. I’d found home, and it was with my knot buried so deeply in my wife that I didn’t know where she ended and I began.
My claws sank into the round cheeks of her ass, not enough to break the skin, but enough to sting and Ophelia moaned tiredly, her head resting on my chest. She shifted oh so slightly in response to that gentle hurt, and that was enough to set off another chain of rolling orgasms that had her pussy clenching my knot almost to the point of pain.
It wasn’t pain that I felt though. It was the most glorious, satisfying feeling of my cum filling my wife as the well of power in my chest seemed to swell to almost overflowing. The more she orgasmed, the more she fed my power reserves. That had been an unexpected perk I hadn’t seen coming.
″Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ophelia chanted under her breath, blunt nails scraping harmlessly at my skin. “This can’t be healthy. This is too many orgasms. I’m going to die of orgasms.”
I growled my displeasure, and the vibrations made her gasp. “You will not die of orgasms. I’ll get you so addicted to fucking me that you’ll die without orgasms.”
″Mission accomplished,” she panted, forehead resting in the middle of my chest, little fists either side of her head as she rode out the final wave. For now.
As soon as her muscles relaxed, I wanted to feel them tightening around me again, squeezing every drop of cum out of my body.
It was not an urge I had ever experienced. I’d never knotted anyone before. Our knots had always been something of a genetic anomaly, a weird thing we had to get around because female Shades could only take them with a lot of work and even then, it was more about emotional significance than physical pleasure for the couple. Their anatomy was designed to clamp down and not let go, and there wasn’t enough space for a knot to fit.
Ophelia felt more compatible with me than women of my own kind, and I didn’t know what that meant because it seemed too convenient to be a coincidence.
″Don’t you dare move,” Ophelia growled, as intimidating as a kitten. “I’m going to pull a muscle or something if I have another orgasm, let me lie here for a minute and recover.”
I resisted the urge to laugh so I didn’t jostle her. “Of course, your majesty.”
″Don’t you sass me right now,” she sighed contentedly, nuzzling her head into my pec. “I was so sure I had more sexual stamina than you, and I need to nurse my wounded self-esteem.”
″I will keep my sass to myself,” I assured her seriously, not pointing out that it was ludicrous to think she could match my stamina. Especially because I was fairly confident that sex with Ophelia was giving me strength rather than taking it away.
Goddesses, how had I gotten Ophelia so wrong?
She hadn’t been afraid of me, she’d been lusting after me. Not even just a mild, cursory sort of interest in what was hiding beneath my shadows either—Ophelia had elaborate Shade-fucking fantasies and she’d committed them all to paper.
My own wrongness about the entire situation was taunting me. She must have thought I was a moron, and while my ego rejected the idea of anyone thinking I was a moron, I was particularly opposed to the idea of Ophelia thinking that way.
I wanted her to like me.
Idiotic. The fact that Ophelia had been drawing her version of Shade-fucking fantasies since well before she’d met me attested to that. I was a convenient focus point for those dreams she’d had, a real life example to pin them on, but it wasn’t me she wanted.
Ophelia’s breathing evened out, either asleep or unconscious from the number of orgasms I’d wrung out of her, and I felt my knot deflate without stimulation, slipping free of my wife’s heavenly pussy while our combined fluids leaked out of her over my thighs.
I idly toyed with her silky hair with my claws, knowing I needed to wake her up eventually so she could dress for dinner, but not wanting to. Holding her in my arms, having her trust me enough to rest on my chest, it was a gift I didn’t know I’d been missing out on.
Perhaps I was just a fetish to her, a curious itch she’d wanted to scratch, but she was stuck with me whether she liked it or not. I could show her that I could be a good husband to her, I would protect her, fuck her senseless, resist the somewhat unsettling urge to sink my teeth into her, and perhaps one day she’d trust me with her heart as well as her body.
Yes. That was a good plan, I thought decisively. I’ll show her there’s more to a marriage with me than just my excellent dick.
