Forever.
She listened to all of it without interrupting once. She sat on the far end of my sofa with her knees pulled up and her coffee going cold in her hands. Lil watched my face with the focused patience of someone filing information away rather than reacting to it.
When I finished, the room was quiet for long enough that I started to understand what the verdict was going to be.
Then she said, "So you've been alone all this time?"
I looked at her. "Yes."
She looked around the room slowly, taking in the shelves and the single coffee mug and the book I had been failing to read all night, and then she looked back at me.
"That's a long time to eat dinner by yourself," she said quietly, with no pity.
I didn’t say anything as there wasn’t much as to say. I watched her get quiet again, and then she asked the question I’d been waiting on since she walked through the door.
"What did you do to get sent here?”
I looked at the floor. "I failed."
"Who?"
The silence that followed was long enough that she could have filled it with anything, and she chose not to fill it at all.
“Generals of Hell who trusted me,” I said finally.
She waited but I didn’t elaborate much further, and she didn’t push me. I understood in that moment that she was giving me the same thing she had given me since the first night she moved in, which was the particular grace of not requiring more than I was ready to give.
She reached over and quietly took my hand.
I looked down at her fingers wrapped around mine and could not identify what I was feeling with any precision, only that it was very large and had been waiting somewhere beneath five centuries of careful distance to be felt.
She studied me for a long moment after that, with an expression I was learning to read as her processing something she had already mostly decided.
"Can I see you?" she asked.
I went still. "What?"
"The real you." She held my gaze steadily. "Will you show me?"
I searched her face for fear or revulsion and only found Lila looking at me with contentment.
Slowly, I let the glamour fall away to reveal my crimson colored skin. The black markings spread like living shadows and my horns curved back from my temples . Finally my eyes went black from edge to edge.
She stood up immediately and walked over to me, reaching up to trace one horn with her fingertips. “They’re warm.”
I nodded, “They are…”
She smiled, soft and wondering. “They’re beautiful.”
I had no words as she explored the scars at my neck, then met my eyes. I explained about the claim, the choice, and the promise.
She placed her hand on my chest. “I know exactly what you are now. And I’m still here.” Her fingers brushed the side of her neck. “I’m choosing you. I want all of you.”
The second time Lila and I became intimate was nothing like the first. The first time had been sex in a basement.
But this time…this was deliberate and sacred.
I kissed her deep and slow, tasting the sweetness of her mouth while my hands stripped her bare. The moment I laid her on the bed, her scent exploded: thick, honey-sweet omega slick already leaking down her thighs. My dick throbbed, knot swelling heavy at the base as I settled between her spread legs.
