Chapter 1: Waking Up in Flames
Heat was the first thing he registered. A damp, suffocating heat, pressed against his side. Asta’s eyes snapped open to the unfamiliar texture of silky fabric against his cheek—fabric that was streaked with black, scorch-marks curling at the edges. The air tasted of ozone and ash, the sharp, clean aftermath of spent magic.
He tried to move, and a firm, heavy weight pinned his legs. A bare thigh, muscled and smooth, was thrown over his hips, anchoring him to the mattress. His own body was naked. The realization came with a jolt that shot from his brain straight to his gut.
Slowly, he turned his head.
Bright red hair, wild and messy, fanned across the pillow next to him. Mereoleona Vermillion slept on her stomach, her face turned toward him, features relaxed in a way he’d never seen them. The sheet was down around her waist, revealing the strong line of her back, the curve of her shoulder, and the side of one breast. Claw marks—four distinct, red lines—ran down his own arm. He vaguely remembered the sensation, a sharp pain drowned in a haze of something else.
“What the hell?” he whispered, the sound scraping his dry throat.
As if hearing him, her amber eyes opened. They were instantly alert, clear, and utterly unreadable. She blinked once, her gaze sweeping from his face, down his exposed chest, to the state of the sheets. Her expression didn’t change. She just… assessed.
“Hm,” she grunted, pushing herself up on her elbows. The movement made the sheet fall further. She didn’t seem to care.
“Captain Mereoleona? Wh-what… where are we? My room? How did we…?” Asta’s voice climbed, cracking with panic.
“Your room,” she confirmed, her voice a morning rasp. She sat all the way up, the burnt sheets pooling in her lap. “And we fucked. Obviously.”
The door to his bedroom exploded inwards with a kick that nearly took it off its hinges.
Noelle Silva stood in the doorway, Asta’s grimoire clutched in her hand, a proud smirk on her face. “Asta, you idiot! Leaving your grimoire in the common room after a celebration is so—“
Her words died. Her blue eyes widened, traveling from Asta’s horrified, bare-chested form, to the woman sitting naked beside him. Mereoleona didn’t flinch. She just swung her legs over the side of the bed, giving Noelle a full view of her back, and stood up. She snatched Asta’s discarded, black Bulls shirt from the floor and pulled it over her head. It strained across her shoulders and chest.
Noelle’s face went from shock, to pale confusion, to a scalding, royal purple rage. “You… you beast! You vulgar, common, lowborn—!”
“Whoa, whoa, Noelle! It’s not what it looks like!” Asta yelped, clutching the singed sheet to his waist.
Mereoleona smirked, stretching her arms above her head. The hem of his shirt rode up. “It’s exactly what it looks like, shrimp.”
“Don’t call me shrimp, you… you lion hag!” Noelle screeched, tears of fury brimming in her eyes. She threw his grimoire onto the floor with a loud thump, spun on her heel, and stormed out, slamming what was left of the door behind her.
A heavy silence followed, broken only by Asta’s ragged breathing.
“She… she likes you, you know,” Mereoleona said casually, as if commenting on the weather.
“Huh? Noelle? No way! She’s always yelling at me and calling me names!” Asta said, his mind still reeling. The sight of Noelle’s hurt eyes was already being buried under the more immediate, terrifying confusion. He looked at Mereoleona, desperate. “Captain… what happened last night? I don’t remember anything after the third toast.”
Mereoleona turned and looked at him, a flicker of something—amusement, maybe—in her eyes. She sat back on the edge of the bed. “The victory party. For subduing the ancient forest spirit. Lots of booze. Your shitty senior, Magna, and your idiot friend, Leopold, decided it would be hilarious to see if the ‘anti-magic kid’ could handle Fireball Whiskey. Straight.”
Pieces started to click, vague and watery.
The common hall, deafeningly loud. A shot glass shoved into his hand, liquid inside that looked like molten lava. Magna’s grinning face. “C’mon, Asta! It’s magic-brewed! You got no magic, so it’ll probably taste like water!” Leopold’s echoing laugh. He’d thrown it back. It had tasted like swallowing a sun.
“I got… drunk?” Asta mumbled.
“Blasted,” Mereoleona corrected. “You started challenging people to arm-wrestling matches. You beat Gueldre. Then you started getting… chattier.”
The crowd parting. Her, standing by the hearth, a tankard in hand. He’d walked up, swaying slightly. Her piercing eyes on him. “Captain Mereoleona! You’re… you’re so strong!” His own voice, too loud, too earnest. Her raised eyebrow. “Your arms are amazing. I want to get that strong.” A low chuckle from her. “Then stop talking and train harder, runt.” But she’d been looking at him, not with annoyance, but with a curious intensity.
“I talked to you,” he said.
“You flirted,” she stated flatly. “You said my fire was the ‘hottest thing you’d ever seen.’ It was clumsy. And stupid.”
