pennyellee

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 　

𝐦𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐢

𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐀 | 𝐌𝐘𝐆 𝐌𝐀𝐅𝐈𝐀 𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) *𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝* Their interlocking gaze served as a butterfly effect on his heart, stirring it to the core. She, in turn, only dreams to find a way to escape. But perchance, over time she might forcefully learn to love the man who has taken so much from her.

Thus unfolds a twisted tale of love and loss, of hope and despair, of life and death. The music reverberated through the dimly-lit streets. Tears of sorrow, weeping symphony - reflects the hurt, the scars that linger deep within and the wounds that never healed. Lacrimosa.

𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐭 | 𝐌𝐈𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐈 𝐌𝐀𝐅𝐈𝐀 𝐃𝐎𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) You know that glance. The last time you've seen it was a decade ago, before those same dark eyes with a scar across one shut for eternity. Yet, somehow...he's alive.

In oil portraits that hung too high on paneled walls. In black-and-white photographs. In...him. A grandfather whose presence could silence a room without lifting a hand. The resemblance is cruel in its precision and you see it only now when it's too late.

He steps into the hollow spaces of your life like he was always meant to. By the time you realize he's listening, your heartbeat has already begun answering.

𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡? | 𝐌𝐘𝐆 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) "You Big Enough?" - when an old flame resurfaced, rumours spiralled, and suddenly, every lingering glance and every touch between you seemed to carry weight. It had always been just music, just friendship—hadn’t it? No. You always had the vibe of  'will they, won't they.' This has become bigger than the music. Tension crackled, boundaries blurred, and there was this thing that Yoongi made sure you knew well besides that he was big enough. "They just talk. I fucking deliver."

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 | 𝐌𝐘𝐆 𝐈𝐃𝐎𝐋 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) "but when I near you I feel flames" - through a series of events and a lingering phone call, Yoongi discovers that love, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, has the power to transform everything—and perhaps, give him a second chance at the one person he lets slip away. A series of moments that etched your destiny. The butterfly effect had begun, and the future was in motion.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　

𝐣𝐞𝐨𝐧 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐤

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐀𝐆𝐍𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐈 | 𝐉𝐉𝐊 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐁 𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) *𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝* you won’t regret me, champagne confetti — i wanna see it in motion, in 3D You, a determined fashion designer, find yourself entangled in a collaboration with the irresistibly charming and egotistic heartthrob, Jeon Jungkook. Will this partnership remain strictly professional, or will he make the lines blur?

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢 | 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐛 | 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬 | 𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 | 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠-𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠

𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐊𝐒𝐊𝐀𝐑 | 𝐉𝐉𝐊 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) To escape an arranged political marriage to the infamous marked-one general, Jeon Jungkook, you enroll in the Riders Quadrant instead—choosing dragons and near-certain death over becoming his wife. But fate proves crueler than politics when you bond a dragon mated to his.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　

𝐤𝐢𝐦 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐣𝐨𝐨𝐧

𝐀𝐍𝐔𝐁𝐈𝐒 | 𝐊𝐈𝐌 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐉𝐎𝐎𝐍 𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐅𝐈𝐀 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) *𝐨𝐧-𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠* “You are something I can sin for” An anchor amidst the stormy seas of life — that’s what Namjoon is for you. But it wasn’t always like that. There was a time where you’ve resented Namjoon with every fibre of your being and every word that came out of his plump lips after what he had done to prove his power. Unfortunately, you will never know what life could be if Kim Namjoon was not in it.

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬 | 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐤, 𝐎𝐩𝐩𝐚?

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦✦ . 　⁺ 　

𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤

𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐗𝐈𝐑 | 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐊 𝐌𝐀𝐅𝐈𝐀 (𝐌) 𝐀𝐔 "And I won't be satisfied till we're taking those vows" you were apparently promised to the heir of Jung's criminal empire since birth, not that you ever took that ongoing inside joke seriously. You grew up alongside the said man, yet your mind is conflicted about upholding your part and saying I do until one drunken night reveals a lot more than you'd like.

𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐗𝐈𝐑 ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐣𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐎𝐎𝐍

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦✦ . 　⁺ 　

𝐤𝐢𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐞𝐡𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐠

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐎𝐎𝐍

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦✦ . 　⁺ 　

𝐤𝐢𝐦 𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤𝐣𝐢𝐧

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐘 | 𝐊𝐈𝐌 𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐊𝐉𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐔 (𝐌) *𝐨𝐧-𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠*

"he is a grifter in an ugly suit that is way too expensive for someone who makes a living bullshitting twelve strangers at a time" If the jury weren’t hanging on to his every word like he was the second coming of Atticus Finch, you’d be tempted to mutter hearsay, each time he cross-examines, under your breath just to see what he’d do. But you don’t. Because, despite everything, you are not a lawyer. You are just a journalist with a front-row seat to the longest-running scam in New York’s legal system and your own heart.

𝐄𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐭 𝐀 𝐄𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐭 𝐁 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦✦ . 　⁺ 　　

You land on both of your feet on the dried grass of the courtyard of Basgiath and breathe the humid summer air of July. You’ve done it. You’ve crossed the parapet. 

Behind you, boots still scrape against stone as the next cadets attempt the crossing, some cursing, some praying under their breath. Ahead, the vast courtyard sprawls beneath iron-gray skies, crowded with survivors trying—and failing—to look unaffected by the fact that they’re still alive.

Your pulse is still pounding hard enough to rattle your ribs. A laugh threatens to escape you, wild and disbelieving. You made it. No carriage waiting at dawn. No wedding dress on you but black leathers instead.

A familiar voice cuts through the ringing in your ears before you can properly enjoy your victory.

“Well,” it says, equal parts disbelief and accusation, “either I’m concussed from too many sparring matches, or you are the last person I expected to see standing on this side of the parapet.”

You turn sharply. There, weaving through the scattered cluster of first-years and unimpressed officers, is your cousin.

Third-year rider leathers fit her like they were sewn onto her body—dark, weathered, practical. A relic scar nicks across one brow from some incident your aunt had dramatically described in three separate letters.

You hadn’t seen her for a hot minute. Not since she’d left for Basgiath and your family had started speaking about your future in increasingly transactional terms.

Her eyes narrow as she takes you in, from your windswept hair to your death grip on your pack. Then her expression shifts from surprise to outright suspicion.

“…What are you doing here?”

 “Lovely to see you too.” You exhale, still trying to regulate your heartbeat. She ignores that entirely.

“No…” she says, stepping closer, voice dropping. “Seriously. What are you doing here?” There’s a beat. Then realisation dawns across her face with almost comical horror.

“Oh, gods.”

“Yes.” You grimace, trying to downplay this even though you don’t have to. But you cannot let yourself to feel any guilt.

“No!”

“Yes.”

“You ran?” Her mouth actually falls open.

“I prefer strategically redirected my future,” you throw your hands around, nervously laughing. Out loud, it all seems so…weird.

“You fled your marriage by voluntarily attempting the parapet?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds dramatic,” or maybe the word dramatic indeed suits your current predicament better than weird.

“It is dramatic.” She glances over your shoulder as if expecting armed guards to descend at any moment. “You were supposed to be halfway to the capital by now, drowning in ceremonial silk and regrettable life choices.”

“Exactly the issue.” A small smile tugs at your mouth and she drags a hand over her face.

“You cannot possibly understand how insane this is,” she mutters. “Do you have any idea what kind of diplomatic incident you’ve just caused?”

“Hopefully a memorable one,” you say as if turning this into some kind of a joke will save your ass once someone will dig into this.

“This isn’t funny.” Her tone lowers further. “You weren’t being married off to some forgettable noble heir from the infantry.”

You know. Of course, you know. There has not been a single conversation in your family home for the year he was courting you that didn’t somehow circle back to him.

General Jeon Jungkook.

Youngest general in active command. Marked one. Rider. Political liability turned military necessity. A man spoken about in one of two ways: with fear or careful diplomacy. Never casually. Never lightly. Never as though he were a person.

“You were engaged to the general Jeon.” Your cousin folds her arms.

“Betrothed,” you correct automatically.

“As if that distinction matters.”

“It matters to me,” or you thought so the past year.

She studies you for a long moment, like she’s trying to determine whether you’ve lost your mind somewhere between your estate and the parapet.

“When he’ll get to know–” Then, with the kind of timing the gods reserve purely for cruelty, her gaze shifts over your shoulder and all the color drains from her face. Slowly, suspiciously, you turn. The noise of the courtyard seems to dim. A cluster of professors parts near the stone staircase leading toward the academic buildings.

And there he is.

Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed not in ceremonial uniform but dark rider leathers lined with a general’s insignia at the collar. A relic mark disappears beneath the edge of his throat, curling just above the neckline like spilled ink. General Jeon Jungkook looks less like a political arrangement and more like a very well-dressed threat.

He’s speaking to some professor, expression unreadable. Fuck. He got here way too fast? You were counting on having some time before he’d come to confront you. At least until threshing, which would give you three months to think of what you’ll say to him. Well… it seems you have about half an hour before the conscription day ends. 

Then, as if sensing the exact moment your life begins to deteriorate in real time, he lifts his gaze and looks directly at you. Not through the crowd. Not past you.

At you.

Your stomach drops harder than it did on the parapet. Shit.

