselves? Only those you tear away from their people through defilement? Is that your purpose, monster?" There it was again. Monster. He did not like the title, though he was not sure it was wrong. He was getting angry, now, though. Didn't she want to talk about her people? The war that could possibly come to his territory? "It is selfish to think that her fears are less important than yours." Damn that voice! Was it his conscience, or amoral? He growled, though mostly at his subsconsciousness' uncertainty.

She seemed to think the growl was directed at her, though, and backed off a step, walking sideways around him as far as the chain would let her, his head twisting to follow. He had measured the distance of the chain perfectly, she could not reach his hoard, or the key to her manacle that he had hidden among it. "If I release you, elf, you will return to them. You will tell them where I nest, of my weakness, you will tell my kin of my...indiscretion. I will not allow that." Cael said, trying to steer them back on topic. "I would sooner let you die."

"Would you? It's been four months."

It was almost a full minute of silence before Cael realized the voice had not come from within, but rather from Ahani, who stood there with her arms across her chest, staring him down. "I no longer want to live in this limbo, dragon. I will tell you the truth as I know it, and you will share your truth with me." Cael nodded to this. Anything to understand the world again.

"I am Ahani Redvine of the Greywood Elves. My clan has lived in that woodland for nearly four generations. We were small, once, but no longer. I was born and raised in that wood, away from all the madness of the south and the violence of the far west. This was meant to be the last peaceful place in the world. It is not."

"The wolves came to our wood some twenty seasons ago. They are savages. They hunt only as much as they need, but they need much and use all that they take. They do not discriminate between animals and thinking creatures when they hunt, savaging whatever they can reach. That is true except in one way: they take captives of those species that they can turn with their foul beast-blood into more of their own. When they learned my people lived in the woods, they began to try and take us quietly...we quickly noticed, and fought back. We thought we would win handily, as we had held this forest for many years...but no. They had turned our kin and knew our ways. They rapidly adapted, and though our poisons and arrows were still strong, the wolves began to use our camouflage, our poison, our tactics."

"Eventually we drew the line at the river that split the wood, killing a dozen of them in the ravine there. From that day we would not cross into their territory, except for our most skilled scout, for any reason. We thought the divide would bring peace, or at least rest. We were wrong. It was only a scant season before the first ambush of a lone hunter in our territory. Our scout marked their retreat and staged an ambush of our own. We began to pick each other off. One for one. Always from ambush. Always overwhelming force. It was no longer a war, just isolated incidents of terror and slaughter...or capture." Ahani took a deep breath here, shuddering through it.

"We hunt and gather, mostly, avoiding the farms of the southern lands. Our supply of deer and other small game began to dwindle. They were driven out of the wood altogether by the wolves. There was only the plains to the south that were still verdant, but the jealous monster that lived there would not let us pass. He hoarded everything in his territory, and killed or drove away those that dared trespass."

"My people fearing starvation, but too afraid of the stories of ambush and murder to leave their homes, I took it upon myself to hunt the south. I would steal from that tyrant, and in doing so prove myself a hero to a people grown cowardly from years of abuse. I was arrogant, and I...was stupid. I thought I would get lucky, that you would not happen by, Tyrant. You did, and so...here we are." She seemed for a moment to be content to leave it there, so Cael moved to speak. She interrupted him. "That is not all.", she said.

"A monster that I thought would kill me instead took me captive. A monster that I thought would ransom me instead tore the furs from my body and...violated me. You ripped from me my dignity and my pride. The very arrogance that drove me into your lands was stripped from me. I suffered for it. I have had four months to ruminate on this in limbo."

Her next words came in a rush, and Cael's jaw was clenched with the fear of speech, lest me may interrupt and silence this story he had been unwilling to ask for. "Among my people, if you are...raped by an outsider, you are gone to them. The elves are pure, and the elves that live as their ancestors did in the forests the most so. Perfection and discipline are our purpose. I...failed. They will never take me back. I am not a Greywood elf anymore, dragon." Her chest heaved with the effort of saying it, and color rose in her cheeks. "You took me from them. Forever."

Cael could not help himself, he had to ask after this creature's insanity. "I...took from you what I did, yes. You were to die, and I would burn or eat you and nobody would know. That you cannot return...that is madness. You did not ask me to take what I did. You did not ask for what I...the lust of gold and fear and...it all came together..." Cael trailed off, the thoughts in his mind never quite making their way into the sylvan language. He snorted in frustration, glancing up and away. Why could such a tiny creature have such an effect on him?

