Max blinked exceptionally hard but kept a straight face. Huh. I wasn't expecting that. And that's an almost suicidal amount of non-curiousity. Or maybe it's just trust? He trusts me, like, a stupid amount? Do I deserve it or is this a flag?

Puppy continued softly looking at her and she could not stop the squiggling feeling in her gut. Butterflies? She hadn't had butterflies in her belly in tens of hundreds of lives. It short-circuited her brain and she froze. Familiar and foreign. Strange and also the same. She pinned those bugs to a board in her mind like a champion lepidopterist, studied them, and then ultimately ignored the shit out of them-- because if it wasn't the suspected flag she thought it was, then it was something much more dangerous and scary.

Be cool, Max. Just fucking be cool.

His eyes traveled to Miles while Max's eyes stayed glued to his cheek. "Do you wanna come with us?"

Miles waved a beautiful little appendage. "I have plenty of work here since I don't want these amateurs to break my printing presses. You two go have fun torturing that fanged menace. I'll GoldChat you if I need you." Miles darted away to quickly poke a priest in the hand with his leg. His target almost got her hands on one of Miles's precious binding machines, and Max would bet good money they would all be tagged with a blessing before the end of the hour so Miles could yell instructions and demands at them where they would hear it. He was particular about his tools and now had a labor force to expedite some of his plans. "Make time later to lead a mound-wide talk of mana wells. The frocked ones will have casting duties delegated to them and they will contribute, or I'll take away their books." Jeweled eyes gleamed with schemes.

"Come on," Puppy said and grabbed her hand to tug her away. He silently led her from the library back to the infirmary, to the new location for the prison anchor. The apartment had been transformed into a large, white convalescing room for the priests, so the anchor was tucked away in an unimpressive storage closet behind dirty mops hanging on the back wall. It was the best camouflage Max could think of when pressed for time. Max would have to come back later and do something with it. Maybe look away wards, or glamour, or something. Just one more thing to do on a never-ending list. She missed the weeks she spent just working on plumbing, forging swords, and making potions. It already seemed like a dreamier, simpler time.

They stepped through the anchor and let the outside world fall away. Puppy hesitated but spoke. "Before we see the Princess, will you hunt a deer with me? I need to check something. Do you have a wolf or dog form?"

"I don't yet have most of anything. I'm one out of five choices for shifted animal forms. I just mostly wanted to be a bird.” Her eyebrows scrunched over her nose. “I guess I could do a wolf." She considered if she wanted to burn one of her animal bindings, and decided... Why not? She shrugged at him and grinned. "Sure. I'll doggy hunt with you." This sounded like a whole lot of fun. It had been lives and lives since she ran down a deer without humanoid weapons or magic, and just for the fun of it.

He started taking off his clothes. She started shedding hers, too, even though she didn't have to. She didn't want him to feel awkward. They both snuck glances at each other's bodies and pretended like they didn’t.

He shifted into his huge fuck-big black wolf form and she followed suit. She based her form on his and unintentionally ended up being just a little bigger than he was. After shaking her head and shivering fur to settle into a four-legged body instead of two, she looked at her front legs and dog-coughed instead of the laugh that she was expecting to come exploding out of her.

She was a solid, glowing white. Stupidly, mythologically white. She had shockingly green vines (where were they growing from?!) sticking out of her fur that trailed across her back, down both legs and had full blooms of moon flowers opening and closing slowly. It was as if a demented forest fairy dreamed up a monster dog and then got hit in the face with cornea-melting moonbeams and decided to go with it for the aesthetic.

Fucking ridiculous.

She should have been male because she based the form off of Puppy, but instead, she was still, surprisingly, female. Together, they looked like a matching set.

Yin and Yang.

Light and dark.

Life and death.

A perfect dichotomy.

Okay, flags. Hint taken. Use fewer hammers when you plant yourselves. Give it a fucking smidge of a rest already. Jeeze. Absolutely fucking ridiculous.

