The Divine Gambit Ch. 16

"Zoey, are you dying?"

A flash of white-hot anger blossomed on the blonde's face as she demanded, "Who told you?"

"No one that was keeping your secrets for you. Antonin's history lessons included information about weres lifespans and how to reckon them. You yourself suggested that you had been pulled from active duty and given a retirement-esque training and concierge position. It doesn't take a genius to put those together."

Her anger, blooming into a righteous rage at the idea that a supposed friend had betrayed her truths, was suddenly wrought without fuel, fading and dying on her face, replaced only by tormented acceptance that I knew.

"I wanted to tell you, but I didn't want to force your hand. I didn't want you to feel as though you had to say 'yes' because of the consequences of saying 'no.' I hoped you would agree outright soon, and then I could tell you."

"Zoey."

She met my gaze, and a visage of horror occupied the once beautiful face. She reeked of guilt and shame and regret and her hands trembled under my stern watch.

"I know I should have told you, James. I know. But I was overwhelmed with having finally found my mate, a boy from my childhood inexplicably my destined one now, and then he wasn't were, and then he was a dragon and maybe misleading me, and then he wasn't misleading me and Mal was right and I was such a fool, and then I opened my mouth to ask for something without giving the full context why."

"Zoey."

Her pained eyes found mine again after they had searched the landscape, desperate for an answer to a question I hadn't asked, and I noticed flecks of lavender tinting them for the first time.

"Come here."

She hesitantly stepped closer and then released a terrified whine when I wrapped her in my arms, hugging her lithe form tightly to my chest.

"I'm not upset. I understand how hard it is to share and how terrifying it would be to think it would influence my decisions. But, if we're going to make this work, like you said earlier, your burdens are my burdens."

It took a few moments of deep breaths for Zoey to relax into my arms, and as the group that had been behind us passed us by with several second glances, she whispered, "I'm still sorry, James. I know I keep fucking up with you. I'm just used to not having to deal with the consequences. Live hard and die young and all that, except it was decided for me at birth."

"You don't have to explain it, Zoey. I'm not upset about this."

After another thirty seconds of me simply holding her, she shivered in my arms, taking a deep breath with her face pressed against my neck. I watched as a tide of goosebumps swept across her shoulders and upper back, spreading out to cover all of her exposed skin and beyond, invisibly pale fair hairs standing in unison. She sighed into my neck and said, "They told me I'd know when I had found my mate. And I knew on Tuesday, obviously. I remember laughing at basic when others found theirs, how young, lost, and spacey they'd act. But here, I get it. I don't really know if I was alive before."

"You obviously were."

She shook her head without lifting it from me, "I mean, sure, but it was like looking at life through a black and white audioless 240p display from across your living room and then being handed a 4k VR headset. You can watch a sitcom, play a game, or do a training sim on both of them, but after using the second one, the first one feels hollow, incomplete, and unfulfilling."

I sighed, with Zoey's change in demeanor and clear display of the inevitable, imminent defeat to her wolf's instincts making me feel obliged to share information. Information that wasn't concretely defined or even conclusive in any manner.

"I should tell you something."

I paused, giving Zoey a chance to interrupt as the tone in my voice suggested I had something grave to say. She didn't interrupt, simply clinging to me in the woods as other people walked the trail past us, lost in the world that existed between my arms.

"I don't think I'm just dragon. I had a crazy dream during the week where I interacted with something that felt sentient. It asked me to help it and I agreed in the dream. I talked with Antonin about this, and he had no ideas. After shifting by the pool, it was one of the things I spoke with Aisling about. She also wasn't sure what to make of it."

Zoey shrugged, indifferent to my words, content to remain where she was.

"You aren't bothered by it at all?"

"We already knew you were unique and odd, even for a dragon. Why weren't you a dragon at birth? Your parents aren't anything magic and you didn't give off a hint back then. Even with your suppression ring on now, you feel imposing. How'd you bond with Beth? I read the dossier on her enchantments and the incident report from outside the bar. No one knows what to make of it, and it's being hushed and forgotten. Why weren't you clearly my mate at school? Even though I was young, I should've felt something drawing me to you. I should've been clinging to you like a smitten schoolgirl, even worse than Sam did. Instead, nothing. You walked into the gym last week, and it was like suddenly half of you was revealed.