Ophelia didn’t stir as I unhurriedly detangled her hair with my claws, vaguely contemplating some of the issues that I needed to raise with the Council that I never spent time just thinking about because I was always moving from one fire to the next.
Who knew spending the afternoon in bed with my wife could be so productive?
Ophelia made a sleepy sound, rubbing her nose against me as she slowly woke.
″Oh. Oh! Oh my god, did I fall asleep on you?” she asked, head shooting up so quickly that strands of reddish-brown hair fell over her face. I parted them carefully with my claws so I could see her flushed cheeks, admiring how beautifully filthy she looked after being fucked to sleep.
″You did. It was adorable.”
That pinkish tinge on her cheeks grew darker and she pressed her thighs tightly together, trying and failing to stop our combined wetness from slipping out. “Adorable? Now there’s a word I never thought I’d hear you use. Especially not in relation to me.”
″Why not? You have always been adorable. An adorable little queen.”
Ophelia rolled her eyes, and the overtly human gesture made me smile. “You know nothing. You thought I was scared of you this whole time.”
She said it like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
″You do know that would be an entirely rational response,” I pointed out drily.
″That’s a fair point,” Ophelia laughed. Actually laughed at something I’d said. The sound skittered over my skin, sinking into my bones. “Your eyes look super bright right now.”
The words cut through my cheerful mood like a knife. “Yes, about that…”
Ophelia frowned, propping herself up on her forearms on my chest and staring down at me. It was a submissive position I would never allow myself to be in with anyone else.
″I think I fed from you. I didn’t mean to—it seemed to happen subconsciously. I could feel myself growing stronger while we were knotted together. I apologize for that,” I said with a grimace, forcing the words out. Apologizing was not something I was accustomed to. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, and it’s a violation of the terms of the treaty.”
Ophelia’s frown deepened. “Is it? I only skim read it.”
I gave her a disapproving look. “You moved here and married me without reading the document that is the basis for our whole union?”
″No? Of course I didn’t do that,” Ophelia hedged, her voice rising in pitch. I snorted.
″There’s a clause in the treaty that no Shade was to feed on the fear of the Hunter bride who came here.”
″You didn’t though,” Ophelia replied, eyebrows creasing.“I wasn’t afraid. If anything, you fed on my lust. Just like it’s my lust that you like the smell of, not my fear. Maybe Hunters are built differently from regular humans in that way.”
I opened my mouth to object before closing it again. She was right. It was her lust that had called to me, that had made me want to taste her. Like the way she fit me, the fact that her desire sustained me felt too convenient to be a coincidence.
I’d never felt as powerful as I did after feeding from her. I felt invincible.
″Your drawings,” I said slowly. “Were there other Hunters like you? Who drew those kinds of things?”
″Looking for an upgrade already?” Ophelia teased, though there was a hint of vulnerability in her face that I didn’t like.
″Of course not. Merely wondering if there’s a connection between me being able to feed on your desire and you having those kinds of desires.”
″Oh.” Ophelia’s features scrunched up thoughtfully. “That’s something to think about. My parents found some drawings—not nearly as explicit as the ones I do now—when I was sixteen, and they took them to the Council who quietly shuffled me into a more human life.”
I bit back a growl of disapproval at the way they’d just cast her aside when she was still a child.
″I’ve always attributed it to me committing an unforgivable sin, I guess, but maybe there’s more to it than that. There was no warning, no discussion about it, just an immediate severing of ties. That seems a bit weird in hindsight, right?”
″It does seem like an extreme reaction,” I agreed. “The kind of reaction they might have if they’d seen those kinds of drawings and dealt with a similar case before.”
″No one I knew, but then families were shuffled around to different regions all the time.”
We were both quiet and thoughtful for a few moments. I wouldn’t bring this up with the Council yet—I absolutely didn’t want them hounding Ophelia for information about her desires—but perhaps Damen could look in the history books to see what we knew about the very first interactions between Shades and Hunters.
