Ayoka had never felt pain like this. Not the sharp kind — not the kind that screams. No, this was deep and slow, like a wound that had learned to hum lullabies. It curled in her belly like fire with purpose. Like something ancient crawling back into her skin.
And damn it, the power felt good. Not sweet. Not kind. It felt like being ripped open by stars. Like the kind of feeling that comes right before you die — or ascend. A high so sacred, it bordered on lust. Her toes curled. Her spine arched slightly. Not from pleasure, but from pressure. From something older than flesh whispering mine.
Her body was steady. Her mind — almost untouched. She could still think clearly, breathe evenly, speak with precision. But her soul was screaming. Not in fear — in change. The kind that couldn't be undone. It felt like the gods were calling for her. Not with mercy. Not with love. With hunger. With names she had forgotten buried in bone.
To others it would have looked like pain, anger, maybe madness. But she and her shadow — Sayoka — felt it all too well. This was their language, their hymn. The only thing that truly hurt was how the power kept splitting them apart, half in her veins, half in the dark.
She wondered: what if I make a sacrifice? Would it end this tearing? Would it make the gods turn their faces away? Would it mean choosing Viktor over her son, or her son over Viktor? Maybe it was Viktor's fault this whole time. Maybe she had been caged for him, not because of him.
She started to crawl toward him, slow, deliberate, her fingers leaving tiny crescents in the floor. Viktor looked up, catching the movement. He saw her shiver, saw her lips move without sound, and for a heartbeat he thought she was just cold. He reached out instinctively, wondering if she needed to be warmed.
It had been beautiful. Chaotic, yes — but joyous. He'd devoured books like a starving man. Told stories to shadows until his throat cracked. Drank until wine dripped down his chin like blood from a fresh kill. It wasn't madness. It was liberation.
It had felt like rising.
But Ayoka? Ayoka looked like she was burning alive.
Her power wasn't flowing — it was tearing her apart. She moved like she wanted to feel every second of it, like pain was the only thing she trusted. Viktor didn't understand it. Not yet. He'd ask the Shadow Man later.
She crawled toward him, silent, shivering. For a moment, he thought she was just cold. That part was normal. She always ran cold. He moved without thinking — started to take off his shirt.
She let him.
Then, without blinking, she used one of her chains to snatch the shirt from his hands and fling it into the fire.
The flames hissed, then flared violet — not just heat, but shadowfire, sparked by her touch. Smoke curled upward in unnatural spirals, tinted with flickers of blue and black. The fire shifted, as if something inside it had awakened.
Viktor stared into the purple blaze, the light casting her face in hues he had never seen before. The fire didn't whisper fear, nor did it warn him away. It stirred something stranger—curiosity. What would this power make of her? She had always been cold, but now the chill seemed almost holy, divine in its wrongness. Something broken yet exalted, gathering in her spine like a curse preparing to bloom.
That was when the chain slid around his neck. Not fast, not violent, but with the weight of ritual. It felt less like an attack and more like a ceremony being performed on him. And still, Viktor didn't raise a hand to stop her.
Ayoka moved with a slow, deliberate calm. She wrapped the chain around his throat and tightened it until he felt the weight settle like a crown. Without a hurry, she lifted him—just enough that his toes left the floor. It wasn't violent; it was ceremonial, an inch of suspension that made every small sound in his body louder. Viktor's lungs adjusted. His vision feathered at the edges for a second. He thought, clearly, almost gratefully: This is what I deserve. I will take the punishment for now. I can handle her pain and joys. I want all that.
She held him there, warm breath on his jaw, and then the chain in her hand became the thing that struck. The whip cracked across his chest—clean, precise. Blue-black blood broke the skin in a thin, glowing stroke the color of ripe blueberries, the wound smoking a faint scent of vanilla into the air. The impact knocked the breath out of him; pain bloomed and then settled into a steady drumbeat under his ribs.