"That's a big part of why I thought you were toying with me. I felt nothing when I woke up that day. I should have gotten a sense you existed and were in the city, a little tug on my soul telling me you were out there waiting for me. But I got up and went to work; nothing was different. And then I walked into the lobby and -- WHAM -- all of it at once. What hid you from me until I was in the same room as you?

"But, no. I appreciate you telling me, especially when I haven't been as forthright, but it doesn't bother me. It's so vague as to be meaningless in terms of predictable consequences and actionable prevention steps. Aisling wouldn't let you walk around in the city if she felt it was a risk to the public and Antonin wouldn't hesitate to warn her if he felt something was off."

I understood what she meant. From a tactical point of view, as Zoey was trained to evaluate things, my warning was just noise. 'Something might be weird with me' wasn't a piece of data you could draw conclusions from. Still, I had one more word of caution for her.

"I think it contributes somewhat to what happened when I shifted with you and Mallory. Beth and Sam have a similar reaction when we're intimate."

"James, that's got nothing to do with you being a dragon or a mysterious undefined half-dragon. That's supposed to happen if you do a good enough job."

"Sam was in the other room the first time. And it specifically happens as a reaction when I cum. When Sam went down on me, she and Beth came at the same time I did."

"That doesn't sound like something I needed forewarning of."

"After the first time with Sam, she gained some elements of the same bond that Beth has. Not the shielding enchantment but a similar experience to the wolf mate bond, I think. They can both feel my emotions somewhat, and for Beth and I, it's gotten precise enough to get more articulate and complex thoughts across, albeit not quite reliably yet. With Beth, that started immediately, but Sam only experienced the dedicated link between us after we had sex.

"I also, somehow, shared some of my mana pool with her. She went from practically none to conjuring illusionary fire crowns around my and Beth's heads while still in bed after sex, much more than she would ever have had the affinity or resources for before. Antonin thinks Beth's enchantments are growing with our intimacy, too."

Zoey pursed her lips and looked back at me, "What are you saying, James?"

"Our first time will probably add a second bond layer on top of what you already feel, and somehow, my not-dragon part empowers the people I'm intimate with. I don't know what either of those mean, but you should be aware. But actually, I want to try and prevent my unique connection from forming during our first time."

Zoey looked insulted, having drawn the only reasonable conclusion from my incomplete explanation. I hastily continued, "Not because of anything with you, and not because I'm trying to hold us back. I just want to know if I can. Not that I'm going to be looking for anything beyond you, Beth, and Sam, but it would be nice to know that I can prevent the connection if I want to."

Zoey furrowed her lips as she thought over what I was saying, "So why tell me?"

"I wanted you to know what to expect. The baggage I carry, even if I don't understand it. I wanted to warn you of what would be coming eventually and then that it wasn't happening immediately and why."

"So you do want that with me eventually?"

"Yes, Zoey, I do. I just don't want to ever be in the situation where I would be intimate with someone I didn't want a permanent bond with and not know if I could prevent it. I'm going to try to hold it back with you because we're already connected by your nature, and I'm comfortable with either outcome. If it works and I prevent it, I'll have the knowledge, and we can go again right away to combine ourselves as we should be, because I do want to include you. If it doesn't work, I'm doubly bound to you, but know I can't prevent it and will act accordingly in the future."

Zoey nodded, "Makes sense," she said, with her bristly exterior receding as she understood I wasn't distancing myself.

"So, changing room and ditching the human path?"

Zoey agreed, content to leave our confusing conversation where it was for the time being. We finished the loop around the lake and found ourselves back at the parking lot. Zoey guided me to the locker room I had overlooked entirely when we entered the park. In a minute, I found myself stripping down and storing my belongings in a perfectly mundane-looking metal locker. Several other lockers had locks on them, but no one else was inside the room with us. Which I was thankful for. It was awkward enough with just Zoey and I.

