All That Glitters
18+ 15.7k words. Dragon!Homelander x F!Reader fantasy au, messy world building, referenced cannibalism, handfeeding, super dubious consent, sexual coercion, monster anatomy, size difference, cunnilingus, breeding kink, dirty talk, marathon sex, mating bond/bite, knotting, tongue baths, virgins, scent kink, overstimulation, body betrayal, fairy tale schmoop. AO3 Link!
Summary: In a world where the only currencies that matter are gold and blood, the gods are lavished with both. Your regions god is a fearsome beast said to reign hellfire from the skies should his appetite not be satiated. When the demand for human sacrifices increases, you make the choice to volunteer yourself, determined to bring an end to the bloodshed, and ascend into the jaws that await you in the old stone tower deep in the woods.
illustration by the ever incredible @anon-nee, who was instrumental to the writing of this fic. see the full piece here!
originally written for Monsterlander Mania, but obviously spiraled wildly out of control.
For as long as you can remember, there have always been sacrifices.
Such a thing is not unique to your village. Gods–and the creatures worshiped as such–throughout the world demand all manner of recompense for protecting the lands of those who idolize them. If the slaughter of a single lamb ensures green pastures in which the herd may thrive, few ever think twice before they lift the blade.
Not all townships worship for benevolence, however. Yours has always worshiped for mercy.
For generations, stories of hellfire raining from the sky have been passed by your people. A great, terrible beast with wings as wide as ten men were tall once patrolled the skies above you, wielding power so devastating that not even ballistae firing bolts the size of tree trunks could fell it.
It had a hundred names, each more terrible than the last. Scourge of the Skies, the Red Death, Flame’s Maw, and perhaps most unfortunately, the Devourer. Named as such for the countless lives it began to claim when treasures were deemed an insufficient tribute. Sacrifices were initially sparse, required only every dozen or so seasons. As time went on, the Devourer grew greedier and greedier, with the timespan between sacrifices shortening.
By the time you offer yourself to the council, there has been a sacrifice every month for over a year.
The wagon hardly jostles on this well-trodden road. You imagine it used to be a rougher ride, but with the increase in frequency of travel, it has smoothed. The thought worsens the feeling of icy weight in your stomach. One might think the exquisite fabrics you’re dressed in would bring some measure of comfort–softer than anything you’ve worn before–but the extravagance of them only serves to further alienate you from yourself.
You have become a thing. A finely adorned offering, and the fabric makes your skin crawl for it.
The tree cover breaks, revealing a monolithic stone tower that stands so tall, it splits the sky in two.
The Tower of the Seven. It’s been generations since anyone knew exactly what it was named for, but legend speaks of mythic creatures that were once held in such reverence, this tower was built in their honor. It served as both a temple and home to these venerated beings.
The years have not been kind to it. The stone pillars have become wild with overgrowth, and the air about this place reeks of stale, old death.
It stands now as a graveyard.
Even the horses refuse to venture much further than the threshold of the treeline, forcing you and your attendants out of the wagon to tread the remainder of the trek on foot. The men who walk with you carry short swords, but they serve no practical purpose, their edges having long since dulled. They are not here to protect you, they are as much a part of the ceremony as your fine clothes.
You shield your eyes as you look up at the staggering height of the tower, but swiftly drop your gaze. Best not to think of what awaits you.
On paper, sacrifice seems a simple thing. Slitting one’s throat upon an altar, floating a burning pyre across the river, or feeding the tribute a concoction of sleeping death and burying them into eternal slumber. Murder can be a righteous thing in the hands of a believer, or so they say.
For you, and those who have come before you, martyrdom is not as effortless as lying down and dying for the cause. The tower presents a trial to you. You must willingly climb the hundreds upon hundreds of large stone steps in order to prove yourself a worthy tribute.
Why you must prove your flesh worthy of consumption is beyond you. You’ve never heard of a farmer who sends his cattle to run laps before the slaughter. It seems a petty thing to demand. Perhaps the Devourer has grown indolent and slovenly in its feasting.
It’s easy to dream up nightmarish images of such an awful creature. A legless winged wyrm with a ribbed body, fat and slimy like an oversized earthworm. It would have an enormous maw with hundreds upon hundreds of jagged teeth, its breath reeking of charred flesh and sulfur. Such a wicked beast would stink like the layers of hell.
Somehow, tormenting yourself like this is an oddly calming distraction. The more nightmarish it becomes in your mind, the less real all of this feels. It’s just a bad dream.
No one speaks as you reach the base of the tower. There’s nothing left to say. You’re one of a dozen in the last year alone these men have ferried to their death. It almost seems cruel to expect eye contact, let alone sympathy. For that reason, it catches you off guard when one of the older of the three, a man named Hector with a thick set of troubled brows furrowed above kind but bloodshot, watery eyes puts his hand on your shoulder, offering a light squeeze.
The last sacrifice had been his own daughter.
In his gaze you find grief and gratitude in equal measure. Neither brings comfort. You return a small nod and move your eyes back to the ordeal that awaits you.
The tower is like an optical illusion: the proportions make it seem a reasonable size at a distance, but the closer you walk to it, the more mythical a thing it becomes. The archways curve high above your head, sized for creatures of legend, and the head of the building disappears completely into the sky.
In the center of it, a spiraling stone staircase beckons you. The masonry is exquisitely smooth despite the age of it, carved in an era when magic was a hundred times more prolific than it is now. It’s wide and open, the steps so large that you’ll be taking them one at a time. Worse than that, however, is the complete absence of any kind of protective railing.
If you sway, you very well may fall to your death.
At the center of the spiral stands a pile of debris. As you approach, a rustling catches your attention and you freeze, eying the pile warily. The head of a creature suddenly pops up, startling your heart into a thunder, but after a beat you recognize it for what it is: a small fox, its muzzle dirty. The two of you stare at one another for a long moment before one of the men behind you calls out, “Shoo, shoo now.”
Everyone keeps hushed, as if terrified of disturbing what is yet unseen.
Moving closer, you anticipate you might see a dead rabbit, or perhaps a chicken. Anything would have been a more welcome sight than the gnarled half-eaten body of a woman dressed just like you piled amongst the debris. You gasp, both hands flying over your mouth as you stumble a few steps backwards.
For a horrifying moment, you swear you see your own face in the rotten remnants staring back at you with black, empty eye sockets. It’s the hair that gives away the delusion, however, and with a chill down your spine you recognize the sacrifice who came before you; Hector’s daughter.
“Nadja,” the man groans morosely, the weight of grief in his voice palpable. You move away, towards the stairs, and watch with a morbid sort of fascination as the man weeps over the corpse of his daughter, touching her hair and her clothes, the only parts of her not twisted and rotted with death, the body left for maggots and scavengers. It’s sick, nothing like the beautiful and noble gesture sacrifice is always said to be. You look up at the dizzying height of the spiral staircase, following the line of it until the stone disappears into darkness.
Did she fall, or was she cast away, having somehow proven herself unworthy?
In a strange sense, watching the men wrap her body in cloth to be carried home feels very much like playing the part of voyeur to your own demise. You stand at a distance, hand braced upon the stone, unable to shake the dread that you’re witnessing a vision of the future. Your future.
No. You will not be left for the insects and carrion-feeders. You turn your back to the sound of Hector’s weeping and, without another world, determinedly begin your ascent one large stone step at a time. Although you feel the men’s eyes heavily upon you, they remain silent, as if already grieving you.
Do not, you think brazenly, skin flushed with unexpected fires that bring your blood to a boil. Do not dare mourn what isn’t dead.
Those flames burn hot enough to carry you easily up the first several floors, indignantly stomping your way. You’ve heard stories of this tower all your life, but nothing could have prepared you for the true scale of it. Most of it is in a terrible state of decay, full of overgrowth and rot that, centuries ago, may have been wood and cloth.
You stop for a breath beneath the remains of what looks to have once been a vibrant mural. You can see trace evidence of beautiful paints, but whatever it depicts has been brutally clawed from the stonework. You lift a hand up high to trace one of the deep gouges in the stone; the marks are spread too far apart for your fingers to reach, but you can make out five distinct patterns nonetheless, like drag marks from a hand three or four times the size of your own.
Beyond the ruined mural, there are statues, too. You pass a grand monument of a woman who stands over seven heads tall wielding a sword of equal might, the statue adorned with steel bracers. You think she might have been beautiful in the same way a frightening storm is, but the head of the statue is long since gone.
On the next floor, you see upon the ground the ruins of a statue of a mermaid–at least, you thought it was. Upon further inspection, however, you see that the statue depicts a man. He has the lower body of a fish and strange indentations along his ribs, just beneath his bare carved chest. He, too, is headless, torso split horizontally, stone strewn across the floor.
This temple must have belonged to these lost figures, their monuments as desecrated as the rest of the tower. Whoever the Seven was, the world has since forgotten.
You wonder if the Devourer did this, defiled this temple to erase whatever history of heroes came before its tyranny.
Ultimately, you only find six statues. None of them have managed to keep their heads, and some are in worse shape than others. You imagine the seventh might have been destroyed entirely. It’s easier to imagine how or why these things might be than it is to focus on how badly your body aches, how you started this venture with the morning sun barely upon you, and yet you barely feel any closer to your destination as the darkness of night encroaches.
Every limb screams for rest. You stop occasionally, but you feel you must not sleep. Was poor Nadja pitched to her death for sleeping through her trial? You’d rather not find out. You’re not even sure if you would wake with the same angry conviction that drives you forward now, climbing step after unforgiving step. It’s gotten colder the higher you’ve gone, too. There’s a chance if you slept amidst the stone, you would turn to it yourself.
“Grant me strength,” you whisper to whomever may be listening. Be they fae or devil, benevolent or malevolent, it would be a boon to know there was some manner of being on your side.
You lean on the wall far from the edge as you ascend the spiral, too nervous of a fall to look over the edge and gauge your progress. A brisk wind chill has begun howling through the tower, whipping your clothing about and biting at your skin. You hug one arm tightly across your chest, bracing against the cold. At this rate, you’ll make for a crunchy meal not just for your bones, but for the frost you arrive covered in.
Your foot slides on something on the step that shifts and clatters. You nearly fall, heart hammering in your chest as you manage to catch yourself. Looking down, you’re shocked to see a pile of shining gold coins spilling down the steps amongst the debris. There is enough wealth discarded on these steps to see a dozen families fed for years and years to come.
You must be getting close. Carefully, despite the tremble running through your body, you shuffle your way through the mess, kicking it aside when you need to clear more of a path. The sound of rubble and gold and the like falling off the edge of the steps makes you flinch, the prolonged clattering of it serving as a reminder of just how agonizingly high you’ve managed to climb.
The familiar flicker of fire light draws a gasp of relief from you, tears gathered in your eyes from the sheer pain of moving your body forward. You can see shadows dancing across the walls, beckoning you from the cold with the barest hint of a warm draft. You’re practically crawling up the steps now, every part of you aching horribly. The tremble in your body is so severe, you worry you would fall to your death if you continued trying to walk through the hoard of treasures that have spilled down the steps.
You practically sob with relief when you reach the final step, limbs quaking beneath you as you haul yourself up onto the top floor and away from the awful railless edge of the spiraling stairs. You bury your face in the fold of your arms. The mixture of relief and exhaustion is so intense, the rest of the world falls away briefly, and the only thing that matters is catching your breath while you all but dry heave on the floor.
“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you were going to make it,” purrs a resonant, honied voice, snapping you immediately back to reality. You shoot into an upright position so suddenly your head spins, blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear your blurry vision.
Before you rests an enormous circular hall lit with dozens upon dozens of torches. The walls are lined with beautiful arched windows, and the interior is piled nearly to the vaulted ceiling with obscene amounts of coin, weapons, artifacts and similar treasure. Your gaze drifts towards the center of it all, where the source of the voice awaits you.
As it turns out, The Devourer is no oversized earthworm.
Reclined upon a magnificently carved marble throne, you behold a creature made of equal parts man and beast. Even sitting, his stature easily brings him heads taller than you. He is adorned exquisitely in gold embellishments–jewelry and piercings alike–and rich navy slacks, serving as a fine centerpiece to the lavish, untidy wealth that surrounds him. He wears a crown fit for a king, the jewel of it a radiant blue that matches his sharp predatory gaze. His lips spread into a wolfish grin. You’re utterly bewitched by the flash of his fangs.
“Rise,” he orders you, gesturing with a clawed hand that’s easily the size of your head. His rings shine beautifully in the firelight. “And speak.”