″I need to bathe before dinner,” Ophelia yawned, stretching above me before rolling off my body. I clamped an arm around her waist, pinning her to my side.
″Don’t,” I growled, territorial urges I’d never experienced in my life rushing to the surface.
″I am not going to dinner in front of the whole court smelling like cum, that is non-negotiable,” Ophelia said sternly. Was she being serious? Why not? It seemed entirely reasonable to me. “Come on, you can bathe with me as a consolation prize.”
″Fine,” I grumbled. ”For now. Next time, I’m going to rub my cum into your skin and walk you through the entire palace.”
Ophelia gulped, her scent sweetening into that delicious melted sugar I couldn’t get enough of. “Okay.”
I climbed out of the bed and cloaked my lower half in shadows to preserve my modesty as I rang the bell to call for Affra. Ophelia moved to grab a robe, but I summoned shadows for her as well, draping them around like a form-fitting dress, commanding them to move with her body.
She looked down in wonder, climbing off the bed and heading for the full-length mirror to admire my work. “I thought it would feel like nothing, but I can sort of sense them there even if I can’t really feel them, if that makes sense,” she said, twisting this way and that and watching the shadows move with her.
″It does. They don’t weigh anything, but you can feel the traces of my magic on your skin.”
Ophelia’s hands skimmed over the shadows, disturbing them but not breaking them apart completely because I created them and they remained under my control unless I gifted control to someone else. In Shade relationships, it was a gesture of trust to go out in public cloaked by your partner, knowing that they could expose you at any time.
″Would the court like me more if I went to dinner like this?”
″Who doesn’t like you?” I asked sharply, my vision darkening around the edges.
″You, I thought,” Ophelia replied with a laugh.
″Well, now you know better,” I pointed out as Affra entered the room with a bow. She immediately headed for the bathing chamber without instruction, and I imagined the smell of our joining was fairly overwhelming. While Affra would undoubtedly change the soaked sheets while we were at dinner, my sudden primal instincts objected furiously to that idea.
I wanted my wife to sleep in sheets that were soaked in the scent of us.
″You should wear one of your dresses to dinner,” I gritted out, forcing myself to behave like a civilized being instead of the beast I felt like. “You are a rare spot of color in this realm, it seems a shame to blanket you in shadow.”
″Who knew you were a low-key romantic,” Ophelia teased, squeezing my forearm as she passed me to head to the bathroom. “Oh my god, I’m leaving a trail on the floor, this is so humiliating.”
″It is wonderful,″ I corrected, scooping her up anyway and carrying her the rest of the way. While I liked seeing the evidence of our coupling, I didn’t want Ophelia to feel embarrassed.
Affra excused herself as we entered, and I stepped into the almost full circular tub with Ophelia still in my arms. She made a distressed noise, clinging on to me a little tighter, and I did my best not to be offended that she would doubt my ability to safely carry her. The stone bath was round and deep, and definitely not designed for more than one Shade, but my Hunter wife was tiny.
″Oh,” Ophelia sighed as I lowered us both into the water, keeping her securely on my lap as I sat on the bench, the steaming water rising to my chest. “You are very strong.”
″You are very small,” I scoffed. “But even if you weren’t, I am feeling stronger than usual after feeding from you. Are you feeling any negative side effects?”
“I mean, I’m tired. But I also just had a month’s worth of orgasms in a couple of hours, so I’m pretty sure I’d be tired either way,” Ophelia replied drowsily, smiling against my chest.
The sweet, unguarded look on her face did something strange to my chest. That happened a lot around Ophelia—strange, inexplicable sensations in my chest that I should probably have examined by a healer.
But then they might fix them, and I wasn’t sure I wanted these strange sensations to go away.
After we bathed, Ophelia got ready in a rush, picking out a sapphire blue dress that clung to her curves and hastily pinning her hair up with Affra’s help. Perhaps I should have left her to it, but I made myself comfortable in the armchair in the corner of her room and watched, feeling strangely unable to leave. Damen was probably drinking his way through my liquor cabinet, wondering where I was, unless the scent of our afternoon activities had carried through into the corridors.