After we stripped and stowed our belongings, Zoey led me down a flight of stairs and along a cement hallway. I felt like I was walking through a bomb shelter, the underground, unadorned cement purely functional. I could see a massive opening at the far end leading out into the woods beyond, something that I thought would have needed to be closed and secured. The realistic answer was that it almost certainly was, just with magic instead of the big door with a lock that I expected to see. While distracted by my thoughts, I didn't realize Zoey had taken my hand until I went to lift it to scratch my nose. She smirked humorously, held firm, and we walked silently hand-in-hand to the woods.

Finally, the long stretch of tunnel opened up into the woods, the cement path abruptly coming to an end. I turned around to look behind me and could see that the tunnel had been cut into a natural hill so that you wouldn't see the entranceway unless you were perfectly aligned with it. After a moment, Zoey tugged my arm and pulled me deeper into the woods. Or rather, away from the tunnel, because it had opened up clearly far away from the civilized area of the park. It felt wild and untamed here, harkening back to an earlier time in the earth's development, an utterly incompatible world to the urban landscape I had spent the last week in.

Zoey was clearly well acquainted with the area, as she brought me through the trees to a sizable, flat-topped boulder, immediately sitting down on it where the sunlight had warmed its surface. She continued holding my hand, reaching with her other arm to grab the other, a relaxed smile on her face. She looked at me, relaxed and at peace, her blonde hair shuffling in the gentle breeze, mentally disarming me and confounding my preconceptions of our run in the woods.

Then she reached up, bopped me on the nose with one finger, and said, "Tag; you're it."

In a flash, she transformed into her wolf body. A powerful streak of white fur went leaping away from the boulder as my mind slowly clambered to understand what was happening. When Zoey reached a spot some twenty yards away, on the near side of a fallen tree she would break line of sight from me with, she paused. She turned, her grey eyes finding me and challenging me. She flicked her tail back and forth in a way I innately understood as playful, but her eyes had steel in them, not just from the color.

They told me she wasn't going to just roll over for me. No matter what the wolf wanted, the human was in control. And Zoey only wanted a mate that could match her, that could best her, that could mirror the steps she took in the world. She was directly challenging me to prove that I was worth giving herself to. She had spent a long time growing accustomed to her lack of besouled kinship to another and was telling me she could wait in the hovel she had spent so long in until I proved I could provide for her, not in the traditional way I was used to, but the things that she needed in a partner.

The glance lasted but a moment before she hopped over the fallen tree in a single bound, clearing it without disturbing the moss that had begun growing. I started running after her as a man, but there was no chance of my human form catching the mighty wolf I was chasing. Before I reached the spot where she had paused, I transformed into a dragon. Now, behind the gleefully fleeing majestic snow-white wolf was a potent blood-red wyrm, recklessly crashing through the forest without regard for anyone else, hyperfocused on the prey eluding him.

Within a few moments of transforming, it was clear that I was still massively outmatched. I had advantages in maximum speed, reach, and magical sensitivity. Magical sensitivity meant I could very easily keep track of Zoey, but it wasn't an advantage because I wasn't nearly graceful enough to hide myself from her. Reach wasn't an advantage when I never actually caught up enough to capitalize on it. And maximum speed, something you'd think would matter when chasing someone, was barely a factor, because Zoey continuously changed direction, dodging and weaving between trees to ensure I never actually reached my limit.

She was just quicker than me, significantly more agile, and way more accustomed to being in her alternate body than I was. My dragon skin made me feel like a lumbering oaf, a baby deer trying to walk on ice. My limbs didn't move how I wanted them to, my gait was awkward and inefficient, and my tail smashed against trees and along the ground as I ran behind Zoey. I even considered trying to fly after her instead of running, but one look at the dense canopy of interlocking branches above me quickly dissuaded me from that idea. I was barely capable of running along the forest floor -- flying would just be asking for an injury.