He huffed at her, licked her nose, sniffed her flowers, and started jogging away in a slow lope, leading them away from the anchor into the woods at a moderate clip. She lifted her snout and took a deep breath, sniffing for their quarry. Immediately, after disregarding her flowery scent and his home-baked-goods one, she smelled a bouquet of smells that made her little doggy mouth water.

Her two-legged problems were left in the breeze that ruffled through her coat, floated away from her body, and fell to the forest floor. She shed them like the dog hair that wasn't needed anymore-- still existing but not attached.

The sun was setting and the light filtered through the trees in a sepia tone. It made it feel as if she were in a dream. Breezes blew leaves that rattled and giggled at them. Birds chirped and bees buzzed. Cicadas still trilled their mating calls and crickets began performing their symphonies to the dusk. She breathed in deep again and let everything but the hunt fall away.

Deer and something heady and spicy. Foxes and rabbits and birds and wild magic that has pumped through my veins and out into the realm. Indelibly my territory. So many things to eat. Delicious.

She followed the black wolf and silently paced his steps to the side so that when they both came upon a meal, they could do a pincer attack.

The demesne was lousy with deer. It wasn't long until they came upon a small herd and they both eyed the biggest buck either had ever seen, with the multipointed rack and almost a hilarious amount of muscle. A true monster, he was. Fattened up by her magic and no predators, he thought he was the king of the world and took his tithes in does and dominance of the herd.

He'd do. He looked tasty.

In the light of a setting sun and rising moon, they worked in a choreographed dance whose synchronous steps were already written and proclaimed as a masterpiece. They split up. The black one went right, she went left, and after sneaking silently closer, they charged into the herd to cut off and run down the mighty stag whom they had both salivated over.

Their bodies moved in tandem like they had been hunting together their entire lives. It was exhilarating. It was right. Running next to him and finding worthy prey with her packmate. She felt a humming string kindle to life inside of her-- an ember alighting on a leaf-strewn forest floor-- like a chime ringing and resonating inside of her soul, and it was magic and perfect. It was another flag, but she didn't care. She was beyond caring, floating away on the dream of togetherness, carried away by the feeling of rightness and simplicity. They were hungry so they'd eat. Simple. She let the feeling into her willingly, invited it in even, and held it close in her heart. It filled her soul and radiated out into her entire being. Spread down and out of her paws and floated into the ground of her demesne, only to connect with his paws to curl around inside of his body to land inside of his soul, too, to ring like a bell and spread like a fire.

She wanted to howl at the moon, singing a song with him to tie their voices together, just as their kill would tie them together. She wanted to run forever in tandem with him. She wanted to rend and tear the deer's meat forever. She wanted to hunt everything in the universe with him and share her kills and feast forever. The world would slide down their throats so sweetly, so smoothly, and they would gorge and rend and hunt and fuck and the universe would be theirs.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

After analyzing the feeling, she felt him inside her soul too, in an actual bond-- not just vague feelings and urges, but a solid tie-- made of magic and emotions that united them together with golden bindings, and she could feel he felt the same. He had the humming string in his soul too, and it tied their hearts together in a soul-tethering spell, that bounced from her to him and back to her in an almost overwhelming feedback loop. She never wanted it to end, and neither did he. Pushing and pulling. Back and forth.

Hunt, her heart said.

Yes, his heart answered.

They ran down the buck that was easily twice as tall as them like the hungering monsters they were. His hooves dodged and weaved through the forest and the giant was a mighty prey for their hunt. He put up a hellacious fight for his life-- his antlers were razor-sharp and deftly pointed at his murderous attackers. He kicked and screamed at them and tried his best to give as good as he got. He fought like a ballad-worthy hero with something worth saving, knocking down trees and charging with defensive intent, and when they'd nip at his haunches, he'd slice them with his hooves and horns. Eventually, and after a mighty battle, they brought the deer down and she ripped out its throat with her teeth while her mate immobilized the deer's back legs by biting down with his devouring jaws on its spine. She tore at the deer's fighting body with her claws.