I hoped it had.
I was attributing the cursed bath as the reason I was struggling to leave. Ophelia smelled a little like me, but nowhere near enough to appease the hungry beast inside me, and it only got worse when she tied her hair back.
That neck. The urge to sink my teeth into it while I’d been buried in her dripping cunt had been almost overwhelming, and I had no idea where it had come from. Perhaps it was some kind of Hunter mating ritual rubbing off on me because Shades did not bite their lovers.
The idea was a little horrifying in fact. My teeth were viciously sharp, I wouldn’t want to break thick Shade skin with it, let alone Ophelia’s paper-thin skin.
That was a lie, I did want to break her skin with my teeth. I just knew it was sick and wrong, so I wouldn’t.
Under the guise of stretching my legs, I stood up and wandered aimlessly around Ophelia’s room while she finished up, swiping my hand over the soaked sheets while she wasn’t looking.
″Okay, I’m ready,” Ophelia said breathlessly, sliding her feet into her silky flat shoes. “Are we late?”
″I’m the king, I’m never late,” I replied, moving to her side and resting my hand on her lower back, hoping the dampness didn’t soak through the fabric of her dress and alert her to the bout of insanity I was experiencing.
I did feel better having scent marked her. I might not accidentally kill someone at dinner.
I guided her to the door before offering my arm for Ophelia to take. She did, resting her slim hand in the crook of my elbow, but the wariness in her expression hadn’t escaped my notice.
Did she not expect physical contact outside of the bedroom? Did she not want it?
Affra pulled the door open before I could start second guessing myself—a horrifying prospect—and Damen and Soren were already standing outside waiting for us.
″Your majesties,” Damen said with an obnoxiously low sweeping bow as I led Ophelia out of her room. I gave him a warning look as he straightened and inhaled deeply, daring him to say anything that might make Ophelia feel uncomfortable. He gave me an offended one back, which was probably fair. For all his many flaws, Damen would never disrespect her that way.
″Soren, anything to report?” I asked as they fell into step behind us.
″The additional guards stationed at the palace have been briefed and gone to their new posts.”
Ophelia gave me a curious look, but I could tell she wasn’t going to ask me any follow up questions. I almost demanded that she did, but I hadn’t given her any reason to think I would be responsive to those kinds of requests.
″We had extra guards placed here when you arrived. They’ve now been dismissed and will be monitoring the situation with the Shades who still have reservations about the treaty,” I told her. The longer I talked, the further her eyebrows inched towards her hairline.
″We had extra guards here in case you were sent here to kill us all,” Damen supplied helpfully.
″Prudent of you,” Ophelia replied lightly. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. One time, a rat got into my apartment and I climbed on top of the dining table and sobbed until my roommates, um, dealt with it. When I say I have no killer instincts, I mean it.”
″I believe you,” I assured her, barely suppressing a smile.
In going through my list of theories as to why Ophelia, of all the Hunters, had been sent here to marry me, that lack of killer instinct was one of the top ones. Perhaps they thought she’d be a liability to me—too delicate and fearful for this world. The impression the Hunters Council had given me on their visits here to formalize the treaty was they thought of us as barely literate beasts, so that tracked.
The doors swung open for us to enter the dining hall and my grip tightened on Ophelia almost subconsciously, expecting her to pull away with so many eyes on her. If anything, she leaned in closer, pressing her shoulder against my bicep.
Probably because the mood in here was very strange tonight. The court always watched Ophelia when we entered because she was a curiosity, but there was something more loaded in their gaze that had me on edge.
If anyone had something to say about me lying with my wife, they would quickly live to regret it.
″Don’t leave us in suspense,” I drawled, not needing to raise my voice because the hall was near silent. “What is it that has you all so enraptured tonight?”
Leonie, one of the prominent Shades at court, stood, clasping something carefully between her hands.
