July 2044 - The UTA
The tripback to his cabin took four days. It didn’t have to take quite so long, but Dom was loath to put his mate under more stress than was absolutely necessary. Besides, he liked spending time with her. Every minute they spent in the truck or in motel rooms, Dom felt a little closer to her, a little more certain that she wouldn’t walk out of his life the moment she was able.
So he stretched the trip out, just because he could.
After the horrible night in the motel by the border, when he had to pin Charlotte down to cut out the tattooed sigil on the back of her neck with a blade of compressed shadow, they passed through the carefully portioned countryside of the Draakonriik without incident. The road was smooth and perfectly maintained, something Dom was grateful for when he worried that every bump might jostle his mate’s bandaged neck.
But Charlotte didn’t seem to care. That first day on the road, she held his hand and stared out of her window, watching the dark shapes of dragons and jets soaring overhead as they put a healthy distance between them and the New Zone. She was quiet, but that wasn’t surprising. His mate needed to process all that had happened to her. That would take more than a single night in his arms to accomplish.
Occasionally, a terrifying rumble would rattle the body of the truck, but that didn’t bother her. It bothered him, but that was because he’d been under dragonfire more than once in his life, and the idea of bringing Charlotte close to an aggressive dragon guarding his roost made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
When he asked her why the sounds of dragons fighting over territory — or the gods only knew what else, as combative as those scaly bastards were — didn’t frighten her, Charlotte merely shrugged and answered, “Dragons do a lot of business in the EVP. When I worked for BriTech’s marketing department, I met a few. They’re scary, but once you’ve seen one do a presentation in front of a room full of bored corporate stooges, a little bit of the shine comes off.”
And so the trip went. They wound through the Draakonriik slowly, making stops to see landmarks and stretch their legs, before they passed over the border into the Orclind. Conversation ebbed and flowed naturally between them. Every day, Dom was relieved to see his mate take on a little more sparkle, a little more sass. It was a relief when she started to bicker with him over little things like the audio feed frequency, what was the proper way to make popcorn, or whether shoes should be worn in the house. The nightmare of her captivity had begun its slow fade, helped along by the certainty that Millie and the feyrunner were nothing but picked over bones far behind her.
He didn’t press her for an answer about staying by his side, but rather took a more persuasive tactic: demonstration. Dom did everything in his power to show her that he could be a good mate, even if he could never be perfect.
Every day, he sought to learn more about her and share himself in return. He wasn’t a particularly open demon, but when she told him something about her life, he did his best to reciprocate. He was awkward, of course. Always had been. Speaking about his clan wasn’t hard, but his year in the war was markedly less pleasant. He told her, though, because he needed her to know and because she looked at him with such honest yearning that it unwound him.
When they weren’t driving, he carefully chose their meals so she would always have something she wanted. He thought it was a good tactic, too, until she picked up on what he was doing and demanded that he also get what he wanted. It might have annoyed him, if only her concern for his needs didn’t make his chest tighten with an uncomfortable surge of affection.
However, his favorite part of the trip across the UTA was not their shared laughter at her embarrassing stories from middle school, or the sight of her staring misty-eyed at the sunset streaking over the plains. It wasn’t even the moments when he caught her staring at his profile, her eyes wide and soft.
It was the evenings.
Every night, they retired to a rented room together. And every night, he coaxed his Changeling into long, drugging kisses until the sound of her wings singing for him filled the room. He liked to tease her until her skin flashed with that impatient glow, telling him without words how desperate she was for his stroking fingers and eager mouth.
Dom was very careful to always make it about her pleasure, not his. Even when she reached for him, a question in her eyes, he insisted. Not because he didn’t want her touch — desperately — but because he had his demon pride to think of. Above all things, winning and caring for his mate took precedence.
Despite the tension that pulled all his muscles taut and made his cock ache, he didn’t want to give her the impression that he wanted to take from her; not when she was just finding her footing again, and definitely not when there was still a lingering fear in her that he might just disappear when she wasn’t looking.
It was a war to win her trust, and every night he won another battle. Every time she reached for him first, it was a win. Every stolen kiss at a stoplight or in the booth of a restaurant was a victory. Every morning that he woke up to her little claws curled possessively into his chest was a boon.
For the first time in his life, Dom felt like he was living for more than the safety of solitude. He lived for every soft puff of her breath in his ear and every bright smile she flashed his way. Never was he more proud, more assured of his place and his worth, than when his mate grabbed his hand without thinking — a reflex that spoke of just how far she’d come in the days since her release.
It was good timing, too.
As they neared the Coeur d’Alene Forest, a quarter of which was his assigned territory, Dom began to feel more than the usual sexual tension raking across his nerves.
They had just passed a large caravan of orcs, a family unit moving from one settlement to another in the annual migration, and were moving into the land that bordered his home when he finally thought to count the days until August.
Three. Three days.
Dom’s knuckles bleached white as he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. No wonder it had gotten harder and harder to restrain himself when he pleasured Charlotte. It was in the drowsy days of summer, when the heat began to tip over into the chill of autumn, that his kind went into rut.
Normally, that wasn’t a problem for him. He rarely saw other people, so his increased aggression and constant, painful arousal wasn’t an issue. Like all beings who had a mating season, he learned to deal. Dom typically worked out more, saw people less, and took care of the rest with his hand.
But the solution that had so far served him well was useless now.
He had a mate. He had a mate who would be staying with him for the foreseeable future, and if he didn’t scare her off, he might even be lucky enough to keep her forever.
Once he realized what was happening, Dom struggled to block out the way drawing her scent into his nose made his skin tighten over his bones, or how his cock throbbed in his too-tight jeans. The presence of his near-constant erection suddenly made more sense. He couldn’t decide if it was a miracle that he’d finally found his mate just in time for this year’s rut or if it was a disaster in the making.
He shot a glance at her from the corner of his eye. Sweat gathered along his spine as he watched her fiddle with a plastic bottle of what was once orange juice. Since the discovery of her gift, Charlotte had taken to experimenting with liquids, trying to understand where her talents were.
So far, she’d managed to turn milk into yogurt and cola into an acid so corrosive, it nearly burned a hole clean through the floor of the truck. He wasn’t sure what she was going for this time, but he could tell she was only half paying attention. Most of her focus was on the audio feed coming through the speakers of the truck.
“…indispensable. While I understand the public’s concern that I am too inexperienced to take the seat, I assure you that I am not.” Theodore Solbourne’s smooth voice filled the car. His address, streamed live from the Solbourne Tower on Treasure Island, came in crystal clear. “I have the support of not only my sister, but the Five Families, who, after a small amount of debate, voted to approve her abdication. The travel ban was put in place not as a means to control the transfer of power, as some have suggested, but to quell mass panic. It will be lifted in five weeks, at which point I am certain the public will be comfortable with having me as their new Sovereign.”