"To my people, it does not matter." Ahani responded. Cael looked back to her. That was her name, right? She had said it before, when he left. Emasa had used it. It was hers. "They will know! I did not deny you! Not at the end!" She seemed crazed now, walking toward him quickly again, he caught a whiff of her scent, the fear that he first knew her by. What did she have to be afraid of? "They will know that I gave myself to you, rather than fight and die! I am nothing to them!" The chain caught her wrist again and she allowed herself to be pulled back, falling to her knees as she strained against it. "If you kill me, so be it! If you release me, where would I go? The south is chaos and war. The forests that cover the north are no home to lone elves, there are greater terrors than a single huntress with mild skill! You know how easily you hunted me by scent. What hope would I have against entire packs of the wolves? I would be among them before the month passed!" She yelled at him now, and Cael bore it. He bore her insult by raising his neck and staring down at her with the same imperiousness that Emasa displayed to him. It worked, and she dropped her arms to the ground, bowing towards him. "You are a hopeless tyrant, Cael. I cannot comprehend you."

"Hear this, then." he spoke Draconic, the ancient preamble of storytelling booming in the small grotto before he continued in her native language "You should call me monster, Ahani, until the moment you no longer believe it. That I am, for taking you from your people. I am a jealous, violent tyrant, yes. I preferred my solitude. I loved my own people, but only at a distance. I told myself I was not interested in the wars of the south or the madness of the north so long as I was safe. I told myself that my thoughts of my neighbors were only those considering territory and violence. You came into the midst of all those thoughts and brought a second voice to my grotto."

"When I took you I did so as countless of my kin had before me. We knew for ages that we could satisfy ourselves on mortals, but considered it the weakness of those that could not find a true mate. When I went to Emasa, perhaps I thought to prove that, but when she was bared...I could not take her in the same way. She inspired nothing in me..." Cael ended the sentence in a frustrated growl, torn by the sheer sexual deviancy of what he was about to say next.

"You still do." he said, stalking forward.

Her head swung up, eyes wide, and her fear hit him like a blast of hot air. Yes! She was afraid again. That was fear, wasn't it? They all smelled so similar. She stammered a moment, scrambling to her feet. "I thought you were satiated, monster. I thought I was free of your predations." She said, half turning her body away, covering the furs she wore with her hands...but not taking a step back.

Cael strode up over her, mouth hanging slightly open, grinning in the way that dragons do, and looked down. "You were, for as long as I cared to control myself. It is not easy, with you at hand. What would you be if I merely took you every time I looked upon you? I have no interest in slaves. What would I be if I did that? A monster? I do not wish to be a monster." He leaned his head in closer to her face, and she watched him, amber eyes still wide with uncertainty. "I am sometimes a monster."

He thought she would flee, give him a reason to pounce, to go mad with the smell of gold and fear and maybe draw enough blood to lose himself completely in instinct again. She did not. She looked up into him, her flawlessly smooth face inches from a dragon's maw and said:

"I know."

His rapid intake of breath startled her, as though he would tear her apart then and there, and he spun in place, careful that his tail did not sweep her away in his haste. He tore into his horde, tilting over anvils, chunks of iron and gold ore, the occasional bag or pile of loose coins until he found the simple brass key he was searching for. He turned in place, holding it in his teeth, offering it to her like a tiny sliver of his own brassy scale. She took it wordlessly in both hands, lowering the key to the manacle at her wrist with fluid speed.

The sound of her chain coming undone echoed through the tiny grotto.

"Go. Before I do it again." he said. "Let her come from the north and slay me on my own plain. I am an impossible tyrant. I would not drive you out, Elf, but I will surely not control myself until your rescue comes at the hands of the two clans." His vision nearly crossed with how close she was to him, standing there holding her own chain, staring at him.

"They'll kill us both. If she takes you, my people will not spare me." she said, quietly. Then, dropping the manacle with a clatter to the stone floor and reaching up to place one hand on his snout. "Let us face them together." she said, with calm firmness. Something in her mind had been made up, and Cael could only guess at it.

He pushed his snout into her hand, rubbing the side of his own cheek against her touch. "You know what I will do to you if you stay, Elf." he said, eyes closed with a moment of bliss at the feel of her skin on his scales. She said nothing.

She just nodded.

The frustration that had been rising in Cael since he returned from the wood boiled over. He inhaled sharply again, this time feeling the blood in his neck and crest. She took a careful step backward, closing her eyes and exhaling calmly. His tongue slipped out as he moved toward her. She was submitting, yes? She was also afraid. What did she fear? That he would kill her? That would be quite beside the point. The fear, though...it was wonderful to him, a mix of intoxication and infatuation that made him want to hold her down and get every drop of sweat and terror out of her that he could. He would.

After all, she had submitted.