A hand on his shoulder, steering him away from the crowd, out a side door into a quieter corridor. Her hand was calloused and incredibly warm. “You’re going to puke or pass out, kid. Which is it?” He’d leaned against the cool stone wall, the world tilting. “Neither! I feel great! I feel like I could climb a mountain!” Her face, close to his. The smell of smoke and something wild. “Mountains are for later. You need to sleep it off.”
“You took me to my room?” Asta asked, the memories gaining clarity, rushing back in a hot, embarrassing flood.
“Tried to,” Mereoleona said. Her voice had dropped, lost its edge. “You were insistent. Talking about proving your strength. You grabbed my wrist. And you didn’t let go.”
The challenge in his drugged eyes. The way her smirk had softened, then vanished entirely. A different kind of heat, not from magic, filling the narrow space between them. Her back hitting his door. His mouth on hers, clumsy and hungry. Her surprising him—surprising herself—by kissing back, just as fierce. The door giving way. Tumbling into the dark room.
The rest wasn’t memories. It was physical echoes. The feel of her skin, slick with sweat. The bite of her nails digging into his back. Her low growls in his ear, words that were curses and encouragements all at once. The overwhelming, blinding sensation of a pressure he didn’t know he had finally, violently releasing. His first time. Lost in a blaze of heat and darkness and her.
“Oh,” Asta breathed out, the full weight of it crushing him. He’d lost his virginity to Captain Mereoleona Vermillion. And he’d been too damn drunk to properly remember it.
A new feeling surged up, burning away the confusion and shame. Determination. Hard and focused.
He threw the sheet off.
Mereoleona watched him stand. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t remember it,” Asta said, his voice low and steady. It wasn’t his usual shouting tone. This was something else, from a deeper place. “That’s not fair to you. Or to me. I was drunk. I don’t want my first time to be a blur.”
She leaned back on her hands, his shirt gaping. “So?”
“So,” he said, taking a step toward the bed. “This time, I’m going to fuck you. And I’m going to remember every second of it.”
Her eyebrows shot up. A slow, dangerous smile spread across her face. “Bold words, runt. You think you can?”
In answer, he climbed onto the mattress, kneeling before her. He didn’t touch her yet. He just let her look. He was muscular, every line earned through brutal training. And he was already hard, his size and girth now fully, unavoidably apparent in the morning light.
Mereoleona’s smirk faltered for a split second. Her eyes widened just a fraction. “Well, fuck,” she whispered, almost to herself. That… wasn’t what she’d been working with last night in his drunken haste. Not even close.
“Lie back,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.
A shiver, minute but real, went through her. She complied, easing back onto the ruined sheets. He moved over her, bracing himself on his arms. His shadow covered her.
“Last night,” he murmured, his mouth near her ear, “I was just some drunk kid. Right now, I’m not.” He kissed her neck, then sucked hard, marking the skin over her pulse point.
She gasped, her hands flying to his back. “Asta—”
“You’re so fucking strong,” he interrupted, his voice a rough grind against her skin as he kissed lower, to the collar of his own shirt. He tugged it aside with his teeth. “But right now, you’re mine.” He took her breast in his hand, his thumb brushing over her nipple before he lowered his head and took it in his mouth.
Mereoleona cried out, a sharp, unguarded sound. Her fingers clenched into fists against his shoulders. He was methodical, relentless. His mouth was everywhere, leaving dark purple marks on her chest, her stomach, the inside of her thighs. He was claiming, memorizing.
When he finally entered her, it was slow, an inexorable press that made her arch off the bed with a choked scream. It was too much, he was too much, filling her in a way that bordered on pain before tipping wildly into pleasure.
“See?” he panted, his forehead damp against hers. “This is me. Remember this.”
He began to move. There was no frantic, drunken clumsiness now. His rhythm was deep, punishing, and impossibly steady. Each thrust was a deliberate act of possession. The bedframe slammed against the wall with a rhythmic, brutal beat.
“Asta! Gods—fuck!” Mereoleona chanted, her nails scrabbling at his back, finding fresh purchase. Her legs locked around his hips, trying to pull him deeper, meeting each driving movement. Her composure shattered. She screamed, she cursed, she begged. “Right there, don’t you dare stop, you little beast!”
In the hallway, Noelle stood frozen, her back against the wall beside the shattered doorway. The sounds were unmistakable—the crack of the headboard, the slick, rhythmic pounding, Mereoleona’s raw, screaming pleas. Each one was a knife in Noelle’s heart. Her own eyes stung with helpless, furious tears. Why can’t I just tell him? she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. Why is it always someone else who’s braver?
The screams tearing from Mereoleona’s throat weren’t of pain. They were raw, unfiltered sounds of utter ruin, each driving thrust from Asta punching the air from her lungs and rewriting her sense of control. Her world narrowed to the heat of him, the crushing weight of his body, the unbearable, perfect friction.