“Oh, you are so screwed.” Your cousin mutters, being deeply unhelpful.  You tear your gaze away first.

Cowardly? Maybe.

Necessary? Absolutely.

The alternative is standing frozen in the middle of Basgiath’s courtyard while your almost-husband stares you into an early grave.

“No,” you mutter, mostly to yourself. “He can wait.”

 “Can he?” Your cousin lets out a sound suspiciously close to a laugh.

“Yes.”

“No, I mean biologically. I’m not entirely convinced General Jeon has ever waited for anything in his life.”

You shoot her a glare, adjusting the strap of your pack higher on your shoulder.

“He waited for a year; he can wait three more.”  

All remaining chatter dies almost instantly. A commanding officer steps onto the raised platform at the center of the grounds, voice amplified with the kind of authority that suggests insubordination is a hobby punishable by death.

“First-years, line up by section markers! Conscription processing begins now!”

Movement erupts around you. Cadets scramble into formation, some jogging, others practically sprinting as if late arrival might somehow disqualify them after surviving the parapet. You take one last glance toward the staircase.

Jungkook is still there, his eyes still dark, overlooking all the outcasts that made it through the parapet and you…among them. He’d probably never anticipated that you’d go to such measures to avoid marrying him. It’s the codex you did it for. Once you cross the parapet, there is nothing he can do for another three years. There is no way they would grant him any exception just because he is a general. Right? You count on all the codex worshipers that are you won’t have any exception.

Your best wish is that he won’t wait, just like Maelys suggested; he doesn’t have it in him to wait. Not three years at least. If you’re lucky, he’ll let you be useful somewhere other than as his bride. You’ll be a rider…if you’ll be seeing the daylight.

You pivot sharply and join the stream of first-years before your body can betray you by doing something humiliating—like turning around and fleeing back across the parapet.

Later that day, a healer presses a blade to your thumb. You hiss as blood wells across your skin.

“Name.”

“Y/N Y/S,” you state it.

The second year rider glances at the roster. Pauses. Looks up at you. Then looks back down again.

Ah.

Recognition.

Wonderful.

By the time you’re handed your assigned temporary quarters and formation details, at least four people have stared at you with varying degrees of confusion, curiosity, or poorly concealed horror.

Apparently, word travels fast. Or perhaps your spectacularly failed political disappearance plan was never as discreet as you’d hoped.

The sun has dipped lower by the time the final orientation announcements conclude. You’re halfway through considering whether hiding in your newly assigned bunk until winter is a viable life strategy when someone stops directly in front of you.

A red-haired girl in rider leathers—older, scar across her jaw, expression carved from stone—regards you with open disinterest.

Your…. section leader.

Or maybe…..wingleader? Or whatever delightful title belongs to the person most capable of ruining your evening.

“You.” You look behind you. There is no one there even though you hoped. Excellent.

“Yes?”

“You’re wanted.”

Every muscle in your body goes rigid. There are only so many ways that sentence can go wrong here. And none of them is fun.

“Wanted,” you repeat carefully, “by whom?”

“The board.”

Of course.

Naturally.

Why let you survive one life-threatening experience today when administrative terror is still available? You suppress a sigh and stare at her for a moment longer, briefly considering pretending you didn’t hear that. Unfortunately, military environments tend to frown upon selective deafness.

So with all the enthusiasm of someone marching toward their own execution, you nod.

“Lead the way.”

The corridors of Basgiath are colder inside. Stone walls. Torchlight. Echoing boots. Your footsteps sound far too loud as you follow the redhead girl deeper into administrative halls, which you definitely should not already be familiar with.

This is it, then.

Perhaps they’ve decided your enrollment was legally questionable. Perhaps your mother has already sent formal complaints. Perhaps someone finally realized accepting a runaway noble bride into the deadliest quadrant in the kingdom is poor institutional judgment.

Perhaps you’re fucking thinking too much.

You round one final corridor. The redhead girl stops outside a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron. She gestures toward it.

“You’ll go in alone.” You blink. Shouldn’t she come with you as your section slash wingleader or whatever she is? 

“Aren’t you—”

“No.”

That seems unnecessarily ominous. Your pulse quickens. Something about this feels… off. Before you can interrogate her further, she turns on her heel and leaves. Just walks away. Actually walks away. Leaving you alone outside the door like some offering left at a shrine.

You inhale once. Twice. Then shove the door open. The room beyond is dimly lit, lined with shelves and maps pinned across stone walls. A war room, not a board chamber… and very much not occupied by a panel of professors.

Just one person.

General Jeon Jungkook stands near the far table, one hand braced against its edge, head lowered over a spread of maps. He doesn’t look surprised when you enter. Which means he is, of course, the one who summoned you.

Sure thing. As if you expected him to just stare at you. Okay….you can do this.

The door clicks shut behind you with a deeply offensive finality. For one long moment, silence stretches between you. Then Jungkook lifts his head. Dark eyes settle on you with maddening calm.

“Are you alright?” 

“…What?” You blink at him with confusion. 

Jungkook straightens from the table, expression unreadable. Is he…?

“I asked if you’re hurt.” His gaze drags over you with clinical precision, like he’s conducting an inventory. Your shoulders. Your hands. The scrape on your palm from the parapet stone. A loose strand of hair plastered to your temple from dried sweat. As if he is checking for damage.

“I survived.” You recover just enough to lift your chin. 

“That was not my question.” There’s an edge to his voice now. Sharper. More personal than a general should sound.

You stare at him, thrown off balance by the fact that he seems genuinely annoyed by your refusal to elaborate.

“No,” you say at last. “I’m not hurt.”

His shoulders loosen so subtly you almost miss it. Almost. Only then does he exhale. A slow breath through his nose, like he’s been holding onto a very specific kind of rage since the moment someone informed him of your location.

“Good,” he says. And then his expression hardens. There it is. There’s the version you expected.

Because when he speaks again, his voice is calm in the way storms are calm right before flattening entire villages.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

“In my defence, your proposal was always deeply inconvenient.” You fold your arms.  A dangerous pause, you’re waiting for him to snap at you, which…he does.

“We were supposed to be married by now!”

“No, right. My apologies.” You gesture vaguely. Something dark flickers behind his eyes. He pushes off the table and begins walking toward you. His boots echo once. Twice. You hate that your body registers each step as he keeps walking.

“You crossed the parapet,” he says, like he still hasn’t fully accepted the reality of it. “Without training.”

“Yes. I made it.”

“Barely.”

“Still counts.”

He stops in front of you now, close enough that you have to tilt your head back slightly to maintain eye contact.

“You disappeared before dawn,” he says, voice lower now. “Left your family in chaos, your escort unconscious and half the capital convinced you’d been abducted.”

You wince. In fairness, the unconscious escort had been a regrettable necessity. Unhinged move that you’ll be apologising for later…in life.

“They’ll recover.”

“That is not the issue,” you swear you can hear his teeth grind against each other.

“No, I gathered–”

A humourless breath escapes him. For a second, he just looks at you. Not with anger, exactly. Something more exhausting. Like you have personally shortened his lifespan by several years.

“This,” he says quietly, gesturing once toward you, toward Basgiath, toward all of your terrible life choices, “was a deeply irritating move.”

“You thought enrolling here would solve your problem?” Jungkook continues in his…lecture? Preaching?

“It actually did,” you retort.

“No–” his voice is maddeningly certain. “It changed the location of your problem.”

“The Codex is clear.” You fold your arms tighter. That earns you the faintest shift in his expression. Almost amusement. Almost.

“Yes,” Jungkook says dryly. “I’ve finished this death college. I lived by the codex…sort of.”

“Then you understand the complication.”

“You seem to be under the impression that a bureaucratic clause is what was keeping this arrangement intact.”

That… is not the answer you wanted. Your stomach tightens.

“You cannot possibly mean—”

“If you wish to be here,” he cuts in, “then be here.” His tone is level. Controlled. Too controlled.

“I will not drag you from the Riders’ Quadrant because you wanted to prove a goddamn point.”

That surprises you. Enough that your guard slips, just slightly. Jungkook notices. Of course, he notices and continues.

“You crossed the parapet. You earned your place.” There’s something almost respectful in the words. Almost.

Then:

“But let’s be very clear.” His gaze sharpens, pinning you in place more effectively than any physical restraint could.

“This changes absolutely nothing.” The words land like stones. Your jaw tightens and you tighten your fists. 

“You don’t get to decide that alone anymore–”

“No,” he agrees, infuriatingly calm. “But you do not get to vanish into a death college and pretend I will simply… what? Move on?”

Well. When he says it like that, it sounds almost ridiculous. Which is inconvenient.

“I entered the Riders’ Quadrant,” you say, forcing steadiness into your voice, “because I–”

“Because you don’t want me? Is that it?” The interruption lands like a blade thrown with terrifying precision. He steps closer, but you don’t move back. Your lips part, but for one humiliating second, absolutely nothing comes out. 

Because of all the responses you’d prepared for this conversation—anger, threats, political manipulation, outrage—that was not one of them. Not even remotely. Jungkook watches you carefully. Not like a general assessing a cadet. Like a man waiting for an answer he actually intends to remember.

“Because Basgiath is the only place in this kingdom where my name belongs to me.” 

For the first time, something in his expression softens. Not much. Just enough to be dangerous.