Shakily, you fight to climb to your feet. Worm or not, this man–this creature has been preying upon your people for generations. You remind yourself of the countless lives lost, of the mourning families, of Nadja’s desecrated corpse and the sound of her father weeping over the rotten remains of her. You steel yourself.
“You who the people know as Scourge of the Skies, Red Death,” you begin, blinking rapidly. Your head began swimming the second you stood. You’ve never been so worn out in your life, and though there are flames here that offer a slight degree of warmth, the cold has sunk deep into your bones. As you speak, your vision gradually begins to tunnel. “Flame’s… Maw… and the Devourer,” you address, fighting desperately to stay focused even as he fades in and out of clarity. “I’ve come to pay my village tribute, and to… to…”
The darkness at the edges of your vision thickens. Your words feel heavy and slurred on your tongue. You sway, feeling your own head slosh like a bucket of water, and before you know it, you’re pitching forward, and the world goes black.
That was anticlimactic.
There was a time he would have been met with awe. Reverence. He didn’t expect you to simply black out.
Scourge, Red Death, Flame’s Maw… Maw. He’s always despised that word in particular, and the ugly imagery it evokes. Just a handful out of hundreds of names he’s been called over the years–if you can call them that. Many border on insults, if not are so outright. The most tolerable name he can remember is Homelander.
They called him that in celebration, he recalls. Those were the last of the days he had any care left for them.
He blows a smoky little raspberry as he stands, hands clasping behind his back beneath his wings. His tail sways idly as he approaches, tentatively intrigued by your splayed form. It’s rare that a sacrifice makes it all the way to the top at all, let alone in a single day. The last one only made it halfway before she decided falling to her death was a kinder fate than him.
Truth be told, he should have reigned hell upon their little village for her insolence. Fortunately for them, her display filled him with far more apathy than it did fury.
He crouches down near enough to touch, though he hesitates, hand ghosting just over your body. He tilts his head to the side. Your breaths are shallow in your sleep, a slight wheeze to each one. Your body is clearly overexerted.
Delicately, he slips his hand under your cheek to turn your face to him, examining your features. You’re prettier like this, the tension drained from your expression and replaced with peace. Certainly not the worst tribute he’s been offered. You were at least determined to reach him.
The corner of his mouth twitches.
He won’t kill you. Not yet.
Homelander lifts you up into his arms, supporting your comparatively slight form with ease. You feel as frail as any mortal might, but the weight of you in his arms strikes him with a peculiar sense of melancholy. He takes pause, more closely observing the shape of you cradled in his arms, head lolled against his chest. You fit there nicely, small as you are. He can almost pretend you’ve simply fallen asleep in the crook of his arm; somewhere you’ve always belonged.
It’s an intriguing little fantasy. He hasn’t felt the need to indulge in one of those in a long while. He keeps his eyes on you as he walks you to the collection of pelts gathered on the far side of the room, where he lays you down atop them.
What had you been intending to say before you passed out? Your departing words spin round and round in his mind while he looks you over, lowering himself until he’s on his hands and knees above you. Tributes used to come richly adorned in jewelry and glittering things, but such pageantry has long since vanished. He’s surrounded by enough of it that the absence doesn’t bother him anymore.
The glitter of gold hardly catches his eye these days. He doesn’t call for sacrifices to add to his wealth. He only seeks to quell his boredom. Perhaps you will prove useful for this, at least for a time.
Pressing his clawed thumb lightly to your chin, he tilts your head away and leans in, nosing up the line of your throat, lips barely ghosting your soft flesh. He inhales the salt-sweet smell of you, a mixture of sweat, the dusty stone steps you’ve scaled, and the sweet herbal oil bath your kind always receives before you’re sent to him. The blend is strangely intoxicating on you.
It makes him wonder if you taste as good as you smell.
Parting his lips, his split tongue spills past them and drags a slow serpentine pattern from your neck to your jaw. Mmm, fuck. You taste better than you smell, the rich oil you were bathed in still clinging to your skin beneath the salty tang of your sweat.
It would be too easy to devour you. He groans quietly at the thought, nuzzling into the crook of your neck. He’s known few things more intimate than sinking his sharp teeth into warm, pliant flesh. The feel of a pulse slowing against his tongue. The metallic rush of blood down the back of his throat. He hasn’t craved human flesh the way he does right now in years, yet something in the scent of you has ignited that primal aspect of him. Salivating already, he swallows it away and draws back.
Not yet. He still wants to hear what you were going to say.
It makes him smile to see the goosebumps that have erupted on every inch of your exposed skin. He cocks his head to the side and trails his index claw down the center of your chest, dragging down the pretty white fabric of your sacrificial dress, stopping just shy of the swell of your breasts. More goosebumps there, too.
None of it compares to the sound that you make. In your sleep, your brows furrow, and you exhale a noise somewhere between pain and sheer exhaustion, your small hand brushing his as you adjust against the pile of plush fur pelts. His gaze drops sharply, hand lifting tentatively. After a beat, he sets it down lightly atop yours. Captivated, he watches your whole body respond to his touch, turning and curling in towards him like a flora bending to the light of the sun.
Fascinated by your innate reactivity to him, Homelander lowers himself onto his side next to you. After a beat of hesitation, he encircles your wrist with his thumb and index finger and brings your palm flat to the warmth of his bare chest. A tantalizing shiver rolls through your unconscious form. Just as he had anticipated–hoped?–you follow the feel of him, moving completely onto your side and into him, breathing out a shuddering little exhale while the fire that runs through his veins warms you.
It isn’t enough to stop you shivering, though. Shifting, he spreads out his wing and curls that over you, blocking the draft that spills in from the surrounding windows. Only then does the tension in your body begin to ease, warmth chasing out the chill from your bones.
Homelander smirks, feeling inexplicably accomplished over this mundane little feat. He’s never particularly cared for the comfort of his tributes before; they’ve never served as anything more than playthings and meals. You should be no different. He knows you would be a delectable thing on his tongue, warm and wet down his throat, yet the thought of you in pieces–cold and unmoving–instantly vanishes his appetite.
He wants you in a new way entirely. Against him, with him. He wants to taste more of you, drag his tongue along the plains of your body and see how else you’ll react to him. He wants to find the places that quicken your breath. Would you sing your pleasure for him? He’s barely heard your voice, but already he can imagine it vividly.
You would. You will.
He’s begun to pant at the thought alone, smoke wafting from his mouth, his eyes softly aglow with crimson light. The smell of you has filled his senses so thoroughly he feels intoxicated by it, and between his thighs, his cock has begun to throb. He leans closer and nestles into your hair, inhaling deeply, a rumble leaving him on a warm exhale.
His entire body has taken on the heavy pulse of his heart, alight with the most visceral feeling he’s had in centuries. This is more than hunger, more than carnality–you mean something. Never before has he felt compelled to find pleasure in the frail body of a human, yet his blood sings it voicelessly in the back of his mind, his every instinct screaming one word again and again and again.
Mate.
Homelander had given up on the concept of a mate a long time ago, given that he’s… abnormal. Sterile. As an unnatural creature, there could not be a natural match for him. Someone who would call to his very blood and set it aflame. Yet here you are, seeking him as desperately as he once sought you. Is that why you were able to accomplish what so few before you had, pushing your body so clearly beyond your limits?
A low, possessive rumble leaves him. Reckless.
He pets your hair, testing the texture with his fingers awhile before letting his hand roam down the back of your neck, between your shoulders, up over your hip, down your leg. You’re no longer cool to the touch or shivering. He flattens his palm to your back and closes his eyes briefly.
He’s never heard of a dragon bonding to a human before. He wonders if you’ll feel it too, recognize it for what it is, or if your mortality will make you oblivious to the depths of it.
It takes every ounce of his restraint not to shake you awake to find out.
Instead, he patiently learns the cadence of your heart. He commits your scent to memory, weeding out the natural musk of your skin beneath the herbs and oils you’ve been lathered in. Soon enough he’ll be able to pick you out of a crowd by the thump of your pulse alone, track you down from miles away with nothing but the barest whiff of you.
Not that he’d ever let you get so far from him now that he has you.
All you’re missing now is his scent. Leaning down, he licks a line adjacent to the one he had prior, and then another, mindful of his horns. The sweet taste of you makes him moan.
He spends hours with you tucked in against him, idling away the time by learning your body as well as teaching you his. He nuzzles his cheek lightly against yours just so that he can turn and taste that same spot, something deep and primal in him appeased by tasting himself on your skin.
“My mate,” he half sighs, half growls.
He can’t wait to meet you.
Consciousness comes back to you in a gradual slew of sensation. Your fingers twitch, flexing in what feels like a lush, thick pelt of fur beneath you. Your whole body is pleasantly warm, as if you’ve fallen asleep in front of a crackling hearth, the cold of those awful stone stairs a distant memory.
The stairs…
Your eyes snap wide open, your spine going stiff. You’re laying on your back. Something wet and hot is dragging along the exposed skin of your shoulder–your dress pulled askew–in repetitive swipes. Looking down, all you can see is a mess of flaxen colored hair and one long, angular horn, the tip of it adorned in gold.
The press of what you can only imagine to be a tongue is unnaturally smooth, as hot as settled coal against your skin. The beast gives a growl, and sharp teeth graze your skin. Your throat feels tight, the scream that bubbles up locked behind the tension of your jaw.
Oh gods, you think, beginning to shake. He’s eating me!
“Good morning,” purrs a familiar voice, the words vibrating against your skin. He lifts his head from your shoulder, though he doesn’t go far. You half expect to see his maw bloodied with your entrails from all the horror stories you’ve been told, but his grin is as clean as it was the first moment you beheld him.
Up close, he’s even larger than you had initially realized. His face is well defined, with strong cheekbones decorated with smooth red scales that ascend into his hairline, where a golden crown sits neatly behind his horns.
“Mmm, someone got their beauty sleep,” he says, the words a low, pleased rumble. You’re speechless, watching in bewilderment as he cups your face, hand so large it covers most of your neck, too. “You were out for hours.”
Your eyes dart to your shoulder, where your dress has been tugged down, but your skin appears unmarred. Around you, one of his enormous wings is curved over, shielding you both from the light and the cold beyond. You can’t move your legs, and with a glance, you understand why: his enormous tail is draped across both of them, pinning you in place. You look back at him, eyes wide in fear and confusion. You wonder if he’s been with you like this through the entire night. “You’re… You’re not eating me?”
The broad smile he flashes makes your heart skip a beat. His eyes, though sharp and a shade of blue you’ve only ever seen in the sky, are disarmingly human. Beautiful, even. They crinkle at the corners with what almost looks like fondness.
“No.”
“Why not?” You ask instantly, adrenaline making your voice sharp. “Not that I wish for you to eat me,” you say just as quickly. “But do you not–were you not–”
He cuts you off with a noise that you belatedly realize is a laugh, the resonance in his chest so unearthly it gives every sound he makes an inhuman quality. “No, I was not eating you,” he says, sounding far too amused for your liking. “Tasting you, yes. And you do taste divine,” he says, leaning in again. You push your head back into the furs as much as you can, but he moves to the side, bringing his lips to your ear. “I knew my mate would.”
Mate?!
Your hands fly up to his chest–gods, he’s as warm as hearth stones–as if to push him back, but you may as well attempt to push an oak tree aside. “What?”
He draws back, glancing down at your hands pressed to the bare skin of his chest before his gaze returns to yours, eyes narrowed in distinct pleasure. “Mate,” he says again, deliberately drawing the word out. “Dragons bond only once in a lifetime. Usually to another dragon. Clearly exceptions can be made, and you, precious little thing that you are… appear to be mine.”
His eyes fall shut, he leans in, and with a lurch of your stomach you realize he means to kiss you, his lips pursed and rapidly approaching. Your own lips part and a noise wholly outside of your control escapes you; a scream so shrill and sudden that it knocks even him back in surprise.
Blinking several times, he gives you a quick once over, visibly expecting to see you wounded and bloody somewhere. He looks back to your face when he finds nothing amiss. “What?”
“I can’t–I don’t know you,” you blurt out, equal parts flustered and alarmed. You can feel yourself burning up, and it isn’t just from the heat of him against you.
“So?” He dismisses, smiling with an array of sharp pearly teeth. “I’m your mate.”