Standing there in her frayed furs, a mixture of buffalo patching and the old deerskin clothing she had worn when she lived in the Greywood, Ahani looked a right mess. Cael didn't care, however, and when he swept into her body and grabbed her waist by his front claw, she colored with a blush rather than screamed as she had before. Maybe she thought it was a ride to be taken on rather than on rushing death? It didn't matter to Cael, he threw her roughly backward into his horde, their scents mixing sublimely into one heady blend. She scrambled and scraped in place to find herself on her back, trying to pull her own mismatched vest off over her head, her skinny arms aiding the process immensely as her the fraying ends of her deep brown ponytail scattered in the motion. The hair spilled over her bare chest as Cael turned in place. The elf propped herself up with both arms, her rounded, cuppable breasts pushing up through the full curtain of hair that covered her.

Cael could barely handle it.

He also couldn't understand why she drove his lust onward in ways other dragons couldn't. The very sight of the elf there, surrounded by his wealth, baring herself, chest heaving as she pressed it upward, crawling slowly back up the pile of shifting metal to improve her view of him. She turned her head slightly away, breathing heavily, as he felt the stirring in his groin. His deep red, dragon cock emerging slowly from his slit. Cael stalked forward, lowering his head onto her body, feeling the smooth skin of her chest and the tickling of her messy hair along his neck as he walked himself up her. His member, twitching with expectation, hung over her midriff, dripping pre onto her paled skin.

She shuddered, unable to take her eyes off the thick member as he turned around, walking up the horde backwards, over her, until his head had access to her knee-length leather skirt. He tugged it in his teeth, his hips pumping the air above her head, causing his member to shake wildly. Flecks of his pre went everywhere, and the elf couldn't even see as the beast above her pulled her skirt down past her hips, onto her ankles. Ahani reached up with some trepedation and took ahold of the erection, surprised by its heat. He began pushing it through her two hands, growling as he did so. She felt motion jerk inside it, and a sticky glob of pre splattered out onto her stomach and began to trickle down her body, its warmth spreading down her torso and running slickly between her nether lips. She let out a whine to match his growling. She had forgotten how -good- the heat of the dragon was, how powerful its presence was once it was in the rutting frenzy. He had not spoken a word since they started, and she was learning to love it. Ahani's face burned with her blush as she slickened the dragon's member with her hands and its own pre.

She lowered her hands to stare between the rivulets of sticky clear substance that webbed her fingers. She knew this is why they would never take her back. This was incredible. In this state the monster was raw sex, all size and heat and slippery liquids. She loved it.

Cael barely heard the small groans of happiness that Ahani had started to make as she worked her hands up and down his shaft. The pleasure of her touches had become too good, too fast. His eyes half-closed as he thrust through her slick hands again. He lowered himself down, smelling the aroused scent of her moistening slit, and gave the length of her opening a lengthy lick, feeling her folds part and ripple around his pebbly tongue. She shuddered beneath him, her hands relenting. He was fascinated. The dragon could feel the heat growing in her, radiating along his belly scales as his body lowered to envelop her. His shaft slid out of her grasp, only to drop between her breasts as she pushed forward into his thrusts and probing tongue.

He lowered himself, pushing along her with his full weight for the first time. This! This is what he had waited for. The warmth beneath him, the smell of fear and lust and knowledge of his own power. He hadn't felt strong when Emasa was before him, but this creature, taking his shaft between her breasts and accepting his rapid, pulsing thrusts. This is it! He growled, knowing he risked crushing her, but could barely bring himself to care. She whined beneath him as his pace drove her deeper into the pile of burlap and smooth metal. She was lucky she had not cut herself on something so far. She closed her eyes and waited, taking quick breaths when his weight relented on her chest, letting them out in small gasps and whines.

"Dragon, please!" she finally shouted, from under him. Whether it was release from his weight or her arousal that she cried for she did not know, but he relented all the same, turning in place over her, his foreclaws grabbing her arms in passing as he turned. He spread them above her head, her chest and abdomen still glistening with his pre. It heaved as she took in the breath that had been denied to her. The beast loomed over her, panting, his mouth half open and dripping saliva. He lowered himself, his slick, heated cock running up the side of her thigh as it probed her entrance. She felt his head and that first, blissful ring press against her. Her legs opened wider on instinct. She could take it, this time. She would not cry out or scream. She looked up at him, hoping to catch a glimpse of the frustrated, ineloquent dragon that had tried to explain itself to her.

She saw only the monster.

The massive member pressing at the edges of her slit, she wondered how she ever took it in the first place. The fear came back over her again. How had she survived the first time it assaulted her? How had she tolerated and sustained its thrusting and madness? It had unchained her, given her the opportunity to walk away, to never let this happen to her body again. It had given her a chance...

She had given it back.

Now it was doing exactly what she knew it would. The throbbing thing at her opening dripped its lubricant into her, she could feel it heating and settling about her lips and hood. She thrust into it, eyes closing blindly with the blush that came back to her cheeks. How could it feel so good? It was preparing her, and she was pushing back to meet it, asking for it. Her own wetness dripped from her folds, mixing thickly with his, dripping over the metal beneath them and letting the burlap turn deep brown with the moisture. It heaved its own shuddering breaths above her, too gone to even communicate with, too powerful to stop. He had himself at her entrance, lowering the warmth of his smooth scale to flatten her breast against her own chest as he pressed her down. His head curled down next to hers as she felt his hot breath wash over her shoulder. The dragon gave the length from her collar to her cheek a long, sloppy lick.