“You think I don’t understand that?” That throws you. Because no, actually—you hadn’t considered that possibility. Not really when he was eager to give you his name.

Jungkook studies your face for a long moment before speaking again.

“If being a rider is what you want,” he says, quieter now, “then I’ll allow this.”

“How generous of you.” You bristle instantly. His mouth twitches. But his next words erase any satisfaction you might have gotten from that.

“However,” he says, “if this becomes too much for you—if you are overwhelmed, too injured, or one reckless decision away from becoming dragon food—I will remove you myself.”

“You can’t do that.” Your eyes widen at his proclamation.

“Watch me.”

“The Codex—”

“Fuck the Codex.”

The sheer bluntness of it knocks the air from your lungs. Jungkook leans in slightly, voice dropping low enough to feel less like conversation and more like a threat wrapped in velvet.

“If you thrive here, then fine. Stay. Bond a dragon. Graduate. Become the most insufferable rider Basgiath has ever produced but you will be my wife.”

“The Codex says no cadet can marry while enrolled,” you say, clinging perhaps a little too hard to the one technicality currently standing between you and total loss of autonomy.

As if a paragraph in military law is somehow stronger than the man currently looking at you, like bureaucracy is a mild inconvenience.

Jungkook’s expression doesn’t so much as flicker.

“Yes–” he says. “And eventually, you will no longer be a cadet.”

That is… annoyingly logical. You open your mouth, then close it again. He steps just slightly closer—not enough to crowd you, but enough to make the air feel tighter.

“You seem very attached,” he says, voice low and maddeningly calm, “to the idea that this was an escape.”

“It was.”

A pause. Then Jungkook tilts his head, almost considering you.

“No,” he says, almost gently. “This was an inconvenient delay, more for your father than me.”

“You’re awfully confident for a man whose intended bride fled before sunrise.” That actually gets him. A very slight exhale through his nose. Not quite a laugh, but adjacent.

“Mm.” Not enough reaction. Unacceptable.

“I’m serious.” You narrow your eyes.

“So am I, love.”

The ease with which he says it is honestly offensive. Like he’s discussing weather patterns, not the deeply inconvenient trajectory of your future. Jungkook folds his arms.

“I’m gonna trust the Gods and be patient–” he leans back, looking down at you.

“You are welcome to continue staging elaborate acts of rebellion,” he says. “They’ve been entertaining so far.”

Your jaw drops slightly and he puckers his lips, smiling at you. You must have pissed him off less than you intended. Shame.

“Entertaining?” you muse.

“You drugged an escort, escaped a guarded estate, crossed the parapet with no formal training and enrolled in the most lethal quadrant in the kingdom to avoid one conversation.” He studies you, something almost admiring, buried beneath the exasperation.

“It was, indeed, dramatic.” He adds which makes you stare at him, standing strong and proud in front of you.

“You’re impossible.” Then scoff. His gaze doesn’t waver, though.

“And you,” he says, infuriatingly calm, “are still going to be my wife.”

Heat climbs your neck so fast it should qualify as a medical emergency. Absolutely not. You turn sharply toward the door, yanking it open with significantly more force than necessary.

“And Dunne, I want this union to happen even more.” You look over your shoulder when he says that.

“We’ll revisit your delusions after I survive the first year, General.”

Behind you, his voice follows—low, steady, far too confident.

“I look forward to it.” You hate him. You really, really hate him, which is unfortunate because that voice is probably going to live in your head for the foreseeable future.

“I can’t believe you did that.” 

Maelys bites down on the chicken while you sit in the dining hall for lunch, staring at you from across the table as you’ve personally offended her ancestors. The air smells like smoke, sweat, and over-seasoned meat. You stab aggressively at something that might once have been a potato.

“Which part?” you ask. “The parapet, the enrollment, or basically telling General Jeon to his face that he was inconvenient?”

“You said what?” Maelys nearly chokes on her chicken. Her hand shoots to seize her cup of water to save yourself.

“In my defence, he was being irritating.”

She sets her chicken down with exaggerated care, as if sudden movement might worsen your already alarming condition.

“You are clinically incapable of self-preservation.”

“That feels dramatic.”

“You entered the Riders Quadrant to avoid marrying a marked general and then immediately antagonised him in private.” She leans forward. “Do you have some kind of death wish I should know about?”

You glare at your tray.

“No.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“He summoned me under false pretences.” You tear off a piece of bread.

“Please. You’re lucky he didn’t summon you by physically dragging you out of formation.” Maelys scoffs. That….is unfortunately true. But even he knows better. He cannot touch you here, and he couldn’t touch you before, not with all the chaperone prying eyes.

Not during negotiations, not during formal dinners, not across carefully monitored estate visits where every interaction was observed by at least three politically anxious adults pretending not to eavesdrop.

Jungkook has always maintained a maddening level of restraint around you; even when he seemed to break it, he would rather leave you pressed to the wall with the faint memory of his warm breath on your cheek than ruin the prospect of marriage.

“He wants the alliance,” you say, though it sounds less convincing out loud. Maelys gives you a long, knowing stare.

“No,” she says flatly. “He wants you. The alliance is a pleasant administrative bonus.”

“That is an absurd conclusion.” You nearly inhale your own drink.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“He crossed three provinces to personally attend your family’s negotiations.” Maelys leans back in her chair.

That is true.

“He declined two stronger political offers beforehand.” Also, unfortunately true.

“He somehow knew within what—an hour?—that you’d enrolled here?”

You open your mouth. Close it again. Because yes, that had also felt aggressively efficient.

“I don’t understand him,” you mutter. That, finally, seems to earn something like sympathy from Maelys.

“Well,” she says, “that at least makes two of us.”

The next time you have to see him will be after Threshing, if…you’ll bond a dragon. Because after Threshing, all bonded riders are formally presented. That’s when high-ranking officers and generals attend.

Ceremonial, strategic, deeply inconvenient. But until then? Freedom. Relative freedom, anyway.

You don’t receive any letters until you finish your first year, and for the sake of your sanity, you don’t subject your mind to venturing into the thoughts of how fuming your father must be. Your province needed the alliance with Tyrrendor, military and civilian enforcement. 

Tyrrendor’s military reach, trade access, and civilian enforcement agreements would have strengthened your territory more than any alliance your father could realistically secure elsewhere.

But you technically didn’t break the engagement, you simply stalled the I do part for the foreseeable future of three years. During which you can find out how to get out of it fully.

Without, of course…dying. 

Until then, your father has to settle for whatever Jungkook demands…without you in the picture.

Threshing comes dangerously quickly, and as you expected, General Jeon did not seek you. He couldn’t, not with reasonable cause. Not after that disastrous conversation in the war room. Not in the weeks that followed. Not during training. Not after squad challenges. Not even during the handful of events where high-ranking officers briefly appeared to evaluate first-years like livestock with better weapon access.

As far as what you heard from Maelys or the battle brief, he was busy and kindly said….you were too.   

“You’ll be fine, it’s not as scary as it looks,” one of the second-year cadets of your wing says to you. You spoke to him on occasion during sparring matches or the gauntlet, but beyond that, you never really talked to anybody; people were sort of…avoiding you. Which is not surprising at all, considering who you are beyond the walls of Basgiath. 

You’ve been carrying your reputation like a second set of armour since the moment you crossed the parapet, which is to say: heavier than necessary, and entirely unhelpful in close combat. You shift your weight, rolling your shoulders as if that might settle the tension coiling beneath your skin. 

By the third hour, your muscles are screaming. Not dramatically. Not in a way that would earn sympathy. Just a steady, grinding ache that settles into your bones like it plans to live there permanently.

The valley beyond Threshing is quieter now—most dragons have already chosen or discarded their cadets. What remains is the aftermath: injured pride, broken bones, and the rare cadet still stupid enough to believe there’s something left for them out here.

You adjust your grip on your blade as you move between jagged stone outcroppings. You’re running out of time; it’s almost dark. You need to find her. From one of the professors, you got to know she likes to hide and make the cadet earn her so you knew you wouldn’t find her in the open field. It’s worth a try, even if you’d be leaving unbonded tonight. That would sure suit general Jeon.

One you now only hear in whispers at family gatherings when adults thought children weren’t listening. A dragon your great-grandfather rode. The last bonded rider of your bloodline. A legend your family stopped speaking about properly after the war—like silence could erase history. But you remember. You remember sitting too close to the hearth, listening anyway. You were very little when you saw her with your own eyes.

Red dagger tail. Crimson scale ridge. Old-world intelligence. Ferocious loyalty.

And a name spoken with reverence.

Virelia.

You step carefully over fractured rock, scanning the narrow cleft ahead. Something feels… wrong here. Not danger. Recognition. Your foot slips. The ground gives way beneath you before you can correct.

“Shit—”

Gravity wins.

You fall hard.

Stone scrapes along your side, your shoulder slamming into jagged rock as you tumble into darkness. The world spins—dust, pain, impact—and then stillness. For a moment, there is only your breathing and the distant drip of water somewhere deeper inside the earth.

Fuck. How far down did you fall into the cave? 

“You have got to be joking,” you mutter into the dark. Your voice echoes back at you—thin, swallowed quickly by the stone. The cave doesn’t bother responding beyond that. No comforting signs of life. No convenient lantern-lit exit. Just cold air and the slow, rhythmic drip of water somewhere deeper inside the earth.