“Humans don’t have those,” you counter, squirming under the weight of his tail. It’s like he’s draped several sacks of grain across your legs. “My lord Devourer, I–”
He scoffs, tail lifting as he shifts, bringing himself up onto his hands and knees over you, his wing unfurling and allowing the sun to spill in, washing you both in its light. “Homelander. If you must use one of those silly names, use Homelander. I’d prefer beloved, though,” he says with a sly lilt to his mouth.
A shiver rolls down your spine. Along with light, brisk morning air has slipped in between your bodies.
“Homelander,” you repeat, a name you’ve never heard before. It’s a great deal less menacing than the others, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has been eating your townsman for as long as anyone can remember. “I–”
He takes hold of your jaw with just his index finger and thumb, the rest of his fingers curling lightly over your throat. “You talk too much,” he tells you, eyes hooded and hungry. “Are you going to scream every time I try to kiss you?”
“Maybe,” you choke out, fists clenched tightly in the furs beneath you. He leans closer, tilting his head, his nose barely brushing the tip of yours. “I’ve never been kissed by a dragon before. Like I said, we don’t have m-mmm!”
It happens so swiftly you don’t have time to gather the air to scream. He presses his lips firmly to yours, making a noise so close to a moan that, despite the relative chasteness of the kiss itself, you flush with the indecency of it. It feels… hot. The heat of him is nearly too much to handle, like touching your lips to a hot mug of tea, but there is something intoxicating about it. He uses that heat to mold you to him, pulling you closer, his body sinking down against yours.
You’re too dumbstruck by the whole of the situation to struggle–not that it would accomplish much–which leaves you to simply experience it. His lips are tentative against yours, not harsh or demanding. He coaxes yours with his as if to dance, luring you into something that almost feels good.
Your heart hammers in your chest, his warmth pooling in your belly and spreading slowly through the rest of your body like boiled water poured into a lukewarm tub. He’s immovable, inescapable, and to your dismay, not entirely awful.
“I want to claim you,” he all but growls against your lips, his other hand clawing slowly down your side, tugging at your dress.
Your heart leaps painfully against your ribs. “Homelander,” you say, though he’s hardly paying you any mind, kissing your cheek now, your jaw, carving a wicked trail with his lips while his hand dips lower and lower, seeking the bottom hem of your dress. Heart racing, you breathlessly cry, “Beloved!”
That gives him pause. He rears back to look down at you, head slightly cocked, eyes bright and attentive. Your breaths are shallow, pulse pounding in your throat. You swallow dryly. “I’m thirsty,” you tell him, which is no lie. Your throat is so dry it almost hurts to speak. “Horribly. And hungry, I’ve not eaten since yesterday’s breakfast. You mean for me to survive, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he says, expression twisting like he finds offense in your words. “You’ll want for nothing.”
“Then please. Water?” You push, praying that he is more man than beast.
He regards you quietly, eyes subtly darting back and forth. There’s a petulant kind of impatience to his gaze that catches you off-guard, like a boy who’s been told he has to wait before he gets to play with his new favorite toy.
“Water,” he echoes eventually. You nod. He startles you when he exhales a little plume of smoke from his nose, reluctantly lifting himself off of you. The chill of his absence is immediate. “Don’t move,” he says, suddenly looking displaced. You’ve caught him by surprise. Perhaps you’ll survive this yet.
You watch him rise to his full height, standing easily eight feet tall. You sit up, pulling the furs over your legs to combat the cold seeping in. The muscles of his back give a mesmerizing flex as he stretches his wings out, the span of them just as jaw-dropping as his height. He wears furs over his shoulders held in place with thick leather straps that cross over his back and chest, emphasizing his musculature as well as the crimson plating that covers his body.
Spines run down the length of his back, transitioning down into a tail that’s even longer than he is tall. It moves along the ground in zigzags, almost like a serpent. You don’t realize how intensely you’re staring until you look back up and realize he’s looking at you over his shoulder, those piercing blue eyes keenly set on yours.
The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smirk. Something about his expression makes you feel like you’ve been caught doing something naughty. You drop your gaze.
“Back in a jiffy,” he says.
You look up just in time to see him step off the ledge, those brilliant red wings fanning out behind him. He disappears so suddenly that you can’t help but gasp, sitting up on your knees. You hear the beat of wings against the air, and then a second later see him lift back up into the skyline, twisting in the air before gliding back down out of sight.
You sit in stunned silence, listening to the fading thrum of his wings. It doesn’t feel real. You don’t know if this is some kind of twisted game he pulls with every sacrifice, or if you’re truly somehow different. You weren’t entirely expecting him to listen to you, but he did. He’s gone, presumably to fetch you food and water. You don’t know how, but you just commanded the Devourer to not only let you go, but bring you a meal.
In hindsight, you’re a little concerned that it was never specified what kind of meal. As far as you’re aware, he primarily eats people.
Adjusting your gown, you haul yourself up to your feet, crossing your arms in a vain attempt to protect the heat of his body lingering on your skin. When that doesn’t work, you pick up one of the several fur pelts strewn on the floor and drape it over your shoulders, sighing in relief. The pelt still holds some residual warmth; a boon over the lovely but ineffective fabric of your ceremonial gown.
In the light of day, you can make out a great deal more detail throughout the lair. The floor to ceiling archways deter you from venturing too far beyond the center, but still there is plenty to investigate. For example, the throne catches your eye immediately.
The size of it makes you feel like a child again, navigating a world not built for you. The masonry of it is exceptionally smooth beneath your fingers, save for a handful of deep, jagged gouges that marr the arm rest. Tilting your head, you realize that you recognize these marks: they match those that you’d seen on the ruined murals.
You trace them with your fingers, connecting them now to the draconic claws that, just moments ago, had so delicately followed the curve of your body. He could so easily tear you apart, and yet in that moment you had never known a gentler touch. You pull your hand back beneath the pelt, feeling a shiver roll through you that has little to do with the morning chill.
Mate. That word sticks in your brain like a wad of gummy tree sap.
Circling the throne, you carefully step around the glimmering mess of gold, silver and jewels that litter the stone floor. There’s so much of it that it doesn’t even look real, stacked over itself like forgotten hay bales left to rot. There is more wealth here than you’ve seen in your life. A single satchel of it would keep you comfortable for the rest of your life, and yet here it serves as little more than clutter. As far as you can tell, it means nothing here.
The Devourer stopped seeking material treasure generations ago.
As you explore, part of you expects to find the corpses of all those who have come before you. Dozens upon dozens of bodies stacked up in varying states of consumption or decay, or maybe a monument built of their bones. You find no such construct, though. In fact, nothing about this place seems put together. You can’t imagine the madness that living like this for a week would induce in you, let alone decades.
To the east, movement catches your attention, startling your heart into your throat. It looks like a silhouetted figure at first, but your brain catches up quickly, and you approach the gently billowing fabric. It’s draped over a statue, giving it the illusion of a person, and your curiosity gets the best of you as you tug the drape down off of it.
You suck in a sharp breath. Once again, you find yourself faced with a legend given form– a painstakingly and intricately carved statue in the Devourer’s perfect likeness. It comes as no surprise that this is the only in-tact statue you’ve seen, but what you don’t understand is why it’s even here. If the Devourer was a usurper, some vicious interloper, why would there be a monument to him in the same vein as all the others?
The plaque beneath it reads: Homelander. Son of the Skies, Protector of the Earth.
Devourer, Scourge, Flame’s Maw–these names are all you have ever known, and yet this is the name carved in stone. He was once worshiped not out of fear, but reverence that you can see in every gentle curve of stone.
What happened?
Shuffling closer to the statue, the discarded fabric gathers at your feet. It’s not quite to scale, but it’s a handsome likeness nonetheless. It’s certainly been cared for more than anything else in this place. You wonder if it’s just vanity or if it’s something less obvious. You trace the smooth stonework, letting yourself get a better look at this version of him that’s less likely to eat you.
Objectively speaking, it’s a handsome visage. The resemblance is uncanny, clearly the work of an intensely skilled mason. His jaw is strong, eyes set forward in unerring determination. Tentatively, you touch the lips of the statue. He’d been so certain that he wanted to kiss you. Just the thought of his closeness and heat makes your stomach erupt in a flutter of butterflies.
Mate.
“I thought I told you not to move.”
You barely hear the full sentence, your own scream ringing loudly in your ears. You move to spin around, but your foot catches on the pile of fabric you had dropped to the ground and suddenly your whole body is pitching backwards, the back of your skull destined for the smooth, unyielding stone behind you.
Fortunately for your brain matter, your descent is halted just shy of contact, one familiar clawed hand cupping the back of your neck while the other lands at your back, steadying you.
Homelander stands over you, a curious quirk to his brow. With his hand at the small of your back, his claws press lightly through the fabric, effortlessly upholding your weight. He holds you as if you’ve been caught mid dip in a dance.
“Gods, you scared me,” you say, eyes wide. “I didn’t hear you.” You had been so certain you would hear his return based on the sound of his wings when he’d left, but his approach had been terrifyingly silent.
“Yes, I know. It makes me a very effective hunter,” he says, dipping down to nuzzle at your neck, taking advantage of how the pelt has slipped off of your shoulder. He inhales the smell of you, prickling goosebumps all over your body. “I missed you.”
“You’ve barely been gone,” you reply impulsively, awkwardly trying to adjust yourself out of this arch he has you in. No use. His size makes him impossible to maneuver around, and your foot is still tangled up in the fabric that he’s currently standing on.
He gives another one of those rumbling sighs, drawing back to look at you. “You’re supposed to say that you missed me, too,” he chastises you, and though his tone seems light, you’re sure you see a flicker of impatience or irritation in his gaze. Maybe both. Despite how fearsome the sum total of his features make him, you’re once again caught off guard by his eyes. Though the color of them is icy, there’s a distinctly human warmth to them that grounds you in his gaze.
Still, the last thing you want to do is make him angry.
“Oh,” you croak quietly, realizing he’s actually waiting for you to say it, staring down expectantly while he holds you. “I… missed you, too,” you return stiltedly, unsure your hesitant delivery will be satisfactory. Shockingly, his expression lightens, lips curving into a smile. He lifts you off of your feet, untangling you from the mess beneath you and turning around to set you back down on relatively clear flooring.
“Good,” he purrs, stroking his hand down the back of your head like he’s petting an animal. He seems determined to touch you, but entirely unaware of how to. He cups the base of your skull and tightens the gap between your bodies, enticing you with his warmth as much as he terrifies you with the hunger in his eyes.
You put your hands to his chest, soaking up the heat of him as you vainly try to maintain an ounce of personal space. “Ah, the–the statue, it’s beautiful. Why do you cover it up?” You ask, the words leaving you in a flustered tumble.
He pauses, glancing over his shoulder, looking at the statue like he’s only just remembered it exists. “Oh, that. Mmm. Don’t always like what he has to say,” he replies, fitting his hand over top of yours, pressing it to his chest.
You blink. What in the world does that mean?
“You humans chill so quickly. I’ll have to light the hearth next time I leave you,” he says, earning a yelp from you as he abruptly lifts you up into his arms, tail slithering audibly along the floor as he carries you back to what you suppose for all intents and purposes is his nest. His touch instantly warms you to your core, making the fur you wrapped yourself in seem like a thin sheet in comparison. Despite your apprehension, you can’t help the way the tension in your body naturally eases with his warmth.
Upon returning to the collection of pelts, you see the fruits of his labor.
Literal fruits, in fact.
Homelander has returned with a small bounty consisting of apples, two melons, and even a handful of peaches, all of it held in a beautiful–albeit aged–woven basket. You don’t get the chance to eat those often; the trees they fall from grow high on the surrounding mountains, and the farmers in your village are content enough with the established agriculture that no one bothers to grow them.
In addition, a tall golden pitcher stands filled to the brim with water. You’re once again hyper aware of just how incredibly thirsty you are, lips dry, throat parched. It’s the only thing you care about, clambering towards it the second Homelander sets you back on your feet.
The pitcher is heavy. It appears made of solid gold and it’s three times the size of any you’ve ever seen before. You don’t lift it so much as you just tip it back slightly, sighing loudly as you drink back the crisp, clear water.
You sputter as the flow abruptly increases, water spilling from the corners of your mouth. Homelander has lifted the pitcher to help you drink, holding it one handed as if it’s no more than a drinking cup, his other hand settled upon your waist. He looks thoroughly pleased with himself, eyes half-lidded, lips gently curved upwards. Once you’ve drunk your fill, you push against his hold and he relents quickly, unnerving you with just how attentive he really is. He sets the pitcher back down and watches you wipe your chin dry.