It took over twenty minutes of constant, dogged running, but I finally caught her. It really wasn't a fair challenge because of our unique circumstances. She was, in effect, an aging werewolf. Her body no longer had the peak explosiveness she would have had in the past nor the complete recovery capacity she would have developed. She was also mostly bound by physics. Sure, she was a giant wolf, but she still had to breathe and perspire to cool down, and eventually, her body succumbed to the demands she was placing on it. Not that she kneeled over and puked like an out-of-shape human after running a mile, but she lost her sharpness, her explosivity, her immediacy.

On the other hand, I pretty clearly wasn't. The magic running through my veins that healed injury clearly also dealt with exercise fatigue. Yes, I still felt tired and sore after a workout, but I hadn't experienced any delayed onset soreness, and I hadn't ever had the multiple-day long drag that particularly intense workouts would cause, leaving me sluggish and sloppy. I would work out hard, nap, eat dinner, hold Beth or Sam in my arms, and be fine that evening. Something was working to keep me in peak condition, even if Antonin and I hadn't figured it out yet. On top of that, I wasn't physically aging out of my peak, having to carefully manage myself just to continue being productive. I was forever in my prime.

All I had to do was not lose her; eventually, she would fatigue. So I kept her in my sights and incessantly wore her down. Her body couldn't go at 100% forever, and while mine needed some recovery time as well, I felt as though I could go forever in the forest here. The very trees felt as though they were urging me on, helping me catch the snow-white fur of the temptress leading me in circles.

I caught her triumphantly, a deathly sharp red claw reaching around her shoulder as she tried to shift directions. She had done that several times over the last minute as I slowly closed the distance, buying herself another few seconds as I had to redirect my massive body. This time, I wrapped my hand firmly around her, my body crashing into hers, taking both of us tumbling along the forest floor. My scaled limbs wrapped around her body, pinning her against my chest as we eventually came to a stop, me laying on my back. Zoey pressed her paws against my body, pushing as fiercely as she could, wiggling and writhing in a final escape attempt.

After a moment, she relented, relaxing, sinking into my embrace. I enjoyed a minute of feeling her panting, brushing her soft fur against my scaled body before she started shifting back into her human shape. I followed her, and shortly, we were two naked humans, our limbs tangled together as we lay on the forest floor, both breathing rapidly.

Zoey's hueless eyes stared into mine unwaveringly. The smile on her face fueled my heart because, for the first time since I had met her, it was unwavering, unadulterated, a pure expression of her in this moment.

"James," she whispered, refusing to interrupt the serenity of the scene around us, "This is going to be our first one, okay? I don't want to remember the pain of seeing you not understand what was going on at the gym, and I don't want to remember the shame of my behavior at the club."

It took me a moment, but I understood what she meant when she pressed her lips to mine. This was how she wanted to remember our first kiss. Frankly, it was much better than the confusing, uncontrolled crash that was our actual first. I wouldn't begrudge her sharing this moment, surrounded by nature, her wolf and my dragon having played together and established their hierarchy, as our first embrace. Zoey wrapped her legs around my hips and rested her arms on the forest floor beside my head. She continued into a deeply romantic kiss, her lips parting in invitation to mine.

Kissing Zoey was a novel experience for me. She was nothing like Sam, who needed encouragement and reassurance to even take the first steps after years of forcing herself to resist. Instead, she wasn't dissimilar to Beth in their intensity and enthusiasm. Yet, where Beth pushed herself to the forefront in order to not be forgotten, not be left behind, not be set aside, Zoey remained just a touch reserved. She was confident enough in herself to not need to display everything. Zoey didn't need to offer herself to me that way, terrified of rejection.

I bemusedly wondered if being with Zoey was what being with an older woman would be like. Yes, she was technically younger than me and a couple months younger than Beth if I remembered her birthday correctly. Yet, she had such a presence when she wasn't reacting to the chaos my sudden appearance wrought. I didn't know exactly what she had been through since I had last seen her, but it was clear that she was no ordinary 18-year-old. In fact, in terms of life experience and maturity, she was more deserving of being called an adult than I was.

After several minutes of swapping saliva, Zoey slowly withdrew, using her long arms to push herself into a sitting position further down my legs, putting her at a safe distance from my now throbbing member. She looked at it, unconsciously licking her lips, and then her eyes looked back to mine.