Fantastic.

You push yourself up anyway.

Pain flares immediately along your side, sharp enough to steal your breath for a second. Blood runs warm down your temple, sticky against your skin when you swipe at it with the back of your hand.

“That’s just perfect,” you mutter into the dark, wiping it away with the back of your hand. “Really elegant way to die, honestly.” 

You take another careful step forward. Then another. The cave feels wrong in a way you can’t name—too still, too aware, like the air itself is holding its breath.

Blood has dried hot along your temple and every movement sends a dull ache through your side. You ignore it. Pain is irrelevant now when you’re running out of time. The cave widens and the air changes. Not colder. Not warmer. Heavier. Like the space itself has been occupied for longer than anything alive should be able to measure.

Your breath slows without your permission. Something is here. That thought makes your stomach tighten.

You round the fractured edge of stone—

—and stop.

Because she is there. Or at least you hope it’s her. You cannot see her colour, nor tail, but something tells you your search is over, you can feel it deep down. Maybe even your life if she decides that you’re not worth being her rider and eats you–

That’s such a nonsensical thought.

The dragon’s large head lifts and her chest expands. A low sound builds in her throat—not warning, not hesitation.

Decision.

Then—

Fire.

It erupts upward in a violent, controlled column of crimson-gold flame. The ceiling of the cave explodes in light. Heat slams into you so hard you stagger back, throwing an arm up instinctively as molten brightness floods the space. Stone blackens instantly, ancient rock cracking and hissing as centuries of cold are erased in seconds.

The roar is deafening. Not just sound—pressure. A living force that vibrates through your bones. You drop into a crouch on instinct, shielding your face as embers rain down around you like burning snow.

For one terrifying heartbeat, you think—she’s rejecting me.

That this is it. That you’ve misread everything. That you’ve fallen into a cave just to be incinerated by a dragon your family never even deserved to name aloud.

But then—

you feel it.

Not rage or rejection. Control. Absolute, terrifying control. The fire doesn’t spread. It doesn’t consume the cave. It clears it.

Burning away loose stone. Shattering weak rock. Carving open a jagged path upward through the ceiling like the mountain itself is being rewritten.

Light pours in.

Moonlight. Cold air rushes down through the new opening, mixing violently with the heat until the entire space shimmers between fire and night.

We’ll be late, girl.

“…Late?”

A pause. Then, with the patience of something that has watched civilizations make worse decisions:

Yes, I don’t like being late, but someone had to fall down and hit her head.

That lands something into your stomach. Isn’t she funny large–

I can hear you. Let’s go or I’ll let you walk your way back. She huffs a hot air in your direction and looks up.

You whip your head toward the opening she just carved—toward the sky, the valley, the world outside this cave that is still full of cadets, dragons, chaos, and one very specific general you have been doing your best to avoid thinking about.

Virelia exhales once, smoke curling lazily from her nostrils as if time itself is optional, then she steps forward so you can climb her.

“We’re absolutely going to be late–” and your voice catches as you scramble to your feet, adrenaline snapping back into place. 

A faint ripple of amusement answers you.

Then move your ass.

Air slams into you as Virelia tears upward through the opening she made herself, massive wings catching moonlit currents with predatory ease. The valley drops beneath you in a dizzying rush of cliffs, forest, and scattered dragons still circling lower fields.

Gods.

This is flight.

You used to talk more. Virelia remarks dryly in your mind.  The cold air bites through your leathers, sharp enough to sting against the blood drying at your temple.

“YO-HOOOOOOOO!” You scream from the top of your lungs. “BETTER?” 

Virelia releases a powerful huff through her nostrils, warm air curling past your legs. Approval. You decide to count that as affection. And for one reckless, glorious second—

nothing exists except this.

I didn’t think you’d find me, little one.

“Me neither!” You scream back to her. Virelia banks slightly, moonlight washing over the crimson ridges of her scales until she looks less like a creature and more like a moving ember against the darkening sky.

So you…a rider?

The last person reckless enough—or brave enough—to choose dragons over obligation. After him, your house had changed. Or maybe simply corrected itself. No more riders. No more unnecessary risks. Just politics. Land management. Strategic marriages. Children raised to be useful in ways that required less dying. You stare out at the horizon.

“My father would probably rather eat stone than admit I’m here by choice.”

I gathered as much.

You grin faintly. 

“So you do judge people.”

Constantly.

That feels correct. A comfortable silence settles between you. Wind whistles past. The Threshing field is still active, though quieter now. Torches have been lit around the perimeter, their flames flickering gold against deepening twilight.

You are definitely late. Very late. Catastrophically late.

“Wonderful,” you mutter into the wind. You’re about to land. Virelia begins her descent with terrifying calm. Unlike you.

Your stomach flips as the field rises to meet you, details sharpening with every beat of her wings—officers near the command tents, upper years gathered in loose clusters, dragons resting across the valley like living mountains.

And then—

people start noticing. At first, it’s subtle. A few heads tilting upward. A pause in conversation. A second-year student nudges someone beside them. Then the effect spreads outward in visible waves.

You dismount Virelia once she lands; the ground vibrates under her weight. You’re dizzy and light-headed from your fall, but you have to make it to the scroll keeper to sign your names. 

Your eyes scan the gathered officers—

and immediately land on him. Standing near the command line as if personally summoned by narrative cruelty itself.

Jungkook.

His eyes are not on you more than they are on your dragon. You glance towards Virelia one more time, but her focus is also not on you or anybody else in particular, they are looking up beyond on the cliff where the dragons of the board and commanders are alongside Jungkook’s….oh. 

“Lia?” You call her name to get her attention, but she isn’t turning her head.

Hm?

“How’d you know I was looking for you?” You ask and then realize “and how’d you no my father–” you stop yourself mid sentence. Oh no. You feel it—her awareness shifting, a slow amusement brushing against your mind like heat curling from banked coals.

Your great-grandfather was my last rider, we figured–

“Who’s we?” 

You stare at Virelia for one long, terrible second. Then at the cliff. At the black dragon. At the way, his entire focus has narrowed onto Virelia with unnerving intensity. Not casual interest. Not curiosity. Something far more instinctive. Ancient. Possessive.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Your stomach drops so violently, you’re surprised it doesn’t physically hit the ground. The pieces slam together in your mind with horrifying precision. You turn slowly toward Virelia. Disbelief first. Then betrayal. Then the pure, unfiltered horror of comprehension.

“…No…” Virelia remains infuriatingly calm. You lower your voice, as if speaking softer will somehow make this less real.

“No!”

Her silence is a confirmation so loud it may as well be shouted. Your eyes widen.

“You cannot possibly be serious.”

“That dragon?”

A pause.

Then, with all the dignity of a creature ruining your life through logistics:

Yes.

Your jaw drops. No. Absolutely not.

Of all the dragons in all of Navarre—

of all the ancient, powerful, terrifying creatures you could have bonded—

yours had to be mated to his.

This is not luck. This is targeted harassment from the gods.

You look back. Jungkook. He’s no longer standing still. He’s crossing the field now. Fast. Not rushed enough to look undignified. But with enough purpose to make your pulse spike. Your entire body goes on alert on instinct. Not because of him. Not entirely. Because you suddenly become excruciatingly aware of how you must look.

Gods.

Blood. You are still covered in blood, and soot, and cave dust. Your sleeve is partially torn. There is dried crimson all over your temple, your knuckles, your throat. Your hair is somewhere between windblown and post-apocalyptic. You look less like a newly bonded rider and more like something Lia dragged home as a conversation starter.

Wonderful. Just perfect. You straighten instinctively, which is ambitious considering your ribs currently feel like shattered architecture. Jungkook closes the distance. His expression remains controlled. Unreadable. Infuriatingly composed. Until he gets close enough. Then he properly sees you and everything changes.

It’s subtle. So subtle, most people would miss it. But you don’t. His eyes sweep over you once. Quickly. Efficiently.

Temple.

Blood.

Shoulder.

Sleeve.

Hands.

The visible stiffness in your posture. Assessing damage. Calculating.

And then—

his jaw tightens.

“You’re injured.”

“It’s mostly decorative.” You immediately bristle. His gaze lifts slowly to meet yours. Unimpressed.

A truly extraordinary amount of judgment packed into one look. Behind him, his dragon descends from the ridge with powerful, controlled grace, landing several yards away with a heavy impact.

The ground trembles. Virelia shifts beside you immediately. Not away. Toward him. Toward his dragon.

You close your eyes briefly thinking that this might be a dream, but it isn’t.

The black dragon lowers his head slightly, releasing a low sound from deep in his chest. Not threatening. Not territorial. Something intimate enough to make you deeply uncomfortable on principle. Virelia answers with a softer rumble. You physically flinch.

Jungkook glances toward them. Then back at you. His expression shifts by approximately half a degree. Which, on him, is basically emotional upheaval.

“You bonded Virelia.”

It wasn’t a question when he already knew the answer. He fucking knew she was your grandfather’s dragon and that the most logical step for you would be to look for her in the field.

“Yes,” you say dryly. “Though I’m beginning to suspect there were external influences involved.” You cross your arms despite the immediate protest from your ribs.