“Thank the gods,” you sigh habitually, finally not feeling as though there’s grit in your throat with every word.
“I’d prefer you thanked me,” he says coyly, his gaze drifting down to where the water has wet your gown. The fabric clings to your skin, sheer where liquid has touched it.
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Thank you, Homelander,” you correct. It’s taking every ounce of your fortitude to speak in full sentences with the way he’s staring at you, let alone the idle way his thumb is stroking your hip. No one has ever touched you with this mixture of ease and clear intent, the weight of his hand practically thrumming against you. The magnitude of him is a difficult thing to parse both in terms of his sheer size and the legend he represents. You don’t know how to reconcile him with the monster you grew up dreading.
No one warned you that monsters could be warm and handle you gently.
“Time to eat,” he says, setting the pitcher back down. He takes hold of both of your hips and pulls you down with him as he sits cross-legged on the pelts, the circle of his legs large enough that you fit perfectly inside it, your own legs hanging out over his crossed calves. His tail loops around as well, encircling him and draping over your legs. The underside of his tail is not unlike the belly of a snake, with large overlapping scales that layer down the length of it. It’s just as warm as the rest of him, and feels like an unnaturally soft stone that’s been baking in the sun.
Reaching over, Homelander plucks one of the peaches from the assortment. It looked perfectly average in the basket, but between his fingers it looks almost comically small. With a deftness that you wouldn’t expect from a creature of his size, he begins to slice through the peach with his blackened claws, delicately cutting out a wedge that he does not hand you, but he instead brings it directly to your lips.
You stare for a moment, struck by the rich red center of the fruit, how the juice of it drips onto his hand in sweet smelling rivulets. You turn to look at him over your shoulder, and he quirks a brow, nodding towards the slice of fruit. You decide that of all the potential battles you have in front of you, this one in particular isn’t worth fighting, and you part your lips, watching him as you do.
His own lips mimic yours, falling apart in quiet entrancement. He slides the wedge between your teeth and watches with rapt fascination as you bite down on it, holding his gaze in an exchange that feels so unexpectedly raw and intimate, your pulse ticks up a notch. You swear he notices it by the way his head tilts ever so slightly, almost as if he’s listening.
“Good?” He asks, voice little more than a rumble.
Gods above and below, it is good. Despite the preternatural heat of his hand, the succulent flesh of the peach retains the morning chill, sweet and cool on your tongue. It’s perfectly ripe, yielding easily to the cut of your teeth and flooding richly across your tongue as you chew. He feeds it to you until it disappears, pressing the last of it in with his thumb, which then follows the line of your bottom lip, smearing the sweet juice on it. You nod and lick your lips, tongue narrowly missing his thumb, and what that does to his expression makes your stomach flip.
He’s quick to cut another slice to offer you. You repeat this process in silence, the air thick with tension that feels so palpable you’re sure you could swim through it. The sounds of the world have narrowed entirely to the sound of his claw cutting through the delicate flesh of the fruit and the tip lightly scraping the pit inside it.
His hands have a sticky shine to them by the time he’s tossing the pit back into the basket, stripped as clean as a bone.
You chew your final bite, jaw slowing as you watch him take his fingers into his own mouth. He’s unabashed in the way he slurps the nectar off his digits, tongue slipping between them. That’s when you realize that his tongue splits down the middle, dexterously sliding over his fingers to lap up every drop of juice. Not only that, but you spot a flash of gold; the same kind of piercing he has on his ears. Watching him stirs something hot in you, a radiating heat that lights a flickering pulse between your thighs. You audibly gulp the last of your bite, tensing subtly when Homelander looks at you.
Slowly, his lips curl into a devious smile. “See something you like?”
You flush, fighting the urge to look away. Don’t play into it. Change the subject. “What happened to your last mate?”
His expression shifts to something slightly more incredulous. “There wasn’t one. You’re my first, my last, my only. Dragons only bond once,” he says, that split tongue rolling along his sharp teeth, that gold tongue piercing clicking against them. You wonder where else he’s decorated himself with gold.
Wait, what did he say? Your gaze snaps back up from his mouth to his eyes, which are once more set into that self-satisfied slant. He’s closer to you now, and nearing by the second.
My first, my last, my only.
“But I am no dragon,” you say, leaning away subtly, though there isn’t far to go. He’s got you trapped nicely in place, like a butterfly beneath pins. “How could such a bond form?”
“I’m as mystified as you are,” he says, his hand sliding up the small of your back. “I didn’t think a bond was even possible for me. Apparently there’s something different about you,” he says, and you notice a brief twitch of his lip, a flicker that looks just a touch like disdain. It disappears as quickly as it had appeared. “Something special,” he murmurs, close enough that you can feel the heat of his breath on your cheek.
Your heart races, your capacity for thought slowly disappearing the closer to you he gets. New subject, new subject! You think, frazzled by the warm spiced smell of him. His hand flexes on your hip, claws prickling your skin through your dress. “Aren’t you hungry?” You ask, eyes darting to the basket full of fruit just to his side.
“Yeah,” he rasps, voice so low you feel it reverberate. His nose brushes your cheek, trailing down from your jaw to your neck. You shiver, and the pulse between your thighs grows into a steady throb. He inhales deeply. “I’m famished.”
The world around you spins and the next thing you know, you’re on your back staring up at the aged banners draped along the stone ceiling, the fur pelts warm and plush beneath you. Homelander pins your arms down at your sides, once more poised on his hands and knees over you. His tongue draws a wet molten line from the collar of your dress to your throat, and you let out a soft, nervous cry as his teeth graze your skin.
Perhaps he’s going to devour you after all.
Oh gods! Gods, gods, gods, please no!
“Wait, wait! Don’t–please don’t eat me,” you plead in a panic, pushing up against his hands with all of your might. He doesn’t yield at all. You may as well be pushing against the stone walls of the tower itself.
He does laugh, however. It’s that same rumble of amusement that travels through your skin and into the core of you. “For the last time, I’m not eating you. I can smell your arousal, though. Practically taste it in the fucking air,” he says, trailing lower down your chest with every word, brazenly nuzzling the space between your breasts before continuing down.
A wave of humiliation rolls through you at his words, and you look away.
He releases your arms in favor of sliding his hands up your bare legs, pushing your dress up with them. “I’m just going to have a little lick.”
Frantically, you try to grab at him as soon as your hands are free. “Hold on, stop–”
“Enough!” He snarls suddenly, startling you quiet. You swear for just a moment that his eyes flash crimson. You clutch your hands to your chest. “You’ll not be harmed. Understand? Just… let me,” he says tersely, gaze hard before gradually softening as you silence yourself, watching him with wide, uncertain eyes. Satisfied, he lowers back down.
His sharp claws kiss harmless welts all the way up your legs, up to your hips, where he catches the band of your undergarments. He hooks his fingers over the waistband and drags them down, seeming to enjoy the way you pant and writhe under him, your heart racing.
“Have mercy,” you slip in quietly, squirming beneath the hot press of his hands, though you’re no longer struggling against him. “I’ve never–no one’s ever–I’m inexperienced,” you desperately explain, your mind running wild with what his size will mean for you if he decides he wants more than to taste you–to claim you, as he’d said before.
“Good,” he replies simply, pushing your knees up into a bend on either side of his head. “As you should be. As am I,” he says, turning his head to drag his split tongue in swirling patterns on your inner thigh, moaning at the taste of you.
You grip the pelts beneath you, brows furrowing. You stare down at the top of his head in confusion. “You are?”
“I told you. I’ve never had a mate. I’ve never felt the need to put my cock into what I intended to eat,” he says against your skin, erupting goosebumps all over your thighs. That should horrify you, but you’re instantly distracted by the sheer burning heat of his breath wafting over your wet cunt, a gasp slipping from your lips when he eagerly presses his tongue to it.
His tongue feels as smooth as glass, like liquid in the way it contours to your every curve. The split of it rubs on either side of your clit, massaging it between the two sides in a way that makes your knees shake. “Ffffuck,” he groans, immediately pushing his tongue into you, licking up the wetness of you twice as eagerly as he had that ripe peach.
You buck against him, a moan escaping you. The sound only encourages him to plunge his tongue deeper, that golden stud on his tongue brushing hotly against your inner walls. He drags it up and pushes it flush, half inside you and half grinding against your clit before pushing back in deep. It feels unlike anything you’ve ever known, so much better than your own curious, clumsy fingers. He laves attention on you like he’s starved for it, drinking just as thirstily as you had from the pitcher.
There’s no rhythm to the way he moves, no sense of consistency. He slips his hands under your ass and tugs you forward with ease, lifting you to push his thick split tongue even further inside you, plunging it in and out, growing greedier with every dive. He growls low in the back of his throat, tail thudding repeatedly against the floor. Instead of the little lick he claimed he was after, he’s working himself into an obvious frenzy feasting on you.
“H-Homelander, please,” you keen, his relentlessness rapidly building an unfamiliar pressure within you. He’s as sloppy as he is voracious, the wet sound of him obscene and loud in the enormous lair. His claws bite into your ass where he holds it firmly to his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to hear you. If he does, he’s taking it only as encouragement.
His tongue touches something inside you that makes your whole body jolt. You grab hold of both of his horns, your back arching as you desperately cling to them. You’re certain you meant to shove him back, to struggle. Instead, your body is ablaze as you yank hard on his horns, hitching your leg over his shoulder and riding his tongue with a shaking gasp.
The pressure bursts, and the wave of euphoria that crashes down on you is unlike anything you’ve ever known. You convulse against his mouth, walls tightening around the intrusion. You don’t recognize your own voice in the sounds you make as he continues to ruthlessly fuck you soaked and open with his tongue, his breaths so hot they nearly burn. The waves of your climax feel like they’ll never end, spurred on by every deep, wet thrust.
“Homelander! It’s too much, Homelander, too much, please, please–beloved, please, I can’t, I can’t,” you beg, desperate to get his attention. You’re on the verge of sobs when he finally withdraws his long molten tongue from you. You suck in a shuddering breath, releasing his horns and collapsing back against the pelts, sweat prickling along your hairline.
However, your shallow breaths are nothing compared to the sound of Homelander’s ragged panting. He looks entirely wild, smoke billowing from his mouth and nose, his cheeks flushed a dark red, the lower half of his face shiny with a mixture of your slick and his own drool. He takes his hands from under you and yanks the sash around his waist loose, dropping it to the side. Reaching behind him, he unfastens his pants.
Your mind is still a haze, but even through the delirium, you’re shocked by what you see when that rich navy fabric falls from his waist: his cock is as large as the rest of him, thick and dripping. The underside of it is strangely ribbed, a feature you’re certain is to be attributed to his draconic nature. Not only that, but he’s adorned in gold here, too, with a ring pierced into the head of his cock and studs between each ridge. Your eyes widen.
It’ll never fit.
Nevertheless, he looks entirely undeterred. Homelander adjusts himself between your legs, eyes thoroughly glazed over with lust, and presses his nearly scalding palms to your inner thighs, pushing them into a wide spread and down to the ground. Arousal and fear lance through you like a twin bolt of lightning.
“H-hold on,” you stutter, lifting a trembling hand. “I–”
Bending over you, he silences you with a firm kiss. You press your hands to his chest and feel it thrumming beneath your palms, the heat of him more intense than ever. You can’t help but moan softly into it, overtaken by the smell of sex and something akin to burning incense. His tongue slips as deftly into your mouth as it did your cunt. Even after having felt it inside you, it’s thicker in your mouth than you’re prepared for, sliding in deeper, like he means to fuck you with it here, too.
It wholly distracts you until you feel a heavy, blunt press to your wet cunt. You make a half-hearted noise of protest, but his only answer is a low rumbling growl, claws biting into the meat of your thighs as he holds you still, effectively gagging you on his tongue.
His cock is as hot as the rest of him, but a great deal more solid than his malleable tongue. The thickness of it slowly spreads you wide, an aching pressure. You’re not sure if the burn of it is from the stretch or the heat, but either way it’s driving you insane. It’s hot and painful and good, frictionless with how thoroughly he soaked you, and despite your nerves, your cunt is loose with orgasm. It’s as if your body, independent of your mind, is eager to welcome him in.
You make a keening noise, the sound of it muffled in this devouring kiss. You grab hold of the leather straps across his chest and yank on them, twisting at them, but nothing takes your mind from how intense it feels to be split apart on the fat head of his cock.
