Chapter 1: Dreams of a Broken Human
The scream tore from her throat like a living thing, raw and desperate, echoing off the shifting walls of her chamber. Elona Solen bolted upright, her thin sleeping silks plastered to her skin with cold sweat, her hand jammed between her thighs where her fingers were drenched and trembling.
Her cunt was still spasming.
The orgasm had been so real, so devastating, that she could feel the ghost of it rippling through her core in waves. But it wasn't her hand that had done this to her. It was him. The dream man. The human.
She gasped, pressing her palm flat against her heaving chest as the bioluminescent patterns beneath her skin flared an agonizing crimson. Her entire body was glowing like a beacon of shame and need, the light pulsing in rhythm with the aftershocks still wracking her small frame.
"Fuck," she whispered to the empty room, the profanity feeling foreign and filthy on her tongue. She'd never spoken like that before. But then again, she'd never woken up with her virgin cunt feeling like it had been thoroughly, brutally claimed by a phantom lover either.
The dream had been so vivid. She could still feel the impossible weight of him inside her, that thick-rimmed spear of flesh she'd never seen but somehow knew with terrifying intimacy. His tongue had been lapping at her clit like a man starved, devouring her with a ferocity that had made her scream his name into the void.
Albert.
His name was Albert Voss. She didn't know how she knew it. She only knew that she did, just as she knew the taste of his skin, the sound of his ragged breathing, the way his betrayal had hollowed him out and left nothing but rage and hunger in its wake.
Elona swung her legs over the edge of her bed, her bare feet pressing into the cool obsidian floor as she forced herself to stand. Her legs nearly buckled. The phantom sensation of a massive cock stretching her virgin passage was still so acute that she could feel the ghost of it shifting inside her with every step she took.
But it was the pain that drove her forward.
His pain. Loneliness. Betrayal. Searing and cold and all-consuming.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to block out the flood of emotions that weren't hers. The betrayal was the worst of it. Six years of his marriage had been a living lie while his wife fucked his own brother behind his back, and he'd been too blind, too trusting, too stupid to see it. His rage was a hot coal in her chest, burning and relentless.
And beneath all of that was a hunger so profound it made her dizzy.
Elona gasped as another surge of psychic energy crashed through her mind like a tidal wave. She saw it in flashes—metal walls, cold chains, the taste of blood in his mouth. She saw him, broken and naked and shivering, his blue eyes wild with pain and confusion.
The dungeon.
Her mother's dungeon.
"No," she breathed, her emerald eyes going wide with horror. "No, no, no."
But she could feel him there. Cold. Alone. Dying.
The distance between her chambers and the dungeons had never felt so vast. She ran barefoot through the crystalline hallways, her wavy red hair streaming behind her like a river of fire, her night silks clinging to her body as she sprinted past guards who shouted in confusion at the sight of their princess running wild in the middle of the night.
She didn't stop. She couldn't stop.
The psychic pull was unrelenting, dragging her forward like a fish on a line, and with every step she took, she could feel him growing closer, feel his despair sharpening into something almost tangible in the back of her mind.
The dungeon stairs were cold and slick beneath her feet as she descended, the air growing thick with the scent of mildew and old blood. The torches flickered with an eerie blue light, casting twisted shadows across the stone walls, but Elona barely noticed. Her eyes were fixed on the far end of the corridor, where a single cell was lit with harsh, unforgiving brightness.
And there he was.
Albert Voss hung spread-eagle against the wall, his wrists and ankles bound in thick iron chains that had been bolted deep into the stone. He was completely naked, his body a canvas of bruises and lacerations that told the story of his capture in brutal, silent strokes. His dirty blond hair was matted with blood, and his blue eyes were glazed with a mixture of pain and defiance as they locked onto hers.
Elona's breath caught in her throat.
He was smaller than she expected. Not in stature—his frame was lean and athletic despite the slight paunch of middle age—but in a way that made her heart clench with unexpected tenderness. He looked so human. So fragile. So utterly broken.
And yet, as her eyes traveled down his body, she couldn't help but notice the way his soft cock hung between his legs. Four inches of flaccid flesh that seemed so unremarkable, so ordinary. It was nothing like the monstrous length that had filled her in her dreams, the phantom spear that had reached so deep inside her she'd felt it in her throat.
But she knew. She knew that when aroused, that unassuming flesh would grow into a nine-and-a-half-inch weapon of pleasure that could devastate her in ways she couldn't even imagine.
The thought made her skin flare a deep, pulsing red.