″Your majesty, if I may…” she began, dipping her head.
″Come forward.”
Ophelia’s hand on my arm loosened, but I quickly grabbed it and gave it a warning squeeze to stay put.
Leonie approached with her head bowed, stopping a respectful distance away and extending her arms, slowly revealing the item she’d been shielding with her hands.
Ophelia sucked in a breath.
It was a flower. But instead of being black or gray as it usually was, an iridescent gold tipped the edges of the petals, fading into black towards the center of the bloom.
I carefully picked it out of Leonie’s hand by the short stem, holding it up to admire. Color. Something with color had grown in the shadow realm.
″Your majesty,” Leonie said, dropping to one knee and bowing her head. “This is thanks to you.”
It took me a moment to realize that Leonie wasn’t speaking to me, but to Ophelia. That the heads bowed at every table were in Ophelia’s honor.
It took even longer for her to realize.
″Thanks to me?” Ophelia repeated hesitantly. “I didn’t do that.”
″You brought color with you,” Damen explained softly, standing behind us. “Legend says that there was once color in this realm, but it disappeared over the centuries. You are bringing it back.”
Ophelia laughed nervously, her harmless nails digging into my muscle. Keeping hold of the flower, I bowed my head to Leonie in thanks and guided my wife up to the high table for dinner, letting the court know to drop the matter for now. I wouldn’t have Ophelia uncomfortable because of their overly reverent behavior.
Conversation resumed slowly in the hall as I pulled out my wife’s seat before taking my own, setting the flower on the table in front of us where Damen immediately leaned forward to inspect it.
″It’s very pretty,” he remarked. “I wonder if we’ll get some more. You do spend a lot of time in the garden,” he added to Ophelia, giving her a teasing grin.
″I still don’t think I did that,” she protested, shaking her head. “I don’t have some kind of magic green thumb or anything. Every houseplant I’ve ever owned died a slow and miserable death.”
″I don’t know what a green thumb is, but I don’t think you should rule out that this miracle has something to do with you, Queen Ophelia,” Damen replied, keeping his tone gentle but firm all at once. “And in the absence of any other explanation, that’s certainly how the rest of the Shades will see it.”
Ophelia looked up, staring at the windows that decorated the upper walls of the dining hall. “I always thought it was strange to have stained-glass windows with no proper stain in them. There used to be color here?”
″So legend says,” I replied, piling meat onto her plate then mine. “There are a few human items—artifacts—that have made their way into our world somehow. Gems and gold jewelry mostly. They retain their color, I have seen them for myself. I’m not sure I believe that there was ever color in our world though. Or I didn’t, until now,” I added, glancing at the flower.
Ophelia drank some of her water before picking up the flower and setting it in the goblet, running her finger over the gold petal.
″You can’t bring items from the human realm here?”
″You’ve seen our forms there,” I pointed out wryly. “We can’t touch inanimate objects, we go straight through them. Carrying them back here would be impossible.”
She frowned, probably wondering how those artifacts got here in the first place. Perhaps Hunters had sent a delegation once before to try and broker a peace? Back in the human Dark Ages, Shades were plentiful and angry. Records from that time mostly haven’t survived, but I was always taught it was a black stain in our history. A lesson in preserving balance, not taking too much, not letting our subjects go unchecked.
″Eat,” I prompted, nudging my wife who hadn’t yet touched her food. “Did I interrupt you before your lunch today? Have you had your vegetables?”
A slow smile spread across her face, her expression looking a little… bemused?
″I did, but thank you for checking on me, that’s very sweet of you.”
″I’m not sweet,” I countered immediately, worried someone had overheard.
Damen leaned around Ophelia with a knowing grin on his face. “You’re the sweetest, big brother.”
Little shit.
Damen and I escorted Ophelia back to her room after the feast while Soren sated his curiosity, wandering around the gardens for more evidence of my wife’s golden touch.
Ophelia paused outside of her bedroom door, looking suddenly unsure as she glanced between Damen and I.