The beast's blood spilled in the forest and fed the trees that she shared with the three others, in a bloody and ancient sacrifice as old as the oldest times and just as perfect as any before. A gong chimed in her head and in the newly bloomed bond in her chest, right underneath her sternum and out into her demesne.

Ding! You reached level 248! All stats distrib...

The trees shivered in approval and the demesne hummed in acknowledgment of their victory as the last of the sun's rays died and night fell in full.

They both gorged on the stag. Ate and ate. But the meat, the bones, the blood, the kill, the high-- it didn't last long with both of them devouring it. Their injuries from their quarry closed and they groomed their shared blood from the feast and from themselves off of each other. Licking the blood off of each other's muzzles and from newly-healed fur and paws. When it was gone and all was clean, they flopped in a pile of soft fur and heavy breaths to digest.

She regained her biped senses and her brain came back online after unrealized time passed. She blinked and shook her head. She forced herself to shift back to Dirt Max when wariness began to bloom.

Max did her best to choke out her question. "Is that normal for you guys? I lost myself there for a while. Is that how hunts always are?" She came back to herself on the ground, belly up and naked with a monster's head on her stomach, to catch her breath from the life-changing experience and tried to recenter back into a humanoid-- all with the taste of blood still in her mouth and the chimes of rightness still ringing in her soul. Her brain stuttered and fritzed. She felt wrong to only have two legs and to be alone in her own heart, somehow. Her senses popped in and out of her awareness. Her eyes stared at stars and whispy clouds and her demesne's white moon drifted across her vision through trees. One hand was slowly petting in between the furred beast's ears and the other was gripping weedy grass to clasp herself to the ground to keep her from mentally falling into the sky.

Concerns began to worm their way back into her brain. The problems that she had shed onto the forest floor were slowly lifted and fitted back into her mind.

He eventually shifted back, too, physically withdrawing to sit bare-assed in the dirt next to her. "Uh." He looked at her naked body for a few really long seconds and looked away, rubbing his forehead and then chin. "I think... I... No. It's not like that, usually. That was what running with a packmate that you have a mate bond is like, I think?" He was silent for a minute or two but continued his thought. "Usually, mate bonds involve sex and bites and years of courtship, but... the door took our courtship away, I'm guessing?" His eyebrows did the thing where they almost met on his forehead and his eyes screwed shut. His head bent and his chin met his chest. "I thought that's what I was feeling, but was unsure with all the new blood-craving bullshit on top of it. I just knew we had to hunt together for me to be sure."

"Oh." She breathed. And breathed. And breathed some more. Long and slow drags of air, in and out. Calm.

"Yeah." He sighed, resigned, and the hand he was using to rub his face quickly grabbed hers as if it occurred to him that she'd run away. "Don't freak out." His thumb rubbed across the top of her shaking hand. "I'm not. I know you're not ready for this. I'm not really ready either. But this is okay. Just a lot faster than what we'd want, but is what I want." His hand squeezed hers reassuringly. "I'm in it with you until the world ends and the stars die, right? We can still do whatever it is we're doing and everything else can be as fast or as slow as you want. We have time. It doesn't have to change anything yet."

Max's eyes met his. She resolutely nodded her head. Took one last deep breath and let it go. Fuck it. It was always going to end up here anyway. It's no different than being a vampire bride or having another fae's anchor in my mound. Flags just mean new options, and not always limited or no choices. Roll with it, Max. She gave him a small smile and said, "Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to go torture the Princess?" She relaxed, then smirked and said, "I say we both show up to his tower to talk about the Conclave and world threats while remaining naked to really fuck with him."

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Aldred was losing patience.