The sounds Homelander makes in response are downright bestial, low and rumbling from his chest. Your only relief is when the widest swell of his cockhead finally breaches you, just the tip of it settling perfectly inside you. You cry out when he gives an exploratory backwards pull, and then shivers as he begins to rock gently, breathing heavily from his nose as he fucks you with nothing more than the head of his cock.
You’re starting to feel lightheaded, pitchy little noises leaving you with every exhale. Homelander sharpens his pace, breaking the kiss with a loud, carnal moan as he tips his head back. He’s barely even inside you and yet the girth of him is overwhelming, the ridges of his cock stimulating you in ways you didn’t know possible, the fat curved head rubbing against that same spot inside you that his tongue had previously made you see stars with.
Thoroughly overwhelmed by the incomprehensible assault of sensations, tears gather in your eyes. That pressure is building back up in you once more, starting at the base of your spine and slowly crawling up it. Desperate to tether yourself, to feel connected, you move your hand from the strap at his chest and touch his face. To your surprise, that instantly snaps his attention down to you, his beautiful blue eyes lost in a crimson glow.
Homelander meets your gaze, some level of cognizance returning to him, and whimpers, something hidden and vulnerable escaping in that exchange. He bends down, his nose brushing yours, and rests his forehead against yours while his thrusts grow more and more erratic, but never deeper. He fucks you in shallow, jagged snaps until finally that mounting pressure overwhelms you and you come again, simultaneously squeezing him into his own sudden release.
The flood of him inside you is burning hot, spilling into your core even from here, and he practically roars with it, burying that loud primal cry into the crook of your neck while his body stills, releasing pulse after pulse of thick, hot seed into you.
His breath billows hotly across your neck, the burning scent of him thick in the air. Your mind is so addled by your own euphoria that it takes you time to realize he’s speaking, fervent murmurings against your skin.
“M’sorry, still, be still, I’m–don’t move,” he rasps, fractured little noises leaving him in between his words. You choke on your own breath when he sinks in, working you open slowly, shivers pitching up and down your spine. Gods above, he isn’t done.
Surely he doesn’t mean for you to take all of it… Does he?
You moan weakly, pushing your hand up into his hair and grabbing hold, which elicits a rumbling sigh from him in return. It’s silkier than you expected it to be.
“Too big, it’s too much, it’s not–it’s not going to fit,” you pant out, screwing your eyes shut tight. While his release had initially softened him some, you can already feel his cock filling back out. Every bit he slips in further, you feel the mess of his release being forced out of you, come dripping down your thighs, slicking the way for the rest of him.
“It will,” he says at your ear, kissing the spot just below your earlobe, then your neck, his tongue slipping out to taste the sweat there before he kisses that same spot. He’s set upon you like an animal, lost to the drive of instinct, determined to fulfill his promise to claim what is his. “It will because it must. Because it’s yours. Because you’re mine.”
Homelander releases a breathy whine, sounding just as overstimulated as you are, nuzzling at your throat while he slowly works his way deeper, practically vibrating with restraint. He sounds as overwhelmed as you feel, but he refuses to stop, to lose. He holds you in place, growling whenever you squirm or struggle against him. The feel of it is dizzying, unbelievably hot and heavy, like fire given form, filling you in ways you didn’t know were possible. You’re feeling it again, the slow rise of that carnal pleasure building to an inevitable climax, and your whole body trembles with it.
You make a desperate keening noise, and Homelander hushes you, kissing your shoulder.
“Sshhh, good, you’re doing so well for me. Don’t move yet, it’s almost over. You were made for this, for me. You feel it, don’t you? How easily your cunt opens to me. Nnngh, hah… Fuck, you fit me. You fit me. You do, and you always will,” he pants, voice hitching.
He slides his hands from your thighs to your waist, the press of his claws just shy of painful. With one final move, he lets out a quaking moan as he pulls you down onto the last of it, finally burying himself completely in your snug, come-soaked cunt.
The fullness of it breaks you–snapping the last tether that was holding you in place–and you come again, your velvety walls seizing up around him impossibly tight before spasming your pleasure around every vein, ridge and piercing he has. You can feel the shape of him so viscerally that you’re sure your body will remember it, carved out in the shape of his cock forevermore.
He cries out with your release, a reverberating sound that you feel all the way down to the marrow of your bones. You don’t know if he’s more in pleasure or pain, but he makes no move to retreat. Instead, he brings you that tiny bit closer, pressing every inch of your body to his. He rides out your pleasure, panting a wet spot into the crook of your neck.
Tears roll from your eyes to your temple, disappearing into your hairline as you breathe roughly. You’re overwhelmingly hot, oversensitized and raw, but as the aftershocks of your orgasm fade, your body steadily loses that quiver. You feel as if you’re melting down into the furs, struggling to even keep your eyes open as a gentle ecstasy sweeps over you.
Once he recovers enough, he lifts himself up onto his hands, and then sits back onto his legs, his hands on your hips to lift you partially into his lap to keep himself buried deep, hitching your legs around his waist. His eyes are completely glazed over, lips parted around heavy, hungry breaths. He doesn’t look at all sated. If anything, the look of his desire has only intensified, despite his obvious sensitivity. Sliding his hands up your body, he pushes your pretty white dress all the way up over your head, tossing it to the side so that he may finally see all of you.
“Look at you,” he breathes, voice utterly frayed. He stares at you as though you’re a vision sent from the gods, a nymph plucked from the heavens and nestled snugly upon his cock. His hand sweeps down your stomach, settling low on it, where he lightly presses down. You both moan with the pressure, with how keenly you both feel it. “Told you it would fit,” he says, but his voice is not smug. There’s a breathless wonder to it, like he’s awestruck by the look of your body against his.
His tongue rolls out to sweep along his lips. He opens his mouth, and you can see threads of saliva snapping between his sharp teeth, his mouth wet with hunger. He continues to reverently stroke your stomach, his large splayed hand easily covering the expanse of it.
“You’ll make a beautiful mother,” he says, a concept you don’t even know how to begin to unravel, but the way he says it makes you feel worshiped. “Perfect. So fucking perfect for me,” he says, a shudder in his voice. His crimson wings spread and curve in on either side of you, the hooked tips of them bracing on the stone floor.
“Mother?” You slur belatedly. You feel dizzy, your body as warm as burning coals and tingling all over. He lifts your legs one at a time, bringing each one up parallel to his chest. They hook over his shoulders as he leans forward, wasting no before time kissing you. His wings support his weight while he grips your thighs, squeezing possessively.
“Mother,” he confirms between kisses, bending you practically in half as he begins to rut against you. He’s not thrusting so much as he’s grinding into you, wringing a low moan from you. “You want that, don’t you? I’ll keep you safe. Feed you. Fuck you. I’ll take care of you, be yours, and you’ll be mine, won’t you? Sweet little thing, fucked happy and heavy with my children. Tell me. Tell me you want that.”
“Yes,” you moan, kneading the furs on either side of you. He paints a beautiful picture in your mind of fresh fruit, crisp water, and this dreamlike pleasure for the rest of your days. Beneath him, any thoughts of the world outside this moment melt away.
There’s only the two of you, resplendently warm and living amongst the clouds.
“I want it. I want–I want you,” you say, touching either side of his face. He leans heavily into your touch, his eyes falling shut. A soft noise that sounds like relief escapes him as you kiss him, coaxing that long, clever tongue out to meet yours.
The eagerness with which he reciprocates nearly chokes you, his tongue slipping over yours and halfway down your throat before pulling back, practically devouring you in this kiss. In your fever, this consuming passion feels so much like love it makes your head spin, makes you forget where, when and who you are.
He breaks the kiss to moan unabashedly, shifting to put his lips to your throat, mouthing at your skin like he’s trying desperately not to sink his teeth in. The thought thrills you. You almost want him to.
“Again,” he pants, grip tightening on your thighs. “Say it again, please.”
“I want you,” you say again, more certain now. The desperation in him is disarming, and despite the animalism of him, you can clearly see the man in him now, hear it in the way he pleads for you to indulge him. That and the euphoric spill of pleasure electrifying your every nerve imbues you with some kind of sense of power, and however misplaced it may be, you immediately feel drunk on it. You can feel your body beginning to build back towards that ultimate swell of euphoria again. “I want to be yours. I want you to be mine.”
He groans, dipping lower to suck a mark at the junction between your neck and shoulder. This time, when you feel the brush of his teeth, you don’t shy away. You cup the back of his head and drag your nails down his scalp. Homelander thrusts his hips jaggedly, wringing a throaty gasp out of you.
“Keep talking,” he demands, but you hear the plea for what it is.
“You feel good. Y-you fit,” you say, echoing his own words, though it’s getting harder to speak with the way he’s starting to fuck you in earnest, just barely withdrawing before he drives back in, as if he can’t bare to be more than an inch outside of you. You moan for him, chasing the bliss swelling rapidly between your legs.
Wait… Something really is swelling.
“What is that?” You ask, voice reedy. You whimper. Somehow, it feels as though he’s getting bigger. “What’s h-nnngh, what’s happening?” Your words are starting to slur together again, your mind split down the middle between your mounting orgasm, and the surreal feeling of the base of his cock growing inside you.
“Knot,” he explains between swipes of his tongue. “Keeps every drop of me inside you,” he says, giving a shuddering moan as that swell catches on the rim of your cunt when he tries to draw back. Just when you thought you had adjusted, that swell makes you ache, has you whimpering and squirming under him.
He could have told you it would get bigger!
“Oh gods, it–mmm, I’m–it feels–” You stop and start again and again, writhing, but he keeps you firmly in place, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh loud in your ears as he fucks you harder and faster, spurred on by the quiver of your cunt as your own climax nears.
“Come for me again. Show me that you want it. I want to feel your pretty little cunt squeeze my cock for my come,” he urges, voice reduced to a rough growl in your ear. He sounds like he’s barely holding himself together, every word more strained than the last. “Give it to me. Give yourself to me.”
The tug of his swollen knot bouncing off of your rim and the feel of his thick ridged cock massaging your walls completely overwhelms you. “Y-yes, okay, I’m–oh gods, gods, I’m–I’m coming, Homelander, Homelander!” You call, lips falling open on a silent scream as your throat locks up, a third orgasm crashing down on you with a force that knocks the air out of your lungs.
Homelander muffles his own cry into the crook of your neck, stilling halfway through your orgasm with one final slam. This time, the rush of his release is pressed tightly against your cervix, pooling inside you with nowhere to go, his knot doing precisely what he said it would. The heat of it fills you in hot, rushing spurts, his cock jerking against your spasming walls with every load he empties into you.
A sudden stinging pain makes you gasp, confusion seeping into the euphoria that has thoroughly addled your brain. Fuck, you realize he’s biting you. His teeth sink in as smoothly as a knife through fresh butter, the sting giving way to the sheer heat of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue, and the inexplicable way it intensifies your orgasm.
The room falls deafeningly quiet save for the pound of your own heart in your ears and the heavy way you’re each catching your respective breath. Your arms fall bonelessly to your sides as you pant, your vision slightly blurry. Homelander begins lapping at your shoulder, soothing the spot he’d bitten. Your whole body feels heavy, stuffed fuller than you ever could have conceived possible. All you can do is whine as he adjusts you, gingerly bringing your legs down to settle on either side of him.
You’re not sure how you’ll ever get off of his cock now that you’re on it. His knot feels like a permanent part of you, fitted so snugly that, just as promised, you don’t feel a single drop spill.
Homelander doesn’t stop at your neck. He drags his tongue down to the dip of your clavicle, where it splits apart slightly anywhere it moves over bone. It feels surreal, but somehow different from the first time you woke to him licking you. For starters, you’re not terrified he’s going to eat you. That has an entirely new connotation now.
He moves down further, slinking down into the valley between your breasts, sighing as he pushes them together to lave his tongue between. He’s languid, practically purring with each breath as he savors the feel and the taste of you. You don’t have it in you to feel much more than exhausted, your limbs as heavy as stone, but it does feel good. Your breath catches when he opens his lips around one of your nipples, sucking almost half of your breast into his preternaturally hot mouth. His pierced tongue swirls over your nipple while his teeth flex precariously against the tender flesh. You lurch, letting out a breathy noise.
“Careful, please,,” you exhale, earning a glance up from him. His eyes are completely glazed over, soft and dark in a way that takes your breath away. He hums quietly in some weak acknowledgement before his eyes flutter closed, his throat bobbing with every swallow as he sucks your breast with unexpected gentility.