Ayoka didn't immediately lean in. She dragged the chain's edge through the fresh wound, collecting the dark, sweet blood along the metal until the chain glimmered with it. Then, slowly, as if performing a sacrament, she brought the blood-slick chain up to her lips. She pressed metal to flesh, let a slow bead of that blueberry-dark blood roll from chain to tongue, and tasted it.
The flavor opened in her like a hymn—berry-sweet and warm with vanilla, shocking and soft all at once. Her body shuddered with something like worship; her eyes fluttered closed for a single, stunned breath. She held the chain at his neck while she savored it, a predator and anointing priest in the same motion.
Viktor hung there, not fighting. He watched her do it, felt every inch of the ritual—humiliation and devotion braided together—and let her have him.
Viktor watched the way her lips lingered on the chain, the way his blood dripped slow into her mouth, and he thought: She's tasting me the way I once tasted her.
He remembered it now—the first time he drank from Ayoka. Not as a hunter, not as a husband, but as something else. Something older. It had been during one of their blood-bound nights, when her scales first began to shimmer against the moonlight, silk-like and starlit beneath his mouth.
Her skin had smelled like salt and something green.
And her blood—gods, her blood—had tasted like honeydew flower sap. Sweet and dangerous. Floral with a bite, like nectar from a blossom that only bloomed for those brave enough to touch its thorns. He hadn't known what she was then. But his dragon soul had. It recognized her the moment the first drop hit his tongue.
That was when he'd made his vow.
Not out loud. Not with words. Just breath.
He'd made it while drinking her blood: I will carry her. I will take what she cannot. I will stay through her storms and her sweetness both. I will not run.
And tonight?
Tonight felt like a mirror.
The blood was his now. The ritual reversed. And still—
My wife is so beautiful, he thought.
Even with venom dripping from her lips.
Even with chains around his throat.
Even while she lifted him up like a god preparing a sacrifice.
Ayoka saw it in his eyes again.
That same distant, worship-heavy look. The one he gave her the night he first tasted her blood—when she thought he'd drown in her and never come back. His mouth had been soft, reverent. His eyes unblinking. He hadn't feared her then. He'd looked grateful.
Now, here he was again—neck wrapped in her chains, blood on his face—and he looked the same.
She hated that look.
"You remember this, Viktor?" she asked, stepping closer. Her voice wasn't furious. It was raw. Wounded. A whisper sliding down a knife.
Her skin shimmered without warning—scales blooming in teal and pink, flickering like oil-slick light across her arms and throat. Her violet eyes sharpened. Her forked tongue slipped out, catching smoke and silence in the air.
Viktor didn't look away.
And that—that was what made her break.
"Maybe you don't like fucking the color lady," she said, low and vicious, like the words hurt more coming out than going in. "Maybe it was easier when I stopped looking like myself."
She tugged the chain around his throat harder, fangs bared.
"You smiled when I changed. When I shimmered like this. Like the monster made more sense than the woman who came before it."
She ran a claw along her own collarbone, touching the scales with care but not softness.
"But this? This is still me. My blood. My body. My chains."
She yanked the chain again, dragging his head forward. And Viktor—gasping, barely audible—managed to whisper:
"I love—"
Her panic exploded.
"No."
She lunged forward and wrapped the chain around his mouth, silencing him fast and hard. Metal pressed against his lips, cold and final. Her hand trembled. Her shoulders stiffened.
"Don't you dare say it," she whispered. "No… don't you dare say that now."
Tears ran down her cheeks, catching on the edge of her scales like glass beads. Her body shook—but not from rage.
From grief.
From fear.
From love she didn't know how to believe in anymore.
Viktor didn't struggle. He just sat there, bound and bleeding, as she guided him down into the chair like a sacrament. The chains obeyed her, coiling around his limbs, across his chest. Not tight. Not rough. Just firm. Just final.
Gods, he thought. What did I do?
