Page 66 of Chained to the Champion
Fang grazed my neck, not to break, but to promise. Dangerous, but the threat only carved safety deeper.
Friction built. Each slap of skin catalyzed a new chemical reaction inside me, heat, tension, ache. The pressure inside wound tighter, his cock stretching, tongue working, tail holding, wrists bound, mind fracturing.
Release tore through me, no warning, only rupture. I convulsed, gripping his cock, milking. Zarvash threw his head back, howled, animal, ancient, shattered, hips driving, cock swelling, then the rush: his flood inside, thick, musky.
I shivered, starlight under skin, nerves jangled, skin streaked with sweat, and the undeniable evidence of us.
Zarvash fell atop me, weight caging me in, tail, arms, even wings enclosing. Still inside me, body still pulsing, leaking, his want embedded everywhere.
Our sweat merged, our scent blurred. His tongue slicked over my jaw, throat, ear, lapping up the mess, the salt of tears I didn’t remember crying. Each kiss a promise. Possession and worship, not mutually exclusive after all.
He murmured between kisses, words, rough as gravel, nearly broken: “Mine. You wear my scent. None will hurt you. You are home.”
My hands traced his spine, found the ridged valley there. I stroked; he twitched, bucked, nearly sobbed. “You’re trembling,” I whispered, voice barely there. “Did I?—”
He bundled himself around me, all tail, all muscle, all wing. His scales slicked up my thighs; our combined fluids still sticky-hot between. His tongue searched the bite mark at my shoulder, slow, careful, cleaning, soothing. Drawing out the hurt, making it a memory.
“Everyone will know,” he whispered, breath tangled in my hair, all possessive satisfaction. “No one can challenge what’s carried in your scent. You’re mate-claimed.”
I inhaled deep. My skin reeked of him, inside, outside, every gland rewritten, my own musk altered, burned new into memory. Pheromones as proof, as claim, as inheritance.
Hushed, only the rasp of breath, the quake of spent adrenaline, the biological signature of what we’d done. Then?—
“Did you ever imagine,” Zarvash asked, voice full of things I couldn’t read, “that it would ever end this way?”
I ghosted my mouth to his jaw, eyes closed against the hazardous hope. “Not in a million years.”
He tucked his chin over my crown, tension leaking out, weight flooding into the shelter of his body. Drakarn devotion, cocooned and complete. For the first time since falling to this violent world, my chest unclenched. I exhaled into the heat of belonging.
27
VEGA
Last night had leftits mark—literal marks, fresh on my neck. I wore them like a badge of honor. Every swallow reminded me they were there. And the ache between my legs? It was well earned.
Zarvash’s scent haunted me, clinging stubbornly to my hair, beneath my skin. There would be no doubt who I belonged to. Who belonged to me.
But the city had its own demands, louder and fiercer than my own. So, I shoved it all down and headed for the human quarters.
I found Kinsley sprawled on the floor outside my room, legs splayed, head tipped back as she breathed in shallow gulps of thick air. She clocked me, her hand darting to the knife at her side, a quick warning in her eyes. She never let her guard down. I respected that.
Reika crouched nearby, jabbing frustrated fingers at a battered comm device that had been scavenged from our downed ship. I knew Orla liked working on broken tech; maybe Reika was learning from her. Reika’s hair was a wild mess, her eyes sunk deep in a face stretched thin by anxiety with nowhereto go. Kinsley watched her like a hawk, tension stringing the air tight between them.
“When were you planning to tell me that the lizard was more than your partner?” Kinsley demanded.
Reika glared and turned away from me while the others—Selene, Orla, Kaiya—turned my way, eyes wide. It was a party.
Wonderful.
“If I told you, would you have risked escaping?” If I was in her shoes, my answer would be a hearty hell no. Even with the taste of Zarvash embedded deep in me, I still have a default level distrust of this place that told me to be on my guard.
Kinsley shot me a sideways glance, suspicion still lurking in her eyes. “I had a right to know.”
Maybe she did. It didn't make me regret my decision.
Eden's shoes squeaked on the stone. She was too bright, too young for this place, but she had a knack for fitting in. She swiped a smudge off her cheek with her thumb. Her hands wouldn’t quite stay still. She was young, only twenty, though her eyes said otherwise, sharp, jumpy, always scanning the room for something.
“How did Kira take the news?” I kept my voice low, not wanting to stir the tension. I should have told her myself, but I'd been a bit … distracted.