Watching him stirs a wash of strange feelings in you. With what little strength you have, you bring your hand up to touch his horn, contemplating the texture of it beneath your fingers. You follow the line of it down to his skull, tracing his hairline just beneath the crown that adorns his head, slipping behind his sharply pointed ear. He’s truly incredible to behold up close like this, beautiful without the lens of terror you had been viewing him through.
On some level, you know you should still be afraid, but it’s a difficult feeling to muster when he’s warm and lax on your chest with his cock buried inside you, suckling on your breast as you’re still riding the high of three consecutive climaxes.
You push your fingers into his flaxen hair. You’ve never seen hair this color before except in very young children. In your experience, age always darkens it away to a sandy color, but his is as bright and warm as sunshine. There doesn’t seem to be any part of him that isn’t golden. He exhales a deep sigh as you run your nails along his scalp, nuzzling sweetly against you. You smile despite yourself.
Who would have thought that a dragon might be so very much like an overgrown house cat?
When Homelander lifts his head, his tongue is the last to leave, returning to his mouth with a wet slide across his lips. He’s left your skin shiny with saliva, but he isn’t finished. He immediately lowers himself to your other breast, taking it into his mouth in precisely the same way. You bring your other hand up into his hair and continue to massage his scalp, earning yourself an appreciative little moan from low in his throat, his tail sliding audibly back and forth on the stone floor.
The two of you lay like that for an indeterminate amount of time. You drift in and out of consciousness, worn thin and soothed by the heat of his body seeping into your muscles, fairly certain you’ll never be able to sit up on your own again. Homelander eventually releases your breast with a soft pop and settles his head on your sternum, narrowly avoiding taking one of your eyes out with his horn. You continue to stroke through his hair as your strength gradually returns.
The swell of his knot, too, lessens, but even soft his cock fits snugly inside you. It isn’t until Homelander gingerly lifts himself off of you that it slides out, coming free with a significant gush that soaks your thighs and puddles beneath you. You flush, making a strained little noise. You feel carved out and left hollow by the sheer size of him. His wings withdraw and tuck in behind him while he sits back on his legs to admire the splay of you beneath him.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, smoothing his hands up and down your thighs. You’ve never felt as exposed as you do in this moment, laid bare under his gaze. Even now, visibly drunk on pleasure and thoroughly satiated, there is an undeniable lingering famine in his stare. He sinks down and slowly spreads your legs apart, leaning in to run his tongue up the crease of your inner thigh.
He laps languidly at your skin, earning hitched little breaths and sounds from you as his tongue deftly cleans the mess he’s made of you. He’s much more tame now than he had been, focusing not on overstimulating you, but simply washing you. It’s a strange and animalistic thing to do, but it’s intimate, too. Sweet, even.
Gods, he’s really done a number on your psyche.
Once he’s satisfied with the state of you, he climbs back up and settles on his side, looking at you with his hand poised over you, hovering like he isn’t sure what to do with it. His expression starts to shift, concern seeping into it. “You’re quiet. Did I hurt you?”
You huff a little breath. You’re quiet because you’ve just been fucked within an inch of your life by a dragon’s cock, but aside from that, of course he had. “You bit me, for starters.”
He turns somewhat sheepish at that. “Instinct. I wanted to mark you.”
“You succeeded,” you say, touching your shoulder tentatively.The skin is still raw, but it isn’t bleeding. It doesn’t even feel like it’s going to scab.
You must wear your confusion plainly, because Homelander is quick to explain: “I sealed the wound. It should be fully healed by sundown.”
“How did you seal it?” You ask, bolder now with how you touch it. It feels like simple indentations, a perfect mold of his teeth.
“My saliva has particular properties. There was a method to my debauchery,” he says, pointedly licking his lips.
You suppose that’s far from the most miraculous thing about him. “That’s convenient,” you say, to which he smiles. It’s bizarre how easily this comes now. You’ve heard of breaking the tension before, but this is certainly the most intense way you’ve ever broken through that initial barrier to more casual conversation.
Seeing that his hand is still hovering over you, you make a choice and take it, pulling it down to settle on your hip. Relief and excitement flash in his eyes in equal measure, and he takes that as permission to tuck you the rest of the way against him, settling on his side. He rests his head in his palm, propped up on his elbow.
You curiously explore the plains of his chest with your fingertips, testing where flesh meets scales. They feel almost like bone, crimson colored protrusions that catch the light as prettily as rubies. They’re smattered along his body in the same way a human might have moles or birthmarks, incidental and seemingly without rhyme or reason.
His ribs are guarded by stiff plates that aren’t as solid as the scales, but look to serve as hardy protection. You let your fingers swoop down the ridges of them, comparing the textures along different parts of his body. It’s fascinating.
“I’ve never seen anything like–” you begin to pull your hand away as you speak, but Homelander takes hold of your wrist, bringing it back to his chest.
“Don’t stop.” You look up at him. His expression catches you off guard. He looks wounded, those fiercely blue and ever human eyes of his intensely focused on you. Swallowing, you nod. He lets go, and you begin to traipse your fingers along his chest again, following the line of the leather straps that cross over it. He lets out a heavy breath. “No one’s ever touched me like this,” he tells you after a long few beats of silence. “Not that I can remember.”
You glance up at him, but he’s staring down at your small hand tracing patterns on his chest. “What happened to this place?” You ask, because that seems politer than asking what happened to him.
“Guess it’s been too long for anyone else to remember. They’re all dead,” he says, the mood of his words difficult to discern. He inhales a contemplative breath, clicking his tongue at the end of it.
“Time happened. I used to be something else to my people. I was… war. I brought fire down on their enemies, and they loved me for it. I won them their home. Homelander. There were others like me, but I was the best of them,” he says with conviction, though you sense bitterness in his voice, too. “When all the wars were won, they built this tower. They built monuments to their gods, and they placed us here with them as though we ourselves were relics.”
The end of his tail has begun to slap lightly against the ground. You can feel a slight uptick in the heat of him beneath your palm.
“They placated me with gold. Adorned me in it. At times they would summon me to festivals. Use my strength to build their stone cities, but they didn’t celebrate me. They had forgotten their love. They treated me as you would any other tool. Something to be taken off the shelf for work and put away when the task is done.”
The seething resentment is more clear in his voice than ever. While you didn’t ask it, it seems he understood what you really wanted to know. You’ve never heard this story before; The Devourer had only ever been a tyrant upon the people. No one ever spoke of a Homelander. No one ever spoke of a hero.
“When treasure failed to keep me impotent and obedient, they tried meat instead. They sent me livestock, as if the simple act of killing a cow would satiate me,” he snarls through his teeth, smoke wafting between them. He sucks it back, tipping his head up slightly in a bit to regain his composure.
“They thought they could control me indefinitely. Out of sight, out of mind. It worked for too long, but only because I allowed it. Because I thought things would change. They never did. So I took their gold and their cattle and their crops and demanded more still. I demanded until they couldn’t ignore me any longer. When they failed to provide, I reigned fire down on them as I did their enemies two hundred years ago, and I gave them no choice but to look at the monster they made.”
His tail cracks like a whip against the stone floor. His anger is so visceral it makes your heart race, but there is more in his gaze than just fury. You feel as though you’re watching him rip apart the stitching over a wound that has been festering for far too long.
“After that, they sent people. Simpering peasants who had no fucking idea who or what I really am. They bathed them in oils like slaughtered lambs basted for roast,” he growls, the blue of his eyes fading into an eerie crimson glow. “So I did. I devoured them, and I spat their own blood in their faces. If they wouldn’t have me as a man, they would have a beast instead.”
The Devourer.
You sit in stunned silence, watching as the glow of his eyes gradually fades, though his temperature remains the same. He looks at you, his expression braced, as if he anticipates a specific reaction. Rejection, you suppose. It seems to be the only thing he’s known for centuries. Within his gaze, you recognize a profound need to connect, to feel you, to hear that there might be a single soul in this gods damned world that wants him.
What does one say to such a story? The anger in his voice strikes such a wounded chord, you can practically smell the blood. The rawness of it alone makes your eyes prickle with tears, a lump gathering in your throat. How warped he has become not for the absence of love, but the deprivation of it. It’s clear in the way he speaks of them how desperately he wanted them to still love him.
“I’m sorry,” you say so quietly it’s a wonder he hears you. His expression flips completely, morphing into bewildered surprise.
“What?” His voice sounds small.
“I’m sorry that they abandoned you.”
If his own words are a knife in the wound, yours twist it deeper. He flinches like he’s been struck, staring at you with such bruised incomprehension. He opens his mouth to speak, but it’s as though he doesn’t even believe what you’re saying enough to formulate a response. He kisses you instead, holding your jaw in his claws.
“I was good once,” he says against your lips, voice hushed as if he’s confessing a far graver sin. “I’ll be good for you. Let me be good for you.”
The desperation in his voice sets loose your tears. You nod, kissing him just as fervently. Centuries of bloodshed on the back of willful neglect is difficult to stomach, but you believe him. You believe the love that went into this tower–this beautiful prison–that they made for him, and you believe the love that you saw in his face carved in stone. You have no doubt that the wonder of him once inspired all those who beheld them, and that they were fickle enough to grow weary of him. Desensitized and disinterested.
When he rejected their apathy, they rejected his humanity.
Homelander lifts you up into his arms, sitting up, kissing you properly with a hand cupping the back of your head, his arm around your middle. His wings curve in around you, and he kisses you until your lips turn sore and you have to protest, your words melting into muffled laughter. He draws back with a brilliant grin. It’s different from the others you’ve seen; it’s the kind of smile that brings deep warmth to his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. He lingers close to you, stroking your cheek with his thumb.
“I stopped believing a long time ago that you could be real,” he murmurs, unable to stop himself from stealing another quick kiss, his nose purposefully brushing yours. He’s thoroughly starved for every little touch.
“I am. So are you. Not the Devourer, the Scourge, nor the Red Death,” you say, tucking back the stray locks of hair that have fallen over his crown. This, too, had been carved for him. He had been loved once, and as he said, he had been good. There is love in you enough to help him find that goodness again. There’s no reason you cannot live for the being you intended to die for. “Just you. Just Homelander.”
He kisses you, and suddenly you feel as if you’re free falling. From this point on, your life is something new. Something inexplicable and unpredictable. It’s yours, but it’s also his.
All that glitters is not gold, and sometimes the monster in the dark is just your reflection.
phew. thank you SO much for reading. this fic took me almost a full month to write, and it often felt like it was never going to end. that said, i'm already kind of chomping at the bit to write more in this universe. i feel like these two have a ton of potential, and there's just so much more that i want to do with them now that we have the groundwork done.
once again, a huge shoutout to the amazing artist @anon-nee, who not only illustrated our dragon boy himself, but these awesome environment sketches as well. please be sure to go give them some love!
The Tower of the Seven
The Dragon's Lair
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a/n: if you've been here for awhile or read through my masterlist, you might remember this one. it became a fan favorite but it was written when i first entered the fandom and there have been things i wanted done differently. things i wanted to rewrite or write better. so i'm doing it. it'll be the same story you love, if you love it, just better, longer, more thought out. a lot will stay the same but alot will change. if yu're wondering what the fuck i'm talking about, a rough version of this story exits on my masterlist titled "all i ask of you." anyway. i hope you enjoy this.
rowaelin // 5.8k words // masterlist
Sweat trickled in little streams down his back, gluing the tan, standard-issue shirt he wore to every dip and curve of his torso. On most assignments, Rowan Whitethorn didn't mind his uniform. Generally speaking, the material was lightweight enough in most climates that they stayed comfortable. The boots were heavy, sure, but they were comfortable.
In the middle of the desert, he hated all of it. The best time of the day was when he took it off to duck under a cold shower, then crawled into bed in nothing but his undershorts. Unfortunately for him, that was a long way off. The sun scorched them to the bone, and the slight breeze did nothing but send sand whirling through the air.
When Rowan got out of the Red Desert, he never wanted to see a single grain of sand ever again.
He walked down the street to the two small houses they used as a base. If anything, they were more akin to rundown shacks in a shanty town, but it worked. One was used for communications, and all their tech was set up throughout various rooms. They took turns on night watch, monitoring the cameras and comms for anything that looked amiss.
The other house was where they ate, bathed, and slept. Nobody had a semblance of privacy here, save for the shitty little bathroom. All the men but Lorcan doubled up in the rooms and slept on glorified cots every night, often mumbling to their roommates to stop tossing and turning. Their beds tended to creak and groan with every subtle movement. On bad days, tension soared until they inevitably went outside to beat each other senseless in the form of hand-to-hand combat practice.