His gaze flicks, almost imperceptibly, toward the two dragons. Virelia and his black dragon are still entirely too occupied with each other, their attention narrowed into something old and intimate and deeply inconvenient. The black dragon lowers his head further, brushing his snout along the side of Virelia’s neck with slow familiarity. The gesture is unmistakably affectionate.

Jungkook watches you for a beat too long, something dangerously close to amusement threatening the corner of his mouth.

“You seem distressed.”

“Your dragon is emotionally compromising mine.” You stare at him.

“That is not how dragon bonds work–”

“That sounds exactly like something a person benefiting from this arrangement would say.” You look at Jungkook. “This is somehow your fault.”

“Is it?” His brow lifts faintly.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You knew they are bonded!” You gesture wildly toward the dragons. Virelia, infuriatingly, looks entirely at ease. Like she hasn’t just detonated your life with ancient reptilian matchmaking.

“How would I know you’ll go looking for her out of hundred dragons out there?” Jungkook exhales slowly. Not frustrated. Not surprised. Just… resigned in a way you deeply distrust.

Before either of you can continue this deeply productive conversation, movement stirs around you. The gathered officers are closing in. Board members, commanders, scribes. The whole dreadful administrative ecosystem.

A rider in command leather steps forward, clearing his throat with the solemnity of someone about to ruin your evening.

“Cadet Y/S.” 

“Yes?” You already hate him.

“The Board requests your immediate presence.”

Why would your first successful day as a rider conclude in anything other than bureaucratic suffering? You pinch the bridge of your nose. Behind you, Virelia shifts, wings rustling softly as if none of this concerns her in the slightest.

Traitor.

Virelia and Kaelor are a confirmed mated pair, which you had no idea before you ventured far enough to find her. Only for her to betray you–

I did not betray you.

You nearly laugh, a short offended sound you manage to disguise as a cough. 

Sure, you just let me bond with you when you knew you had a mate whose rider is my betrothed I specifically came here to escape.

You were looking for me. 

Yes.

And you found me. 

That is not the point.

You wished to become a rider.

Well….kinda.

You wished to avoid a life chosen for you by others.

Possibly–

So I gave you what you asked for. 

I wanted to be away from him–

Why?

Mentally scrambling for an answer that feels simple enough to survive being spoken aloud. 

Because he acts like I’m already his.

Well–

Don’t. 

You won’t admit it. You won’t admit defeat when there is still a lot to fight for.

When he looks at me it feels like he already knows what I’ll do before I do it.

And you dislike being known.

That is—

rude but uncomfortably accurate.

I dislike being predictable.

That is not the same thing. 

No, it isn’t and that is somehow worse.

Because suddenly this feels less about escaping a marriage and more about escaping the deeply destabilizing possibility that Jungkook sees through you with alarming consistency.

That he reads you too well. That he understands parts of you you’ve worked very hard to keep inaccessible. He spent the whole year learning everything about you. Courting you, trying to capture your heart, only for you to screw him over by becoming cadet.

And all that—

that is terrifying.

The Board, after what felt like an offensively long amount of discussion over your life as though you were a scheduling inconvenience rather than an actual person, reached what they proudly called a reasonable compromise. 

Due to the confirmed mating bond between Virelia and Kaelor, prolonged separation was deemed operationally unwise—not only for dragon wellbeing, but for rider stability and flight performance. Which, translated from military language into something more honest, meant: your dragon would become increasingly insufferable if kept from her mate, and everyone preferred avoiding that scenario.

As such, a formal exception was entered into Basgiath records granting you temporary leave every third day to fly to Tyrrendor under supervised authorization. The destination? Aretia—but, more specifically, a smaller fortified island territory under General Jeon Jungkook’s jurisdiction.

Officially, these visits were classified as necessary dragon accommodations and advanced rider instruction. Unofficially, the Board had managed to weaponize your betrothal into a logistical arrangement so absurdly intimate it felt like a personal insult.

You were now, by written military decree, required to report to your betrothed every three days so your dragons could spend time together. A line of text in an official record that would haunt you for the foreseeable future. 

So it’s been a few months of you two flying back and forth. They even allowed Jungkook to substitute for some of the classes you’d miss. He always gets what he wants; his high standing allows him to do so.

The morning air is sharp with sea salt and early frost as Virelia cuts through a pale sky, her massive wings beating steadily over the endless stretch of water separating Tyrrendor and Drakskar. 

Drakskar was less an island and more a weaponised hidden outpost carved into rock. Watchtowers lined the perimeter, their silhouettes sharp against the grey horizon, while the estate itself sat at the highest point like something designed by a man who considered comfort suspicious. It was isolated, brutally practical, and impossible to reach without a dragon. Which, you suspected, was exactly how Jungkook liked it. 

Waves crashed violently below, white foam exploding against jagged black shoreline. There was no softness here, no ornamental architecture, no attempt at charm. Just defense. Height. Distance. A place built for command, secrecy, and people who preferred being unreachable.

Only Virelia knows precisely where the place is, and now…you. 

The Board still believes your authorised residence during leave rotations is Aretia proper. Which, to be fair, had been true at first. For approximately four visits. Long enough for your presence there to become an immediate logistical headache.

Too many people. Too many guards. Too many officers with eyes and functioning pattern recognition. And, according to Jungkook, far too many security vulnerabilities.

His exact phrasing had been: If someone wanted to leverage you politically, Aretia is the first place they would look. A sentence that had somehow resulted in you being quietly relocated to Drakskar. 

You were now being housed on Jungkook’s aggressively isolated island stronghold like a very politically inconvenient treasure. You are still undecided on how to feel about this. Actually. No. That is a lie. You know exactly how you feel.

Annoyed.

Vileria lands with practised precision in the centre of the stone courtyard, claws scraping against weathered rock as her wings fold in around you. 

Maybe next time I don’t have to land at all?  

You slide from Lia’s back onto the weathered stone with significantly more grace than you had during your first humiliating weeks as a rider. 

No stumbling.

No nearly-dislocated shoulder.

No accidental public embarrassment.

Months of flying had finally taught your body how to move with Virelia instead of against her. Dismounting now feels almost natural, boots hitting the courtyard with an ease you would have once found deeply suspicious. But not quite ready for flying dismount yet.

Virelia lowers her head slightly. 

If you like me to fall face-first on concrete, be my guest. 

“That would certainly stain your beautiful face with bruises.” A familiar voice echoes from the other side of the courtyard. 

Jungkook stands near the base of the stone staircase leading toward the upper terrace, one hand resting loosely against the hilt of a training blade at his hip.

Dark riding leathers. Hair windswept by the violent coastal air in that annoyingly effortless way that feels strategically designed to worsen your life. He must have land just minutes before you. But you didn’t see Kaelor in the sky; he must be down in the cave. 

He looks entirely too comfortable here. Of course he does. This is his island. His fortress. His aggressively isolated piece of weaponised rock in the middle of nowhere. 

Beside you, Virelia emits what feels suspiciously like amusement through your bond. Traitor. You ignore her. Mostly because Jungkook is already approaching. His gaze shifts from your face to your harness, then your gloves, then briefly to the still-settling position of Virelia behind you.

Assessment mode.

Again.

Honestly, at this point, you’re considering asking if he was born like this or professionally trained to be incapable of greeting someone normally.

“You landed well,” he says. That almost sounded like praise. Almost.

“I know.” You cross your arms.

“Confidence.”

“I’m trying it out.”

“It suits you.”

You stare. Again.

There is a beat of silence in which the sea crashes violently below the cliffs, and your brain very helpfully forgets how language works. He’s being way too nice today. Usually, his teaching style consists of relentless criticism.

Your footing is weak.

Your grip is inefficient.

Again.

Always followed by some variation of: I’m trying to keep you alive long enough to become a competent rider. 

Even Virelia doesn’t let on what is going on in his head and you don’t know how to use the bond you all have to your advantage just yet. Simply because…you have yet to manifest a signet. No manifested power. No sharpened access to the deeper mechanics of your bond.

Something is clearly wrong. You eye him suspiciously as you follow him toward the western terrace, where you usually train. When exactly he changed his mind about you being a rider remains a mystery. In the beginning, he tolerated it at best, but you knew deep down he wanted to pull you out of there numerous time.

He allowed it, technically, because he had promised he would. But there had always been an undercurrent to it—an expectation that perhaps eventually you would realise Basgiath was too brutal, too dangerous, too much. That you would leave yourself if he gave you the chance.

Now?

Now he trains you like he fully expects you to survive. To stay. To thrive, even. Which is significantly more disorienting. You haven’t managed to figure out what shifted.

The worst part of your arrangement here, however, is not the logistics. Not the forced travel. Not even the fact that you are now essentially military paperwork away from being professionally supervised by your own betrothed.

No. The worst part is sparring. Without question. Because sparring with Jungkook is a uniquely miserable experience. Not because he is cruel. Though he can be ruthless.

Not because he is impossible to beat. Though he absolutely is. But because sparring requires proximity. Far too much of it. You get way too close in those sessions, and he enjoys that way too thoroughly.

You spit a strand of hair out of your mouth.

“This island is actively hostile.”

Jungkook glances toward the darkening sky. Heavy clouds have begun gathering over the sea, low and bruised, swallowing what remained of the afternoon light.