"What the fuck do you want?" His voice was hoarse, cracked from screaming or dehydration, laced with a venom that made her flinch. "Come to gawk at the alien freak? Enjoying the show, blue skin?"
Elona opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She could feel him in her mind now, a maelstrom of fury and confusion and raw, animalistic terror. He was lashing out because he was scared. Because he didn't understand what was happening to him.
"You're not one of them," she finally managed, her voice barely above a whisper. "You're not supposed to be here."
Albert let out a bitter, broken laugh that turned into a cough, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, no shit. I was supposed to be on a cargo ship heading to Mars. But your people had other fucking ideas, huh? Thought I'd make a nice little toy to poke and prod."
"No." Elona stepped closer, her bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. "This is a mistake. You were taken by mistake. My mother—the Queen—she doesn't know about this."
"The Queen?" His eyes narrowed with suspicion. "So you're royalty, huh? Princess of what? Dragons?"
"Elona Solen." She stopped just out of reach of his chains, close enough to see the intricate patterns of bruises decorating his ribcage. Her heart ached at the sight of them. "You've been hurt badly. Let me help you."
"I don't want your help." He spat the words at her like poison. "I don't want anything from you or your kind. You're all the same. Decent up close, fucking monsters behind closed doors."
The accusation stung, but she understood his anger. She could feel it radiating off him in waves—protective armor forged from abandonment and betrayal. But beneath it all, she could sense something else. Something raw and desperate and achingly vulnerable.
"I'm not your wife," she said softly, and the words hung between them like a blade. "I'm not your brother. I'm not anyone who's ever hurt you."
Albert went still, his piercing gaze drilling into hers. She could feel his confusion through the psychic bond, the way her words cut through his defenses like a hot knife through butter.
"What the hell do you know about my wife?"
"Everything." Elona's voice trembled with the weight of her confession. "I've seen her in your dreams. I've felt you through the void. For the past two weeks, I've been lying in my bed at night, burning for a man I've never met, feeling his loneliness and his rage as if they were my own."
A pregnant silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
"You're insane," Albert finally whispered, but there was no venom in his voice anymore. Just exhaustion. Just fear.
"Maybe." Elona reached out her hand, stopping just short of touching his torn shoulder. The bioluminescent patterns on her skin pulsed with a soft, comforting light. "But I know that your brother's name is Marcus. I know he wore the same cologne as your father. I know that when you found them together, you didn't scream or cry—you just stood there, watching them like you were watching strangers in someone else's life."
Albert's face went pale beneath the dried blood. "How... how do you know that?"
"Because I'm a telepath." Elona's voice cracked. "And because, somehow, I'm bonded to you. Across galaxies. Across time. Your pain called to mine, and I answered."
He stared at her for a long, agonizing moment before his body slumped in the chains, all the fight draining out of him. "This is fucking insane," he muttered, hanging his head. "This whole goddamn situation is insane. I wake up on a ship, get dragged to some alien castle, get beaten half to death and thrown in a dungeon without so much as a word about what the hell I did wrong... and now you're telling me you've been fucking dreaming about me?"
"It's not just dreaming." Elona stepped closer, close enough now that she could feel the heat radiating from his broken body. "It's more. So much more."
She reached up, her slender fingers brushing against his cheek with impossible gentleness. He flinched, but he didn't pull away. His blue eyes met hers, and in them, she saw the flicker of something she couldn't quite name. Curiosity. Desire. Hunger.
"Don't touch me," he whispered, but his voice lacked conviction.
"Too late." Elona pressed her palm flat against his chest, feeling the frantic beat of his heart beneath her hand. The contact sent a jolt of raw energy through both of them, and she gasped as his emotions flooded her senses—hot and overwhelming and desperately, achingly needy.
Albert groaned, his body shuddering against the chains. "What are you doing to me?"
"I'm not doing anything," she breathed, her skin flaring a deep, consuming red that licked across her collarbones and down her arms. "This is just what happens when we touch. The bond... it's alive. It's hungry."
He looked down at her, his gaze traveling over her delicate features, her high cheekbones, her full lips parted in breathless anticipation. His cock was beginning to stir, swelling against his thigh despite his best efforts to control it, and the sight of his growing arousal made Elona's own body respond with shameless need.
"Hungry," he repeated, his voice rough and dark. "Yeah. I know a little something about that."
Elona swallowed hard. "I can take you away from here. I can save you."
"Why would you do that?" His voice was bitter, but there was a desperate undercurrent to it that betrayed his hope. "What do you want in return?"
She met his eyes, letting him see the truth in her gaze. "Everything."