The houses were on the outskirts of an impoverished chunk of land that couldn't even be considered a village at this point, though once upon a time, it had been a well-populated township. Now there were just rundown buildings and dilapidated houses that people crammed into for shelter. Less than two thousand people remained living in the desolate stretch of desert. All of them were skin and bones, the malnourished ghosts of who they used to be.
Over their last few months of being abandoned in the Red Desert, they learned that the breadwinners of the family, usually men, pedaled bicycles to the surrounding towns for work. A few of them were forced to walk, which was a feat in itself– the closest town was ten miles away and would take them well over two hours to arrive. Rowan had also learned, mainly from the children, that the ones that walked stayed in cheap inns during the week if they could afford it. Everything else was funneled into food and any other necessities they required, including running water that they really only used to cook and bathe.
Most of the women homeschooled their children to the best of their ability. Generally, they could read, write, and perform basic math. Much else was lost due to the lack of accessible tools for anything beyond that. Rowan had an intense respect for the people that dwelled here and did their best with what they had.
On the other hand, he could kill every government official who continued to leave these people behind. There was no excuse for such an extreme display of poverty in this day and age. It was made worse by how kind the people were. They lived in the worst conditions they had ever seen, yet still found joy in the little things.
Case in point: a few of the kids that Rowan gave the candy from his MREs to were chasing a soccer ball around the makeshift pitch Fenrys had built for them. He and his twin brother, Connall, were playing with the gaggle of teenage boys and girls, their bright laughter chipping away at his frozen heart. It had been long since anything had threatened to thaw his frozen core, but those children whooping and hollering got to him.
Rowan lifted a hand in greeting, shaking his head but offering a tight smile when they shouted for him to join them. If Lorcan hadn't summoned him, he probably would have. They had done a fat lot of nothing today besides trying to stay out of the sun. Rowan had only left the communications house less than an hour ago to stretch his legs.
Once inside, he found Lorcan sitting at the desk in the room they considered their office. It wasn't much more than a couple of chairs and a folding table, but it got the job done. Rowan rapped his knuckles against the door frame as he entered and leaned against it, folding his arms across his chest.
"You wanted to see me?" There was no point in bothering with formalities unless people outside the Cadre were around. They rarely pulled rank amongst themselves. Rowan was second in command, but they usually viewed it as a partnership more than anything else.
"Yep," Lorcan exhaled, putting his pen down and bracing his arms on the edge of the table. Every muscle in his face was tense, down to the feathering of his jaw as he eyed Rowan. This didn't bode well. Whatever he was about to say wasn't good. There was no light hiding in the shadows of his dark eyes. Lorcan had a shit poker face when it came to bad news. With a jerk of his chin, he added, "Sit down."
"What happened?" Rowan slid into one of the folding chairs across from him and braced his hands on his knees.
"We're going to be a team of six again, starting tomorrow morning." That was all? That didn't seem like the tragedy he looked ready to drop on Rowan's head.
They used to be a group of six until Gavriel retired last year, and they still weren't used to being down to five men. While each of them brought forth their strengths and balanced out their weaknesses, an even number of people made things easier on missions because everyone could be paired off into two teams. During their last few, they had all wished for that extra body. Having another person would be great, especially if he was skilled enough to keep up with the rest of them.
Though several special ops units existed in the Terrasen Navy, Rowan's was the most elite and the smallest. Every other team had at least a dozen men assigned to it, but it wasn't necessary with the Cadre, the name Rowan's ex bestowed upon them. All of them were over six feet tall and corded with muscle. What they lacked in numbers, they made up for in skill. There was a reason they didn't push to replace Gavriel when he retired. Nobody else was a match for them in any capacity and would have been in the way more than anything else.
"Why don't you look happy about it?" Rowan asked, relaxing a bit and leaning back in his chair. Lorcan looked like he was grinding his teeth to dust and savoring the pain that came with it.
"Because I'm not."
"You had to approve it. He must be good enough to hold his own with the rest of us." His commander wouldn't accept anyone unless he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could do his job with expert precision.
Lorcan scratched his jaw, nails scraping against the stubble he hadn't bothered to shave away that morning as he said, "It’s not a he.”
Rowan’s blood turned to ice in his veins so quickly that he shivered for the first time in several months. Every hair on his body stood at attention, skin pebbling down his arms, shaking his head in a single sharp movement as he ground out, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to know who she was. Her name had been whispered up and down the grapevine over the last few years as she quickly climbed the ranks. At this point, she was almost as decorated as he was, and he had been at it for three years longer. Thousands of women served in the various military branches, but only one had ever been good enough to break the glass ceiling and become a Ghost Leopard.
The Ghost Leopards were Terrasen’s most elite special operations unit. No other military group came close to the skill and drive they had. Most people didn’t even try to join— the physical, mental, and emotional strength demanded was too much for many to handle. Rowan’s unit was the best the Ghost Leopards had to offer.
Rowan knew she had been part of two different ops teams, but never in a million years did he think she would join his own. Not because she wasn’t good enough. There was no question in his mind that she didn’t belong. Lorcan disliked the woman on a good day, yet he had approved her joining the Cadre after putting personal bias aside.
No, she had definitely earned it; he could admit that much. Rowan had just doubted that she would ever want to share any amount of oxygen with him ever again. Her assignment to the Cadre likely hadn’t been her own idea. Whoever initiated it must well and truly detest Rowan, though. The gods were playing a cruel, sick joke on him.
Lorcan’s features were frozen with tension, lips curling at the corners in distaste as he said, “Aelin Galathynius arrives tomorrow.”
~*~
All five men stood in a straight line, feet shoulder-width apart and hands clasped behind their backs. They had decided on the dressed-down version of their uniform, foregoing the over shirts with patches, ranks, and names on them. They each wore the same tan t-shirt tucked into pants in a multi camouflage pattern in shades of brown. It perfectly matched the sandy ocean they were trapped in.
Heavy black boots anchored Rowan to the ground while they watched the helicopter land a few hundred yards away, kicking up enough dust that they were all happy about the sunglasses and camouflage balaclavas they wore. Without them, the sand would be in every fucking orifice for days on end.
The newest member of their team finally hopped out, landing with feline grace. To anyone else, she would have been unrecognizable with her face and eyes covered. Not even her hair peeked out as she walked toward them, heaving her bags higher on her shoulder. Rowan would know her anywhere, though.
It wasn’t until the helicopter returned to the skies and the dust settled that she finally pulled her balaclava down around her neck to expose her face. The aviator-style sunglasses stayed perched on her nose, and though her hair was slicked back into a bun at the nape of her neck, the golden strands still shimmered in the sun. The only difference in her uniform was that she wore her blouse with the sleeves rolled up and over her elbows. Seeing her like this made his vision cloudy at the edges, the memory of their first meeting creeping to the forefront of his mind. He forcefully shoved it away.
The sixty seconds it took her to be within ten feet of them seemed to happen too quickly and in slow motion all at the same time. No emotion flickered over her face, not even her mouth, which usually wore a smirk. Aelin Galathynius was all business.
Hearing her name multiple times in the last twenty-four hours had his mind twisted around itself in a tight knot he couldn’t unwind. Typically, everyone avoided bringing her up when they could, yet now he was seeing her in the flesh for the first time in years. With his heart trying to break his ribs, he was surprised that he heard Lorcan call her by her last name when she stopped before him.
It probably killed her to do it, but she saluted him the way she would any other commander. Lorcan gave her a nod in return, and her body relaxed. Aelin’s bags slid from her shoulders and landed with a thud on the ground at her feet. Rowan heard her sigh for the first time in ages as her hands dropped to her hips, and she gave them all a once-over.
Light and mischief danced in her fiery blue gaze until she looked at him. Any semblance of emotion flickered out like he’d extinguished the fire that burned within. It wasn’t the first time he had seen her eyes look so damn empty when turned on him. Her dead gaze yanked him two and half years in the past, holding him at gunpoint as he remembered the first time she had ever looked at him that way.
“I promise. Okay?” Rowan’s hands held Aelin’s cheeks like she was the most precious thing in the world to him because she was. It didn’t matter what he said or did, though. That heavy sadness wouldn’t dissipate, and she wouldn’t look at him.
“Rowan, I told you–”
“Baby, it’s the last one, and then I’ll take a job in the city, and it won’t be like this anymore. It’s going to get better, and we’re going to be okay.” He only had minutes left with her, and he hated wasting it like this. It would have been better spent sharing kisses or with him exploring her body to prove how much he loved her. Instead, when they woke up, Aelin had retreated so deeply within herself that he didn’t feel like he could reach her.
“You’ve said twice now that it was going to be the last time. When is it actually going to be the last time, Rowan?” Gods, he really didn’t want to fight with her before he left.
“This is the last deployment I’m going to make,” he swore, and he meant it. He’d already told his commander, and as much as he had hated it, at the end of the day, Lorcan understood. “I don’t want to fight with you right now.”
“I wanted you to stay and pick me for once, so I guess neither of us is getting what we want, are we?” The look in her eyes wasn’t one he’d ever received from her. There was no warmth of love, just a distant chill that felt so tangible goosebumps crawled along his skin.
“Aelin,” he sighed, tugging her until he could wrap his arms around her even though she tried to resist. At complete odds with her expressions and words, her arms tightened around his waist, and she fisted his jacket in her hands. Like this was their hardest goodbye yet, she refused to let him go.
They stood like that for several minutes, Rowan’s lips pressed to the top of her head while he breathed in her scent one more time. Nothing ever came close to how much he missed her when he was gone. Every deployment, he took something of hers with him, falling asleep to the faint scent of jasmine until time washed away any sign of its owner.
“You’re going to be late,” she finally said, pulling back and wiping her face with the back of her wrist.
“This is the last time,” he swore for a final time, taking her face between his palms and wiping at her cheeks. Aelin nodded, eyes fixed somewhere over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Okay.” The goodbyes were always hard, but this time was different. A warning bell was chiming in the back of his head, but he pushed it aside. They made it through everything else over the last five years, and they would pull through this, too.
“I love you.” Rowan kissed her, his heart shattering at the feel of her quivering mouth against his. A sob slipped out of her lips, her shoulders caving in. Aelin shook her head, letting it fall to read against his chest. “Hey. We’re okay.”
They were. It was an argument they’d had over and over for the last few years. While Aelin loved active duty, she had taken a desk job a few months ago when they had agreed that when Rowan got back from his last deployment, it was his last. Lorcan had begged him for one more tour because Gavriel was talking about retiring, and he didn’t want to lose them both at the same time. The day Rowan returned and told his girlfriend he was doing one last twelve month deployment, it immediately became a fight that wouldn’t end.
Aelin was twenty-six and genuinely loved her job, but she had wanted to start planning their future. Rowan was twenty-nine, and while he did want those things, he still wanted to keep building his legacy and rake in every ounce of glory while he still could. He wanted nothing more than Aelin, and he knew they could stick it out for one more year. They were strong enough to handle anything thrown at them. Of that, he was absolutely certain.
While the fighting had led to a lot of high tension in their house, they still loved each other at the end of the day. Even when it was hard, and they went months without hearing each other’s voices or seeing one another, they shared such a rare, blinding love that nothing could fracture it.
“I love you,” he said once more, kissing her trembling lips and wiping her tears away.
“I love you, too.” But her eyes didn’t meet his, and it was the image of her crying in the foyer that chased him into fitful sleep every night after.
~*~
“Aelin Galathynius,” Fenrys drawled, shaking his head as he took her in. Over the formalities of the situation, Aelin pulled off her sunglasses and dropped into a low bow with her arms spread wide. As soon as she pulled her eyes from Rowan and looked at their mutual best friend, she grinned.
“At your service,” she crooned with a wink. Down the line, Rowan snorted and turned on his heel, just about stomping the entire way back to the house. Aelin’s eyes rolled, and Fenrys held his arms open for a hug. With a squeal and a joyous giggle, she ran for him and leaped into his waiting arms.
“As soon as Salvaterre said we were getting a sixth again, I fucking knew it was you.” His voice was low in her ear as he spun them in a circle, finally putting her feet back on land so she could hug Connall and Vaughan. Aelin made no effort to further engage in conversation with Lorcan. They tolerated each other on a good day, and he was still watching Rowan as he disappeared into what she assumed was their living quarters.
“I missed you the most out of everyone,” she told Fen as he hefted her bags over one shoulder and threw his other arm around her to lead her toward the house.