Rain.

Imminent.

The coastal kind, which on Drakskar likely translates to biblical punishment. He lowers his blade.

“We’re moving inside.”

You don’t argue. A rare and deeply humbling occurrence. Mostly because your fingers are already beginning to numb despite the suspiciously well-fitted gloves currently betraying your principles. He gifted them to you on your second visit when you complained that your hands are always cold here even when the sun is shining. 

Jungkook leads you through a side corridor branching off the main fortress and down a curved stone staircase you haven’t explored before.

The air shifts gradually as you descend. Less salt. Less cold. Warmer. Humid, almost. Interesting. The corridor opens suddenly into an enormous glass conservatory built into the cliffside. You stop walking. Oh.

Floor-to-ceiling arched windows rise overhead, framed in black iron and fogged faintly at the edges from the warmth trapped inside. Rain begins tapping softly against the glass almost the moment you enter, droplets racing downward in silver lines.

The space is absurdly beautiful.

Wild greenery spills from enormous stone planters—climbing ivy, dark ferns, flowering vines twisting around wrought iron columns. Strange herbs and medicinal plants line raised beds near the centre, their leaves glossy in the filtered evening light.

It is the softest room you have seen on this island. Which feels almost scandalous.

“Did you build this?”

“No.”

“How disappointing.”

A faint brow raise.

“You seem surprised I didn’t personally construct an entire glass botanical structure.”

“I’m still learning where your unnecessary competencies begin and end.” That almost earns another smile. Almost. 

You stop beside a citrus tree growing improbably well near one of the windows. Rainwater streaks down the glass behind it, blurring the violent coastline beyond. The contrast is strange.

Outside: cliffs, storms, cold sea, black stone. Inside: warmth, greenery, quiet.

“This feels suspiciously peaceful for somewhere you spend time voluntarily.” You glance over your shoulder.

Jungkook has removed his outer jacket now, setting it over the back of a chair near the mats. Rolled sleeves. Bad. Deeply unhelpful visual. He catches you looking. You immediately focus very intently on a nearby fern. Botany is suddenly fascinating.

“This space belonged to my mother,” he says.

You freeze.

That—

you did not expect. Slowly, you turn back toward him. His tone is neutral. But quieter somehow.

Less guarded. Something about the admission feels unexpectedly intimate. Not because the information itself is dramatic. But because it sounds unpolished. Unstrategic. Simply offered.

“Oh.” An incredibly eloquent response. Well done. You glance around again, this time differently. Not as an anomaly in this island. But as something preserved.

That changes things. Subtly. Enough.

“She liked plants?” A small pause.

Then:

“She liked things that required patience.”

He must have inherited that part of her, because Jeon Jungkook must be the most patient and thorough man you’ve ever met. 

No other general would ever let you get away with this. Everyone had apparently been deeply convinced Jungkook would drag you out of Basgiath by your elbow within a week and punish you for your misbehaving. 

As far as Maelys has very helpfully informed you, most commanders in Navarre would have treated your enrollment as either an insult or a logistical inconvenience to be corrected immediately.

Not accommodated. Not entertained.

But he didn’t and now you’re almost at the end of your first year, which means one thing: your time is shortening, and you still haven’t thought through how you’ll get out of this, which now seems very impossible with the fact that your dragons are mated.

Several rounds later, you are beginning to suspect Jungkook is enjoying this far more than necessary. Not the sparring itself. Though he is, infuriatingly, still barely winded while you are starting to feel every muscle in your body protest.

No. He is enjoying you being frustrated. A deeply different problem. Wood clashes again, dull and ringing in the warm conservatory air. You drive forward with more force than precision, aiming a strike toward his left shoulder. He blocks immediately. Predictably.

You twist, trying to force an opening. He counters. Your blades lock. Too close. Again. This is becoming an issue.

Your breathing is heavier now, chest rising faster from exertion while warmth has begun gathering annoyingly beneath your leathers. The conservatory is warmer than the terrace.

Humid. Dense with heat trapped beneath glass and rain. And sparring, as it turns out, is significantly less enjoyable when your body has decided to become acutely aware of temperature. 

“This is tactical bullying.” You break apart from the lock with a frustrated sound.

“You’re overcommitting.” Jungkook lowers his blade slightly, dark hair fallen messily across his forehead now from movement.

“You say that like it’s a character flaw.”

“It is.”

Rude. You lunge again. He sidesteps. You miss. Badly. Your momentum carries you farther than intended, and Jungkook catches your wrist before you can fully lose balance. His hand is warm around your wrist. Your body stills instantly, and you swear all you hear is your heartbeat and his ragged breath.

For one deeply unfortunate second, neither of you moves. Rain drums harder overhead. Your pulse immediately begins behaving like it has lost all military discipline. Jungkook releases you first. A tactical retreat you are grateful for.

He steps back, gaze briefly dropping to the collar of his shirt where damp fabric has begun sticking lightly against skin. Then, with infuriating calm, he sets his training blade aside.

What is he—

Absolutely not.

You stare in mounting disbelief as he pulls the shirt loose over his head in one efficient movement and tosses it onto a nearby bench.

And—

well.

This feels like targeted psychological warfare. Your brain stops functioning for approximately three full seconds. Which, in combat terms, is catastrophic.

Jungkook is built exactly like a man who spends his life fighting wars and making deeply controlling logistical decisions.

Broad shoulders. Defined muscle cut sharply beneath warm lanternlight. A scattering of old scars crossing his torso and ribs like quiet evidence of every life he has apparently survived.

There is a relic mark curling darkly over one shoulder and along part of his collarbone, disappearing lower where your eyes absolutely should not be following. This is deeply inappropriate. You look away immediately. Then, accidentally look back. A tactical failure.

Your throat feels dry. Too dry. The conservatory suddenly seems approximately ten degrees warmer. You tighten your grip on your weapon. Trying very hard to recover some degree of composure. Trying harder not to notice absolutely anything. A losing battle. Jungkook settles back into his stance. Completely unbothered.

The audacity. What does he think he’ll achieve?

You’re getting distracted by the handsome general.

Virelia’s voice cuts through your scalp. The sheer betrayal of it nearly has you dropping your blade on principle.

Excuse me? You grip the practice sword harder, glaring at absolutely nothing in particular. Do not start. 

It is an observation. A fairly obvious one. Virelia sounds unbearably amused.

You are supposed to be on my side.

I am. This is very entertaining.

Fantastic. Wonderful. Your own dragon has decided to become a commentator on your rapidly declining emotional stability.

Across from you, Jungkook remains infuriatingly composed, blade angled lazily at his side as though he is not currently responsible for approximately eighty percent of your internal distress.

You narrow your eyes at him. This is somehow his fault too. You haven’t worked out how yet, but spiritually? Certainly.

“What?” he asks. His tone is neutral. Suspiciously neutral. Like he’s aware something has changed and is waiting to identify the threat. 

You blink. Had you been staring? No. Absolutely not… Probably.

“Nothing.” 

A pause.

Then Jungkook glances briefly upward, as though he could somehow locate Virelia through several floors of stone and an aggressively rainy sky and smirks. He is surely talking to Kaelor. You hate when he does that. 

Don’t you dare tell him Lia!

You are flustered. All the fucking time. Virelia remarks helpfully. 

I am not flustered.

Your pulse is elevated.

I’m sparring.

You have sparred before.

Traitor.

Absolute traitor.

You inhale once through your nose, attempting to recover what remains of your dignity.

Jungkook rolls one shoulder, loosening his grip slightly before resetting his stance. Still shirtless. Still unfairly calm about it.

Thunder rolls somewhere over the sea. The lanternlight catches gold against the sharp line of Jungkook’s jaw, across old scars, along the planes of muscle in his shoulders and arms.

You look away so quickly it nearly gives you whiplash. Absolutely not. Not happening. Not acknowledged. You raise your blade again with renewed hostility.

Enough. 

If he insists on being distracting, then you are at least going to make him work for it.

You lunge.

Fast.

Not reckless this time. Focused. Jungkook blocks immediately, but you’re already anticipating it. You pivot left, letting his blade glance off yours before dropping lower and shifting your weight.

He moves to counter—

too late.

You duck beneath his arm, twist sharply, and hook your foot behind his ankle with far more force than elegance. A dirty move but an effective one. His balance falters, just enough for him to fall and before he can fully recover, you use the opening.

One hand catches his forearm that holds his weapon and pins it to the ground. The other drives your practice blade upward—

stopping with the flat edge pressed firmly against his throat.

Silence. You are breathing hard. Chest rising too fast. Hair is partially stuck to your forehead from heat and exertion. Your pulse is so loud it should qualify as a military announcement. But none of that matters right now.

Because for once—

finally—

Jungkook is still. Not because he chose to be. Because you put him there. His back pressed to the cold stone ground while you straddle him, your body far closer to his than is remotely strategic. Victory, glorious and intoxicating.

“There.” Your mouth curves before you can stop it.  

“I win.” Breathless. Triumphant. For one beautiful second, satisfaction floods through you. Pure and untouched. Then you realize exactly how close you are.

Oh.

That is—

less ideal. Your smile falters by approximately half a degree. Jungkook hasn’t moved. Hasn’t even attempted to disarm you. Which feels suspicious. His chest rises once beneath you. Steady. Controlled. Far too calm. Slowly—dangerously—his eyes lift to yours.