It had been days since he saw the monster with the beautiful faces. All of his plans involved making the monster love him enough not to doom the world, and the monster avoided him at best and condescended to him at worst. The dog had come and gone several times, smelling like hunger and lust, but wouldn't let Aldred get close enough to ease him from either malady.

Apparently, the dog needed his 'alpha's' approval before he could slake either of his thirsts.

Both of his wanted brides were maddening and exasperating. They were toying with him and he hated it.

Even the perfect world that was his cage was starting to grate. He was starting to climb the metaphorical walls. He needed to make progress with them. He needed interaction with his newest obsessions. He had to have them, even if just for a few moments.

He spent most of the day trying to paint what he saw in the monster's dream last night—contextualizing the absurdly hot horrors of it all. Trying to capture colors that didn't exist in reality and an unfathomable amount of tentacles, eyes, and teeth was a challenge that he had nothing but time to aspire to meet.

If that was what the alien truly was, then the world had no hope.

Breathtakingly eldritch.

Defying sanity.

If he could have dreamed up a perfect bride for himself, he'd think the alien was an overreach of wanting. He would have scoffed at himself for being greedy.

The dog was similar. Direly and scarily powerful but skittish and weirdly normal for a young person of the times. Aldred would not have believed that a Devourer --of all things considered monsters-- could be empathetic to human slaves. Every interaction he'd had with their breed in the past had implied that they were all rabid and starved beasts-- and not beautifully sculpted, naive, bashful men with troubled dark eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass. He'd have to ask the monster what they did to flip the switch between reason to insane fury in the dog.

The entire idea of a world-eating beast being a champion for dispossessed human slaves was preposterous and almost unbelievable if he'd not seen it for himself.

It made him want the dog more, and he already wanted the dog to an obsessive degree.

Aldred would gift him hundreds of human slaves to free if that's what he wanted.

There were several paintings of his high cheekbones and brooding eyes in Aldred's tower, too.

He threw down his paint supplies and was about to flop down in his clean and comfortable bed to try to dreamwalk, hoping to find his monsters sleeping again, when he heard their voices in the far-off distance.

They came for me. Finally.

"It won't work, you know." A hated, stupid voice said. Aldred spun around and found the bug king outside of his tower door, sitting on his porch. "Whatever stupid and tone-deaf thing it is that you're going to do to woo them won't work. They'll see through it and it'll just set the two of us back since they have us mentally grouped as a package because of your bullshit."

"Go away, bug. They are here for me." He said.

The bug's foot tipped over the pot growing the flower his alien bride so lovingly gave him. It teetered, fell, rolled down three steps, and then shattered, along with a small piece of his heart, leaving dirt and a fastly wilting plant strewn across the stairs. "We'll see. If you can interrupt my courtship rituals and mangle my bargain-wrought anchor, I will interrupt yours every chance I get. You won't have an unsupervised moment alone with them if I can help it."

Aldred's eyes flashed red and he growled like the beast he was. "I. Am. Going. To. Eat. You."

"Haha. I'm going to eat you, too, shit-sucker. Since I'm your bride, with all the urges and wants that entails, I'm not sure if it's your lust I'll eat, or if I'll just shove my proboscis in your eye socket and suck down your fluids until you're nothing more than a mummified and moisture-emptied husk." The king cackled crazily. "I'm definitely leaning more one way than the other, though, you shit stain of a being."

"Oh," a female voice said from the courtyard of the tower. "And here I thought they were old friends in cahoots with each other, Puppy. At least no blood has been spilled in my demesne yet that we didn't put there." The bug king and Aldred both looked over the stair railing to the ground below to see the objects of their mutual affection. "I'm glad you're here Green. I'd hate to spend another month being sent to your voicemail before you turned back up. We have some stuff to talk about. Things have happened and I need to ask if I should take it to your Conclave."

The alien and the dog were delivering themselves unclothed to him. Like the gifts they were.

He knew it.

They loved him back.