Suddenly he was in her. The first three ribs of his cock stretched her suddenly, the squelching sound of her penetration echoing obscenely in the grotto's hollow space. He was not even done, but the sudden press of his thrust drove a high-pitched wail of pleasure from her lips, and a feral grunt from his. Cael began pressing the rest of himself into her, the scraping of his lower limbs against the too-smooth floor trying to find traction to press further into her filled the air. She tried to pull her arms out, down, anything to get a grip on the thing that was filling her so completely and guide it just a little further on its way. She couldn't he had her pinned. This encounter was at his discretion, and his lead.

Unable to find what he wanted, the dragon began to pull out, nearly lifting her off the ground as she felt the rings of its cock slip over her clit one at a time, slapping each time with a wet sound that reminded her of her own willingness. Cael growled again, his draconic heart beating across from hers in the heat between their two chests. He moved his limbs for better traction, trying to lower himself enough to start again.

Ahani placed her hands on his neck, gripping tightly. "Do it, dragon. Please." There was barely even time for fresh air to replace the gap between their loins before Cael relented, thrusting powerfully back up into her.

Tears came almost immediately to Ahani's eyes, but Cael was too far gone to notice or care. He was in the rutting frenzy, his powerful thighs directing his pounding motions. She could feel everything exquisitely. The texture of the ribs on his shaft as they pulled her apart just a little more. The little pop of vaccum as he removed himself, and the slick, moan-inducing thickness that returned in the next instant. He was nearly hilting himself each time, her thighs and hips pushing back against his thrusts, meeting him just to feel that extra inch, the final touch of his dominance. He was undoing her. Whatever love she had for her people, whatever regret she had for not staying behind...this made up for it. The heaven he had brought her to here was enough to make up for all that she had lost. Forget the graywood. Forget her people. Forget her honor. This made up for it. She would be with this monster forever, or until she died.

Cael felt her arms wrap around his neck again, this time accompanied by a soft sigh, almost of release. It redoubled his frenzy, and he continued to hump the soft, lean elf with brutal abandon. If she expected moments of tenderness or quiet dignity, he denied them, his incessant pounding preventing her from retaining any instance of control. Her breasts rocked along her body, bouncing with each unforgiving penetration. The sensations overwhelmed the two of them, leaving the feral union in a place of no return. The tightness of her was impossible. There was no way a dragon could compare. A glance downward revealed that sweat had broken over her pale body, the skin on her arms and face shining. She felt him twitching inside her, the heat of his seed working its way up his shaft. She threw her head back and cried out as climax crashed over the both of them.

Cael hilted himself inside Ahani in one powerful maneuver, his haunches straining as he pushed her up the pile of smooth metal. He hissed his release, and Ahani felt her insides fill quickly with his burning seed, the warmth bringing her to blush as the feral creature pushed her to the edge for the second time. Her toes curled with the pleasure of it all as the dragon growled down at her, his rough thrusting never ending as his seed spilled out of her and dripped between the shining pile of the horde. Her mouth hung open, the pressure of the beast inside her still leaving her ragged and groaning. He did not seem willing to withdraw. Instead, he pushed his tongue into her open mouth and across her face, exploring the taste of her own tongue and sweat.

Cael did finally relent after being locked in the elf another minute, the two of them heaving from the feral mating. She raised her arms above her head, spread-eagled on the horde, all the strength run out of her body from the powerful climax they had shared. Cael saw the tears welling in Ahani's eyes again, though she blinked them back. A moment of his uncertainty returned as he beheld her lying there savaged by him.

"You suffer, elf?" he asked.

She shook her head no.

"Then...you stay?" His sylvan was worse when he was in his haze. She almost smiled, covering her face with one fluid-slicked arm instead.

Ahani nodded.

The dragon snorted. "Good." it said, reaching out to lift her with his foreclaw, pulling her onto his back and letting the fluids still dripping from her run down his flanks as he settled onto the pile of treasure that he called home. Cael shuddered as he curled up, leaving the elf lying on his back, clinging to it. He could still feel the softness of her skin and the furs, the warmth of their chests blending again. "Then you stay here." he rumbled, closing his eyes.

Ahani rolled onto her side, against the beast, feeling the monster pressing against her now even in her sleep. This distance they had kept for months was finally parted. So what if her kin may come to kill them both for this union? What of it? She thought with the same arrogance the dragon questioned itself with. She had a monster on her side after all.

Cael slept peacefully as well.

For he had an elf.