“Even more than you missed Whitethorn?” It was a joke, one that wasn’t rewarded with laughter but by a swift jab to his ribs. He winced, lips pulling into a harsh frown. Aelin couldn’t help it. She smiled.
“Is he still being a bitter asshole?”
“Worse, if you can believe it,” Connall chimed in. A sigh was desperate to creep out of her lips, but she swallowed it down. She knew when she got the assignment that it wouldn’t be easy for her, Rowan, or anyone that had to be in close proximity to them. Aelin also knew that she could check the baggage at the door when it came down to doing their jobs. In their downtime, however… She was making no promises.
“We cleared out a room for you. Fenrys can show you which one,” Lorcan shot over his shoulder as he walked past them, headed toward the house next to the one Rowan had entered.
“I don’t need special treatment just because I’m a woman!” Lorcan merely waved dismissively over his shoulder and slammed the front door behind him.
“I promise there is no special treatment here in Hela’s fucking armpit,” Vaughan mumbled, nudging her with his shoulder as he brushed past. Indeed, it seemed their living quarters were a far cry from her house in Orynth. Not that the barracks or living situations on special missions were ever anything to write home about, but this was particularly shoddy.
Fenrys led her inside, gesturing to each fixture in the common areas and trying to sell them for far more than their worth. It wasn’t the worst place Aelin had ever lived in her decade-long career in the military, but his jokes had her in stitches by the time he led her to her ‘bedroom.’
Really, it was more of an oversized closet with a cot, a chair for a nightstand, and a single light operated by a cord that dangled from the ceiling. Someone had put a small fan on top of the chair that she turned on to test the airflow. Beneath the cot was just enough space for her to slide her bags, and the door shut almost all the way. It refused to latch, but you win some and lose some. It wasn’t the worst and definitely beat sleeping outside or sharing a room with any of the boys. Aelin had spent enough time with military men to know they smelled horrible.
Not that she smelled like jasmine at all hours of the day, but the women tended to try a little harder than the men did. It didn’t matter that she knew all of them personally. Maybe it was a little sexist, but she stood firm in the idea that women cared a little more about body odor than men.
After the grand tour was finished and she’d peeked into the guys' rooms, they walked back toward the kitchen. Aelin had arrived much later than planned, and Rowan was already preparing his MRE for dinner. The others quickly followed suit, and Fenrys knelt on the ground to dig through the box.
“Alright, we’ve got spaghetti with meat sauce, chili mac, a chicken stew, regular mac and cheese, and lemon pepper tuna.”
“Chili mac,” she said, firm in her decision. It was one of the best ones, and with their supplies looking a little low, she didn’t know how it was even an option.
Fenrys handed her the dinner, and she quickly removed all the contents. Along with the main entree, it held a few other snack items ranging from a beef jerky stick to a packet of Sour Patch Kids and a few things in between. She hummed contentedly at the fruit punch powder packet that she would most definitely add to her water.
Aelin was forced to sidle up next to Rowan to fill her pouch with water to activate the one-time-use heater that came with the meals. He said nothing as their shoulders brushed until she was finished, folding her pouch over to avoid spillage. Aelin handed her food off to Fenrys while she relocated everything else to the small table that would barely hold them all. By the time she retrieved it and took her seat, Rowan was already in his chair.
Because she simply couldn’t pass up on the opportunity, she sat next to him, not bothering to avoid their knees knocking or shoulders bumping as she settled. Again, he said nothing. Just stabbed at his own pouch of beef and barbecue and pretended she wasn’t there.
“Are you going to give me the silent treatment?” Aelin nudged his elbow with hers, tilting her head to look at him. Rowan finally relented and gave her a sidelong glance.
The others, including Lorcan, were claiming their seats. To their credit, it seemed that they were trying not to eavesdrop, but that was impossible in this house. Lorcan, however, looked ready to jump between them and dispel a fight that would leave two of his incredible assets licking their wounds.
“I was thinking about it,” Rowan replied tersely, not looking up as he shoved a bite into his mouth. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the last few years?”
“Ah, so Connall was right then.” Bitter asshole to his very core, apparently. Fenrys snickered at her remark beside her while Rowan tensed. Aelin could have been sitting up against a concrete wall and wouldn’t have known the difference.
“What are you missing most about civilian life?” Fen asked, likely an attempt to prevent a verbal sparring match. He popped a skittle into his mouth and settled back in his rickety chair.
“I barely remember what it’s like at this point, to be honest.” It was the truth. Aelin had thrown herself so thoroughly into work that she was only home for a few days at a time. The longest she’d been home was for a month last summer. There were days when she didn’t know what to do with herself and days when her mattress felt too soft, or the food too indulgent. Aelin pondered, mouth twisting to the side. “Usually, I would say long, hot showers. But I don’t think I’ll be craving any sort of heat while we’re here. Probably my nightgowns. I can handle everything else, but sleeping in silk is wildly underrated.”
“Can you not share intimate details while we’re eating?” Rowan grumbled. Aelin whipped her head around to look at him, her brow furrowed.
“Intimate details, my ass. You’ve literally been inside me. I don’t think it gets more intimate than that.” Had she chosen nightgowns specifically to wiggle her way under Rowan’s skin? Maybe. But it didn’t make his reaction any less stupid. “How the hell is sleepwear an intimate detail?”
Rowan opened his mouth to respond, but Lorcan beat him to the punch, looking for all the world like he should have told them to put Aelin in someone else’s company as he said, “On the topic of civilian life–”
“Please tell me we’re leaving this godsforsaken place,” Fenrys cut in, eyes wide and pleading.
“I just flew halfway around the world, and we’re leaving?” Aelin felt as exasperated as she sounded. It was a long way to travel to just turn around and head right back. She wasn’t eager to be cooped back up on any sort of aircraft so soon.
“In three days,” Lorcan confirmed, shifting in his seat to pull a roll of paper from his back pocket that he dropped into the middle of the table. Six pairs of eyes peered down, scanning the words even though it was upside down for Fenrys, Aelin, and Rowan. “I didn’t find out until this morning, or we would have waited for you to join us then.”
“What’s going on?”
“Since we’ve been monitoring the border here for months and nothing is happening, we’re more useful elsewhere. Another unit will be stationed here while we go to Rifthold.”
“What’s happening in Rifthold?” Rowan asked, leaning back in his chair. Aelin did the same while taking a swig of fruit punch, eyeing the unused drink packet from Rowan’s meal kit. It was grape, and she knew he wouldn’t drink it because it was too sweet. Maybe she could steal it when he wasn’t paying attention.
“A threat on the Crown Prince of Adarlan’s life.” Lorcan’s tone lacked inflection. He could have been talking about the weather.
“I’m all for preventing an assassination, but we’re the Terrasen military. Why are we getting sent in for this?” Vaughan had a point. A good one, too. Not that any of them were really complaining. Going back to civilization would be a damn vacation for them, the boys more than Aelin. She hadn’t been hiding in a shack in the desert for the last four months.
“Because all signs point to it happening at the summer ball, and our President, along with a dozen high-ranking officials from our government, will be in attendance. Preventing the Prince’s assassination will save their lives, too.” Everyone murmured their agreement. “We don’t know where it came from, though. Our source is unclear on that, which will be the trickier part. All signs point to it being an inside job right now because things have been intense between the king and his oldest son.”
“Dorian has been speaking out against a lot of his father’s policies. The king can’t do damage control fast enough. It was all over the papers when I was in Orynth last month. As quickly as the king puts out one fire, Dorian starts another. ‘Inside sources,’” Aelin added air quotes with her fingers for emphasis, “Claim that the king is getting really fed up. It’s causing a lot of unrest and protests among the people. More of them seem to agree with the prince than the king. It would make sense for it to be his doing.”
“That,” Fenrys drawled, holding one finger, “Is fucked up.”
“It is,” Aelin agreed. “But things have always appeared to be rocky between them.”
“We’ll be going undercover for a while. Adarlan’s government isn’t asking for assistance on the issue, probably because they’re starting it to begin with. But we aren’t willing to risk their version of ‘taking care of things.’ And if it comes down to it, President Galathynius–” Lorcan’s eyes shot to Aelin when mentioning her uncle, “–would rather save the prince’s life and risk tension with Adarlan over it.”
“Considering the King of Adarlan is a sexist, racist piece of shit, I don’t blame him,” Connall mused, letting his hair out of the bun it had been in since Aelin arrived. She agreed with her uncle. Dorian did as much as he could as a prince, but as king… He would pave the way to a better world.
“Do we have covers yet?” Rowan leaned forward, reaching for the stack of papers Lorcan had presented to them. As he sifted through them, Aelin noticed the commander’s face getting tighter with every page Rowan skimmed. Her brow furrowed as she looked over her ex-boyfriend’s broad shoulder.
“You two…” Lorcan hesitated. Almost like he was dreading the news he was about to bestow upon them. “The four of us will be blending in with the commoners. Our base will be a large manor set far enough out that nobody will notice we all congregate together.”
Beside her, Rowan went utterly rigid. If she thought he was tense before, it was nothing compared to now. The tendons in his neck were ready to snap. She swore she could see his pulse pounding in his neck as a vein protruded in the center of his forehead.
“No,” Rowan said, shaking his head and throwing the papers on the table. Confused, Aelin snatched them up to read them herself. Fenrys leaned in to read along with her, one of his fingers tracing down the edge of the page.
“It wasn’t my call,” Lorcan said defensively, right as her eyes landed on the incriminating words that had Rowan’s body taut as a bowstring.
“This better be a fucking joke,” she spat, pushing out of her chair and rising to her feet. It had to be a joke, a prank, a hazing for joining their stupid little boyband. The harsh lines on her commander’s face said it was anything but. “Married? Out of all five of you to make me pretend to be married to, it’s Rowan that gets picked?”
“We don’t know how dangerous of a situation we’re walking into.” Lorcan tried to sound calm, but his eyes darted between the former couple like they might burn down the world out of spite. Aelin was considering it. “Rowan is the best of us at hand-to-hand combat should you ever need the defense–”
“I can fight for myself. I can protect myself. Fenrys could protect me just as well as Rowan if that were truly a concern.” It was risky to shout at her commander so much, especially on her first day, but Aelin was just past the point of caring. Every fuck she might be able to give was caught in a tornado of sand, plowing through the desert in the complete opposite direction.
“You know better than anyone that Rowan has skill sets that would work well while masquerading as a Duke, just like you do for being a Duchess. Fenrys is too loud-mouthed, and the other two lack the general composure to pretend to be royal. Rowan always has the quiet, dignified mask in his back pocket. He can talk his way out of–”
“I don’t care,” she hissed, taking several steps from the table.
“Ace…” Fenrys said quietly, leaning back in his chair to grab her hand. “Lorcan has a point.”
“I know he does.” Aelin’s voice was muffled while she rubbed at her face. Nobody objected or disagreed with Lorcan’s mild insults because it was the truth. Sometimes, Fen didn’t know when to shut up, and while Vaughan and Connall could easily look the part, they were missing something that Rowan just had naturally.
When he walked into a room, he carried himself like he was important. Unlike typical royals, it wasn’t because he was looking down his nose at anyone but because he almost commanded respect from everyone. Rowan, as a royal, wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Aelin knew that. She just wished she had more of a heads-up before getting thrown into something that hit a little too close to home where their former relationship was concerned.
“I’m sorry for yelling.” Her eyes met Lorcan’s, and he shrugged. Now was not the time for him to assume she couldn’t do her job because she was an emotional woman. It was sexist bullshit, to begin with, but her time in the military told her it’s what they all thought of the women. No matter how hard they trained or how many times they proved themselves, women were silly, emotional creatures that couldn’t handle anything.
“I expected it. I know it won’t be easy for either of you.” Aelin couldn’t hide the surprise on her face. Not the raised brows or the way her mouth parted at his words. Maybe she undersold him. Just a little. “Rowan?”
“Yeah.” The word was flat. Seeing his face wasn’t necessary to know his eyes were probably as vacant as he sounded.
“Can you handle it?”
“Don’t really have a choice, do I?”
No, they didn’t have a choice, but if it would save multiple lives, they would manage. Their tumultuous past would stay where it belonged when they were in public and doing their jobs. Maybe they would even find a way to be civil by the end of it. There was also the possibility of everything going up in flames, one violent explosion at a time until everything was burned and nobody was marked safe from the fallout.
Aelin really wasn’t sure which one it would be.
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