″Goodnight, wife,” I said quietly, stroking her face with my claws.
There was a flash of emotion on her face too quick and too nuanced for me to catch before she gave me a perfectly unaffected smile, already backing towards the door. “Goodnight, your majesty.”
I watched her disappear into her room experiencing a faint sensation of… guilt? That couldn’t be right.
Frowning to myself, I headed into my rooms with my brother on my heels, making my way directly to the bar. I had experienced a wider range of emotions this afternoon than I had in my entire life.
″You should show her more softness,” Damen observed, flopping down onto the couch. “It was very brave of Ophelia to come here all alone, but I get the sense she’s quite a gentle soul and you haven’t done a great job at showing her kindness so far. What happens between the sheets doesn’t count.”
I grunted, mostly in annoyance at him giving me relationship advice. I hadn’t been unduly cruel to Ophelia, just kept her at a distance until I understood what level of threat she presented. And she was happy enough now, I’d made sure of that this afternoon many times over.
″I’ll consider it. In the meantime, I need you to look into something for me,” I told my brother, pouring us both a goblet of wine and handing him one.
″Oh?” he teased, eyes sparkling with mirth, an inappropriate comment on the tip of his tongue.
″Tread very carefully,” I warned. “I won’t have you or anyone else making lewd comments about my wife. What I want you to look into is the earliest history between Hunters and Shades. The very first interactions, anything we have on record.”
Damen frowned, sipping slowly on his drink. “I’ll see what I can find, but there’s a very good chance I won’t be able to read them. The original documents are all written in the old language.”
Fuck, I hadn’t thought about that. The old language was a form of runes that both Damen and I had learned a little of as part of an upper-class education, but neither of us had any real knack for.
″It would be helpful if I knew what I was looking for,” Damen pointed out.
″This conversation doesn’t leave this room under pain of death,” I muttered, topping up my drink before taking a seat on the sofa. “There’s a connection between Ophelia and I that feels too neat, too convenient, too perfect to be a coincidence. We fit too well for it to be a case of two opposing species being stuck together by chance and getting lucky.”
″You mean she can take your—”
″Do not finish that sentence,” I growled.
″It’s pertinent to my task,” Damen retorted, smirking. “I’m not asking for the details, but you did specifically mention fit.”
″Fine. Yes. I knotted her and it was very pleasurable for both of us and caused her no pain,” I stated, trying to keep it as factual as possible. “And I fed on her lust at the same time,” I added with a grimace.
Damen’s eyes went round. “You fed on her?”
″Not on purpose! It didn’t feel like I was feeding on her. It felt like she was just… feeding me. Unconsciously.”
″I had been wondering if that smell you’re so attracted to was in fact desire,” Damen admitted. I whipped him with a shadow.
″When were you going to tell me that?”
″I didn’t realize you needed so much help with the opposite sex, big brother,” he laughed. Arrogant shithead. “My best guess then is that the awful smell was, in fact, Ophelia’s fear. We scared her that first night when we spoke so casually about Meridia’s violent nature.”
Of course. By the goddesses, I wanted to go back in time and punch myself in the face.
″So if her fear smells repulsive to our kind and her desire” —Damen dodged another whip of shadows— “smells appealing, and you are physically compatible and can feed from her… Well, yes. That all does seem too much to be a coincidence. That’s without even considering the sudden appearance of a colorful flower in the garden. I’ll spend some time in the library tomorrow and see what I can find. Discreetly,” he added hurriedly before I could reiterate that point.
″Thank you.”
″Allerick, this could change everything, you know,” Damen said softly. “What if all this time they’ve been killing us and we were meant to be united? Is there any coming back from that? Would it even matter if we were linked after everything that’s passed?”
I thought of Ophelia, tucked into her oversized bed as she would be by now, rich reddish-brown hair fanning out over her pillow, eyelashes fluttering softly in her sleep, mouth slightly parted.
″Yes. Yes, it would matter. It would be everything.”