Yes, he loved her like this. Her venom, her strength, her shimmer. That divine, coiled fury she became when she let go. But he loved her softness too—her quiet mornings, her breathless jokes, the way her fingers trembled when she wasn't sure what to say.
Did I make her feel like that wasn't enough?
He looked into her eyes again and saw it—she didn't even believe the things she was saying. Her lips moved like she was reciting someone else's grief. Like she needed him to be guilty so she didn't have to feel broken.
And maybe… maybe he should've shifted too.
Let her see him full-form. Let her know he could match her. That he would.
But he didn't.
Because if she could barely handle his human body—
how the hell was she supposed to survive his hybrid one?
"I reckon I need to claim you," Ayoka murmured, low and matter-of-fact, as though it were no more serious than sweeping a porch. "Same way you done brought me and our boy into this cursed place. It's only right I return the favor."
She guided Viktor into the chair like she was leading him down to prayer — gentle hands, firm intent. The chains moved before she gave them voice, curling up from the floor like they knew their place: around him. One wrapped his wrist. Another circled his waist. The seat rose behind him, made not of wood nor iron, but something darker. Something older.
Viktor didn't fight it. Not yet.
The dragon heat in his lungs had begun to rise — slow, smoldering — like coals that hadn't been stirred in years. He let it build, let it settle beneath his tongue, waiting for just the right moment to breathe.
And then he saw him.
The Shadow Man.
Tall, still, carved in darkness. He stood beyond the reach of the firelight, half in the wall, half in the world. Ayoka passed him as she moved — brushing close, near enough to touch — and never once flinched.
She couldn't see him.
But Viktor could.
The Shadow Man lifted a length of chain in his palm. Gave Viktor a look.
Well, boy?
Viktor met his gaze. Just a flick of the eyes. Calm.
Not yet.
Ayoka returned, holding a bundle of cloth and glass in her hands. She hummed a strange little tune under her breath — something that sounded like it belonged in a funeral parlor — and unfastened the chain at Viktor's mouth.
"There we are," she said sweetly, climbing onto his lap like a bride getting comfortable on her wedding night. "Can't do a proper binding if I can't hear your voice, now can I?"
She ran her fingers through his hair, slow and careful. "Ever had a tattoo?" she asked, eyes dancing with some bright, rattling emotion.
Then she pinched his cheeks with both hands and moved his mouth like a marionette. "'No, I haven't, dear wife. You're so pretty in this form today. I'll be your loyal slave forever.'"
She threw her head back and laughed, full and sharp, like she'd cracked something open and found joy inside. "Slave," she spat the word again, grinning. "That one tickles."
Sayoka, her shadow, stepped forward now — tall and flickering like candle smoke — and offered her a glass bottle. Ayoka took it gently, unscrewed the cap, and poured a stream of her venom straight into the ink. The mixture darkened, turned viscous and blue-black like creek water in a drought.
She dipped her claw.
Pressed the tip to Viktor's chest, right above the heart.
"Any final words, love?" she asked. "Before I make you mine for good?"
Viktor took a breath.
Held it.
Then said, simple as gospel: "Now."
The Shadow Man moved.
Chains flew through the air like judgment, coiling first around Sayoka, then around Ayoka herself. They hit her mid-breath. She froze — eyes wide — and slumped forward in Viktor's lap like a doll with her strings cut. Sayoka collapsed beside her, vanishing into her own shadow.
The bottle tipped. The ink spilled across the floor, steaming faintly where it touched the chain.
The room fell quiet.
The Shadow Man stood near now, holding the ends of those ancient chains like reins. He looked down at Viktor, his mouth a thin, grim line.
"Had to go and lay with a snake lady, didn't you," he said, voice dry as grave dirt.
Viktor rolled his neck, shoulders loosening as the last of the heat left his lungs. He glanced down at Ayoka's sleeping form, head resting against his chest, her face still half-smiling.
He looked back at the Shadow Man.
"Might've done a good deal more than that."