Her words come out muffled against my chest. “I killed him.” Her fingers dig deeper. “Maybe not directly, but I killed him.”
My arms wrap around her, careful of her bruises. “He killed himself the moment he entered our den.”
She pulls back just enough to look up at me. “I don't feel guilty.” Her eyes search mine. “Should I feel guilty?”
I brush dried blood from her cheek. “Feel what you feel.” My forehead touches hers. “Guilt is for those who had choices.” My tail wraps around her waist. “He made his.”
She pulls back enough to look at me. Her eyes are wild, pupils dilated from adrenaline and arousal mixing. Her whole body vibrates with need. “I need you.” Her hands move to my chest, clawing. “Now.” She's already pulling at her torn clothes. “The tonic... fighting made it worse.” Her breathing is ragged. “I'm burning.”
I can smell it on her. The desperate need that's been building since I left. Made worse by violence, by dominance display, by survival. The scent makes my breeding cock emerge immediately.
But not here. Not in blood and death stench.
I lift her, her legs wrapping around me instinctively. Her mouth finds my neck, biting, not gentle. I carry her to the back chamber, the one she retreated to during the frenzy. It's clean here, just our scents and the furs I laid out seasons ago. She's clawing at me before I set her down, desperate for contact, leaving marks on my scales.
Her words are barely coherent. “Please.” She's pulling me down onto the furs. “Please.” Her hands are everywhere at once. “Been empty too long.”
The breeding that follows is violent necessity. She needs to be filled, claimed, reminded that she survived. I need to mark her, inside and out, erase every trace of their presence with my own. When I enter her, she screams. Relief, not pain. Her bodyclamps down immediately, trying to keep me inside. Her nails rake my back, adding new marks to old scars.
I thrust deep, setting a punishing pace. “Never leaving you alone again.” The words come out between heavy breaths, my control shattered by her desperation.
Her legs lock around me, heels digging into my back. “Can't keep that promise.”
I bite her shoulder, not breaking skin but marking. “Watch me.”
The knot forms faster than usual, my body responding to her desperation with its own. When it locks, she comes immediately, the orgasm ripping through her with enough force to arch her spine completely off the furs. I follow, flooding her with seed her body has been craving.
We stay locked longer than normal. Neither willing to separate. She tells me details while we're joined. How the brown one was so young his scales still had soft edges. How the yellow one cursed in dialect she didn't recognize. How Vek looked when the frenzy hit, surprised and terrified and aroused all at once.
“I'm not the same person who came through the portal,” she says.
“No. You're better. Sharper. True.”
“I'm violent.”
“You're surviving.”
The knot finally releases, but I don't withdraw. Stay inside her, half-hard, enough to keep her settled. Her breathing gradually slows from desperate to normal. The shaking stops.
“Ten days,” she says. “Ten days until the portal.”
“Yes.”
“I should be thinking about it more. About choosing.”
“Should you?”
“Lily needs me. Earth needs the resources. Everything logical says I should go back.”
“Logic isn't everything.”
“What would you do? If positions were reversed?”
I consider the question seriously. “Would depend on whether my mate could survive without me.”
“You survived before me.”
“Existed. Not the same as survived.”