Not to the weapon. Not to your hand. Just you and something in his expression changes, subtly, but enough. The playfulness is gone. The instructor’s detachment is gone with it. Replaced by something lower. Darker. Focused in a way that immediately sends heat racing beneath your skin.

Your grip tightens involuntarily. A terrible instinct.

“You should have followed through.”  His gaze flicks once toward the wooden blade at his throat. Your heart stumbles. That is not remotely what this moment needed.

“With a wooden sword?”

“Everything can be made into a weapon.”

There is something deeply unfair about the way he says that. Like it means two things at once. You narrow your eyes. Mostly because you are losing control of this situation at an alarming rate.

“Do not make this weird.”

That—somehow—makes his mouth twitch. Barely, but enough.

“You’re the one straddling me.”

You freeze. Horror. Immediate. You glance downward. And yes. Yes, this is visually catastrophic. Wonderful. You should simply throw yourself into the ocean. The conservatory windows are right there. Easy access.

You let his hand go and move to step back—

but Jungkook’s hand closes lightly around your waist to keep you in place.

Not forceful. Not trapping. Just enough to stop you. Your entire body stills. Oh no. Your pulse is now actively treasonous. Slowly, your gaze lifts back to his. 

“You did well.” His voice is lower now. Almost lost beneath the rain hammering against the glass overhead.

That should not be the thing that undoes you.

And yet.

Something about the quiet sincerity of it—here, now, like this—hits harder than any teasing ever could. Your pulse immediately abandons all remaining loyalty to your dignity. 

Jungkook is looking at you like he has forgotten every single thing outside this room exists.

“What are you doing?” 

Jungkook’s thumb shifts almost imperceptibly against your waist. A tiny movement. Devastating consequences. His gaze flicks once to your mouth. Then back to your eyes. Your stomach drops somewhere into the ocean below Drakskar. His voice is low enough that you barely hear it over the storm.

“Stopping you from running away.”

That—

that is not helpful.

His hand remains steady at your waist.

Grounding.

Possessive in a way that makes your entire nervous system light up like a distress signal. Your voice is barely above a whisper now.

“You are making this very difficult.”

“I’m aware.” His gaze doesn’t leave yours.

At least he has the decency to admit it. That should annoy you. Instead, it makes something warm and traitorous unfurl low in your chest. Terrible, absolutely terrible.

You look down briefly, mostly because maintaining eye contact has become a high-risk activity. A mistake. A fatal one.

Because all that does is make you more aware of proximity, of his sweaty, muscular torso right under you.

You exhale slowly. Trying for composure. Failing. Spectacularly.

When you look back up to his face, Jungkook is already watching you with an intensity that feels almost unfair. He sits, still keeping you in place, straddling his hips. You instinctively put your hands on his chest to push yourself in case he’d let his hands fall from your waist. Which doesn’t happen and now you’re in more trouble.

If that position felt close before, this is even worse. Close enough that one more inch would be a terrible idea and judging by the way Jungkook’s gaze lowers once more, very briefly—

he is thinking the exact same thing.

The firm grip of his hand still settled at your waist, not restraining exactly—but making it very clear you are not being allowed another graceful retreat.

Not this time.

Not when you are already here.

Not when you are practically straddling his hips in the middle of a conservatory during a thunderstorm like the gods themselves have lost all subtlety.

Your entire body feels like a tactical liability. Jungkook’s hand shifts just slightly higher at your waist. 

The fact that for all his possessiveness, for all his maddening certainty and terrifying competence—

he has never once taken what wasn’t willingly offered.

Your breath catches. Something in your chest shifts.Dangerously. Your gaze flickers from his  eyes to his mouth. Back up again. A fatal hesitation.

Jungkook goes still beneath you. Not frozen. Focused. Like he is one breath away from losing whatever carefully maintained control he has been operating under.

“If you keep looking at me like that—” His voice is low. Rougher now. “Fuck that.” 

The words barely leave his mouth before his hand at your waist tightens just enough to pull you the rest of the way in.

And then his lips are on yours.

Gods.

Every coherent thought simply evaporates. Gone. Reduced to static.

Because Jungkook kisses exactly the way he does everything else—like he has spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about it and is now executing with terrifying precision. 

The kiss is warm and immediate and entirely capable of ruining your week. Possibly your life.

You kiss him back. Which is arguably the most reckless thing you have done since enrolling at Basgiath.

Out of…pure curiosity.

Not because the way Jungkook kisses you feels alarmingly like something you could get addicted to with catastrophic efficiency. Certainly not because his hand is still warm against your waist, thumb brushing absentminded circles there like he has forgotten he is doing it.

No. Scientific inquiry. That is all.

You kiss him back again—more deliberately this time. As if testing a theory. A hypothesis. One requiring immediate and repeated verification. For research purposes.

Jungkook makes a quiet sound against your mouth that completely dismantles whatever remained of your internal logic.

That—

you hate how much you like this kiss. Something is irresponsibly pulling you to continue kissing him back. 

“We shouldn’t—” you manage to mutter through the smooches of your intertwined lips.

“Yes, we should—” he replies, as breathless as you are.

You feel the tip of his tongue demanding an entrance you are hesitating to give, but when his hand slides to grasp your ass, you cannot help but yelp into his mouth. The kiss deepens, growing messier as your tongues tangle together. Jungkook tastes faintly of mint and something uniquely him that makes your head spin. Saliva mixes as the kiss grows increasingly frantic, your breathing coming in ragged pants between moments of feverish connection. Jungkook’s hand tightens on your waist, pulling you flush against him as his other hand moves to cup the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair. The slight pressure against your scalp sends another wave of desire through you. 

The kiss becomes a dizzying spiral of sensation—wet heat, probing tongues, and the occasional scrape of teeth against lips that sends jolts of pleasure through you. Jungkook sucks gently on your tongue, drawing it deeper into his mouth before releasing it to resume. You’re completely lost to sensation, your earlier hypothesis forgotten as you abandon yourself to the overwhelming pleasure of his kiss. 

When you briefly break apart to gasp for air, Jungkook’s lips immediately seek yours again, as if unable to bear even a moment of separation and as if the thunder wasn’t loud enough, the epiphany of what you just let happen is louder. 

Mortified. 

Somewhere deep in the bond, Virelia radiates a wave of smug satisfaction so intense it nearly gives you psychic whiplash. 

Were you observing that? 

Yes, we were.

You close your eyes for half a second. Of course they were. Of course the dragons are worse than the humans.

The distance between you is still dangerously small—small enough that your breath keeps catching on the space where his mouth had just been, small enough that your pulse refuses to settle back into anything resembling normalcy.

His forehead brushes yours again, slower this time. Controlled, but not entirely steady. Like he is trying to reassemble something he just deliberately broke and failing. You swallow.

It does not help. You have to get away.

“That cannot happen again.” You stand up from him abruptly, taking advantage of his guard falling. You walk away a few steps, your back turned to him.

Something in Jungkook’s expression changes when you look back at him still sitting on the ground.  

He exhales once, slow, like he is physically containing a reaction before it becomes visible.

When he speaks, his voice is lower than before.

“Why?”

You straighten slightly, forcing your thoughts back into alignment, back into something resembling reason.

“Because it—” you start, then stop, because anything you say next feels dangerously inadequate for what just happened.

Because it was a mistake.

Because it changes things.

Because it cannot be repeated.

All of those feel correct, yet none of them feels strong enough.

“You kissed me back.” 

“That doesn’t change anything,” you say quickly.

“Doesn’t it?” Jungkook’s gaze sharpens slightly.

Your stomach drops. Because there it is again. That unsettling certainty. Like he has already accounted for this outcome in a future you haven’t seen yet. 

“Everything happens for a reason. Dunne be my witness Y/N–” he says instead, voice steady enough to cut through the heat still lingering between you. 

“You don’t get to reduce this to fate,” you say quickly, forcing steel back into your voice. “Not when you’ve been steering every outcome since my father said yes–”

Jungkook doesn’t deny it. That is the worst part.

“I didn’t steer Lia, bonding with you was her own decision Kaelor just told her you entered the quadrant—” he says quietly. So he did tell her afterall.

He’s telling the truth. She says. But you refuse to believe he didn’t persuade her any further.

“That doesn’t make it destiny–” Your throat tightens as you speak to both of them. 

“No,” he agrees, calm as ever. “It makes it confirmation.”

Before you can respond, the corridor outside grows louder. Footsteps. Voices. The approaching certainty of interruption.

Jungkook exhales once, like he is setting something aside—not abandoning it, just postponing it.

“This doesn’t end here,” he says, quieter now.

Not a threat but a structural fact. You feel it in your bones anyway.

The door opens.

Cold air spills into the warm conservatory, breaking the fragile heat between you like a snapped thread.

“General Jeon. The dinner will be ready in half an hour if you wish to dine—” A steward stands in the doorway.

“Prepare the table,” he says evenly still looking at your rose colored cheeks.

“As you command, General.”