He found a deeper angle, adjusting the tilt of her hips with a rough, knowing hand. The next thrust didn’t just fill her; it electrified her. A sharp, bright shockwave detonated low in her belly.
“Fuck! Asta, right there! Don’t you fucking stop!” she begged, her voice ragged, her legs shaking where they hooked around him.
He was hitting it now, that secret, spongy place deep inside with a piston-like precision that shattered thought. Every nerve in her body was singing, screaming, coiling tighter and tighter towards a breaking point she could barely comprehend. Her own pleasure was a wild, roaring thing, and his name was the only word left in its vocabulary.
She could feel his rhythm starting to fracture, the deep, punishing strokes becoming erratic, harder. His breathing was a harsh rasp in her ear. He was close.
“I’m… I’m gonna…” he grunted, his muscles seizing, and he tried to pull back, to withdraw.
Her hands flew to his ass, her blunt nails digging in, holding him to her with all the fierce, desperate strength she possessed. “No! Don’t you dare pull out! Cum inside me, Asta. Right now. I want to feel it.”
That was all the permission he needed, all the command he would ever require. With a guttural roar that was pure release, he drove into her one last, final time, crushing her into the mattress as he emptied himself. She felt the hot, pulsing rush of him flooding deep, and it triggered her own climax, a second, more devastating wave that tore through her with silent, convulsing violence. Her back arched off the bed, her mouth open in a soundless scream as she milked him, spasming around his length until she was utterly, completely spent.
They collapsed together, a tangled, sweat-slicked heap on the ruined sheets. The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the faint, residual creak of the bed frame. The smell of sex and burnt magic hung thick in the air.
For a long time, they just lay there. Asta’s heart hammered against her back where he’d slumped beside her. Slowly, the haze of absolute physical sensation began to clear, leaving something quieter, more vulnerable in its wake.
Mereoleona turned onto her side to face him. Her usual fierce smirk was gone. In its place was a look of startling openness, her amber eyes serious as they tracked over his face. She reached out, her calloused fingers brushing a strand of sweaty hair from his forehead.
“Asta,” she said, her voice softer than he’d ever heard it.
“Yeah, Captain?”
“Mereoleona. Right now, it’s just Mereoleona.” She took a slow breath. “I don’t do things by halves. You know that.”
He nodded, unsure where this was going, his body still humming.
“This… wasn’t just a fuck,” she stated, the words leaving no room for argument. “Not this time. Not after that.” She gestured vaguely at the space between them. “I want you. With me. Not just for tonight.”
Asta’s eyes widened. “You mean…?”
“I mean I want to be with you. For real. No hiding. No pretending it was a mistake.” Her gaze was unwavering, fierce in its honesty. “Forever, or as close as two people like us can get to it.”
A slow, brilliant smile spread across Asta’s face, so genuine it made her chest ache. “Yeah,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation. “Yeah, okay. Me too.”
He leaned in and kissed her. It was different now—softer, deeper, a seal on the promise. As they kissed, he felt the heat stirring in him again, the incredible, relentless recovery of his body. He broke the kiss, a little embarrassed. “Uh… sorry. It’s just… you.”
Mereoleona looked down between them and let out a low, throaty chuckle. “You’re not done, are you?” Without waiting for an answer, she pushed him onto his back and moved down the bed. She took him into her mouth, her tongue tracing the sensitive head before swallowing him deep, her movements confident and demanding.
“Shit, Mereo—lena…” he choked out, his hands fisting in her wild red hair. It was too much, the sight of her, the feel of her, the ownership in her actions. His hips jerked off the bed as the tension coiled, snapped, and he came again with a shattered gasp, spilling into the heat of her mouth. She took it all, swallowing before pulling back with a final, slow lick that made him twitch.
He was completely spent, soft and languid as she crawled back up to curl against his side, her head on his shoulder. They lay in comfortable silence for a while, skin cooling.
“Move in with me,” she said suddenly, her words vibrating against his chest.
Asta went still. “Move in? Where?”
“My place. In the Royal Capital. It’s bigger. Has its own training grounds. Private.”
“But… that’s not near the Black Bulls headquarters,” Asta said, the reality dawning on him slowly.
“It’s not,” Mereoleona confirmed, her voice firming up, slipping back into the tone of a captain stating a fact. “You’d have to transfer. Officially leave the Black Bulls and join my squad. The Crimson Lions.”
The weight of those words landed in the quiet room like a physical blow. Leave the Black Bulls. Leave the ramshackle base that was his first real home. Leave Captain Yami’s grunted lessons, Finral’s portals, Vanessa’s drunken advice, Noelle’s… Noelle. Leave the family that took him in when he had nothing, when no one else wanted a magicless peasant.
He felt her waiting for his answer, her body tense against his. The easy, post-sex warmth was gone, replaced by a cold, looming decision.