“Yours,” I whimper.
* * *
It takes some time to become coherent. Again, Isu bathes me. He cleans his seed from me tenderly and he makes sure that I drink to replace the fluids I lost in my writhing sexual ecstasy. When I speak again, it is with words of surrender.
“You don’t need the chains, Isu. I will go to the surface when I need the sun, but I will not leave you.”
I have surprised him. I have, in fact, surprised myself, but it remains true that in spite of everything, there is no place I would rather be than with this big, hot, terrible monster of an alien.
“Meek, M’uklak,” he murmurs to himself, dropping into his native tongue as he attempts to come to terms with what I have told him. “You’re not lying, are you, Aspel.” It’s not a question. It’s an acknowledgement. Maybe I should hate him, want to flee his clutches, or maybe I know that he holds me so tightly because separation was painful for us both, and that having found me again, he is terrified I might find some way to leave.
“I wouldn’t leave you forever, Isu. Where would I go? Back to the human world where they drink away their cares and then become insulted if you suggest that they have any? To the farm, to fight the Vargons? To free humans who do not know any better than captivity? You are cruel, Isu. But you know what you can change, and what you cannot. You understand this universe. And you see me.”
“I do see you,” he murmurs, his lips closing in on mine and capturing my mouth in a passionate kiss.
He is the sun in the center of my personal cosmos. If I get too close, he burns me. If I stay too far away, I freeze.
“I’m going to keep you chained,” he says, brushing the hair tenderly from my head. “Just a little longer. I’m not ready to lose you all over again just yet.”
Our love is madness. It is captivity. Flame. Fire. Pain. Sacrifice. Loss. It is everything I fear, and everything I crave. I may one day break these chains and flee. But if I do, I know where I will return, and he knows it too. I am the woman who woke the wyrm.
I have wondered how that could be possible, how a simple human being taken from a prison planet, cast upon strange shores might find herself catalyzing complete and utter destruction. But I think I understand now. It wasn’t my presence that woke the wyrm. It was my hunger. No wonder she feasted upon the planet until there was nothing left. Every moment I was away from Isu, I was ravenous for him. Now that I am sated, I wonder if she might be satisfied too.
“What are you thinking?” Isu asks me the question gently.
“I was wondering if the wyrm and I are connected.”
“Of that, there can be no doubt.”
“You blamed me for waking her. But it could not have been my fault. I was one girl, from a planet very far away. How could I ever have woken a beast that powerful? It must have been coincidence, but I was punished for it, then and now. At least, that’s what I thought.”
“There is no such thing as coincidence, Aspel. Either all things have meaning, or no things have meaning. She woke when you walked our world, and she fed when you fled. Fault is not what you think it is. You can be at fault for something you have no control over.”
“That’s not fair.”
“The universe is not known for fairness.”
“You truly believe I bonded with the wyrm somehow? That we were connected?”
“Humans have the rare power to connect with beings of all species,” he says. “Maybe you did bond with the wyrm. Such things are not able to be known. Do you know what I do know?”
“What?”
I can feel the rumbling of the young wyrm beneath us as Isu draws me into his arms. Perhaps these creatures do resonate with need. Perhaps I am so full of desire it drives the elements themselves mad. Maybe that day I landed on Isu’s world, I did wake something terrible. I may never understand all the causes and their resulting effects. Nobody ever does. The people on Erf don’t even bother. And those on the farm? I cannot save them. I cannot even save myself. My salvation has come in the form of captivity, being owned by an alien master who will ravage my body and sate my carnal hunger until I am at peace with the universe that spawned me.
Isu captures my mouth in a long, passionate, demanding kiss, driving all thoughts from my head as he pulls me closer to him, my chain clinking lightly as he maneuvers me for the benefit of his fanged embrace.