The dining hall in Drakskar is nothing like Basgiath. It’s small and private. It is carved into the cliff like everything else—long stone walls, high arched windows facing the restless ocean. Wind rattles faintly against the glass panes. Inside, everything is too controlled. Too quiet. You sit where you are told to sit. A long stone dining table entirely too large for two people, lit by low candlelight that softens absolutely nothing. 

Just you..and him again. 

You got used to being alone with Jungkook. He never took advantage, up until today’s sparring lesson, which after some thought, you admit you didn’t do anything to stop it. 

Sea fish rests on your plate, seasoned with herbs probably from the conservatory, alongside roasted vegetables and fresh bread still warm enough to steam when torn apart.

It should be comforting, but anxiety is beating you to it. You don’t wanna talk about it. But your mind would be at ease if you two established some boundaries. You didn’t need them before but after today…you’re not entirely sure.

He eats with infuriating calm. You, yourself, focus on your food with militant precision.

Knife.

Fork.

Fish.

Chew.

Do not make eye contact. A flawless system. It lasts approximately three minutes.

Then—

“We should talk about it–”

You close your eyes briefly. There it is. Of course. You don’t even bother looking up.

“No.” Across from you, a beat of silence and a deep groan.

“That was not a question, Y/N.”

You set your fork down slowly. Very slowly. As slowly as you look up to him. He’s already watching you. Not with the detached composure he uses in meetings or strategy briefings or while dismantling your sparring technique with surgical precision. This is different. Like this conversation has occupied his thoughts since the second you fled the conservatory. Or perhaps even longer.

You fold your hands neatly in your lap, mostly so he cannot see how restless your fingers suddenly feel.

“There is nothing to discuss.” A lie so transparent it should embarrass you. 

Jungkook leans back slightly in his chair, studying you with that maddening patience that somehow always feels more dangerous than outright confrontation.

“You kissed me back.”

Heat immediately floods your face. A physiological betrayal. Unacceptable.

“I got carried away–will never happen again.” Your jaw tightens while you breathe in as much air as you can muster in your lungs. 

“Will it not?” The calmness of the question is almost worse than if he had argued.

“No.” You say sharply. One dark brow lifts. “It was a lapse in judgment.” 

“A lapse in judgment,” he repeats, nodding his head with a stead rhythm. “You’ll realise that we’ll do much more once you’ll come to your senses?” 

Your grip tightens around your glass. 

“Excuse me?” you stare at him across the candlelit table, genuinely offended by the sheer audacity of his existence. 

“You continue speaking as though our relationship is temporary—Y/N, you’re my—.” 

“Because it is–” Your brows knit with anger as you interrupt him. Jungkook exhales once through his nose, gaze never leaving yours. 

“No.” Just that. Flat and certain. The single syllable lands harder than anything louder might have. 

“I am still a rider at Basgiath and when–” You straighten slightly in your chair.

“And I am still the man you are betrothed to.” He snaps back at you, clearly losing his patience but you simply stare back at him with the same anger that reflects in his eyes. The candlelight catches against the sharp planes of his face, throwing shadows across the relic mark disappearing beneath his collar.

“I have been very patient with you.” That gets your attention. Not because the words are dramatic. Because they are true. Painfully, inconveniently true. It took him years up until now to dare to kiss you. And kiss he did. If you close your eyes long enough, you can still feel him on your tongue.

He could have made your life significantly more difficult. Instead, he gave you distance. Space. Too much time, perhaps. Enough for you to mistake patience for surrender. A tactical error.

“You enrolled in the Riders Quadrant believing it would place enough distance between us to make this avoidable.” When he says it aloud like that, it sounds embarrassingly naive…and perhaps it was….at least partially.

“But–” a faint pause, as if he stopped to answer Kaelor in his mind. Virelia is oddly quiet this evening, usually she jabs at you with snarky remarks about how you should give this a shot. Or that it would make your life entirely easier if you’d just bend and accept this union.  

“Your dragon is mated to mine.”

The unavoidable, catastrophic truth of your existence. You’ll never be away from him. Can’t. As though fate itself saw your carefully constructed escape plan and laughed. 

“You will continue returning to this island–” 

Your pulse does something deeply unhelpful.

Because hearing it laid out like this—

so plainly, so clinically—

makes the situation feel even more absurdly intimate than it already is.

“Until you stay here as my wife—” Jungkook’s gaze holds yours steadily. “Willingly.” 

He stands up, throwing the napkin he had on his lap onto the table and walks right to where you’re sitting. You don’t pivot to see him, instead, you keep your gaze fixed stubbornly on the arched windows ahead, where the black ocean churns violently beneath moonlight. White foam crashes against jagged cliffs below. A fitting visual representation of your internal state.

Behind you, you hear the quiet shift of fabric as Jungkook rests one hand against the back of your chair. An impossible awareness at your shoulder. You can feel him bending down, his nose nudging your hair away before he whispers into your ear.

“The sooner you accept that there is no version of future in which we remain separate,” he says quietly, “the easier this will be for you.” 

And with a warm kiss to your cheek, he leaves the dining room.

Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.

Your room at Drakskar is quieter than Basgiath ever was. You sit at the edge of the bed, fingers absently unfastening the leather straps at your wrists one by one. The room is dimly lit by a single candle already burning low, throwing amber light across rough stone walls and the neatly folded blankets at the foot of the bed.

The mattress dips slightly beneath your weight. You let out a slow breath and lean back onto your palms, staring at the wooden beams overhead. This was manageable before—

that is what keeps circling in your head.

Before today, whatever strange arrangement had formed between you and Jungkook was at least functional. Predictable, in its own infuriating way.

You came to Drakskar. You trained. He criticized approximately every aspect of your technique like it was a sacred duty. You returned to Basgiath. Simple. Contained. Annoying, but manageable. Then today happened. 

Because the second darkness settles behind your eyelids, your mind immediately betrays you. His lips.

Warm.

Intentional.

The way everything in your body had gone utterly still for half a heartbeat—not from shock, not entirely, but from the unbearable realization that this was happening. The heat of his skin beneath your palms because apparently at some point you had decided holding onto him was an excellent idea. 

A truly catastrophic lapse in judgment. You groan softly and drag both hands over your face. You should have never kissed him back. You should have slapped him the moment he let you breathe again. 

That is the worst part. Not the kiss itself. Gods, no. If anything, that may somehow be the more alarming issue. No. The problem is that you had wanted to.

Like some traitorous part of you had been waiting far longer than you were prepared to acknowledge. Which is absurd. Completely absurd.

You sit up abruptly. As if changing position will somehow disrupt your own thoughts. It does not. You kick off your boots with more force than necessary and begin removing the rest of your leathers, folding them onto a nearby chair with rigid efficiency.

You should stop thinking. Immediately. A wise decision. One you are unfortunately denied.

Because suddenly—

heat floods through you so sharply you physically jolt. Your breath catches in your lungs. 

What is it?

A pulse. Hot and immediate, racing through every nerve like liquid fire. Your hands grip the edge of the mattress.

“Oh, no–”

Another wave hits. Stronger. Deeper. Is…is Lia channeling her magic? Right now?

A warmth low in your stomach unfurling with alarming speed, curling outward through your limbs until your skin feels entirely too sensitive. You just gotta get to bed and sleep it through. Right?

You make it approximately six minutes.

Six.

A humiliatingly short amount of time before pride, dignity and every sensible instinct you possess lose the ongoing war against whatever this is. You yank your chamber door open and step into the corridor, breathing sharply as cooler air brushes overheated skin. They are mating. She started to channel right when they are fucking mating. You feel almost every single bit of it.

You don’t know where you’re running off barely dressed, but it seems that there is a red thread in front of you that you follow.  

It does not help. Nothing helps. The fortress is mostly quiet at this hour. You walk faster. Then faster still. Not running. Certainly not. Just… urgently relocating.

Another pulse rolls through the bond. You stop so abruptly your palm hits the wall beside you.

“Oh, for the love of all the gods.” Your forehead briefly meets stone. Cold. Marginally useful. Virelia offers nothing except a smug warmth that feels deeply personal at this point.

How do I stop this? You are met with silence. 

You push off the wall and continue. You need distraction. Water. Fresh air. Possibly divine intervention. 

Any of the above.

What you do not need is company.

Which is why naturally, when you round the final corner and push open the heavy doors to what you vaguely hoped was an empty common room—

you freeze.

Because of course.

Of course.

There is one person here.

Seated near the massive hearth, one arm resting lazily along the back of a dark leather sofa, a glass of amber liquid loose in one hand. The entire setting looks offensively intimate. But that is not the worst part.

No.

The worst part is what he is wearing.

Or rather—

what he is not.

AGAIN.

Jungkook is wearing only loose black sleep trousers slung low on his hips. That is it.

Nothing else. Bare chest. Bare shoulders. Bare arms. Fucking again. You physically stop breathing for half a second. Fucking again.

He looks up. Sees you and immediately knows something is wrong.

Or rather—

not wrong.

His gaze sharpens with quiet recognition. A slow, deeply knowing expression settling across his features. Not smug. Worse. Aware.

“No–I–ehm–” You stutter. Defensively. A warning or maybe a plea. Hard to tell.

“Running from something?” he asks, voice low and rough. Jungkook sets his drink down on the low table beside him with measured calm.

“I think Lia started to channel and they are–”

“You lasted longer than I expected.” He interrupts you.

“You expected this?” Your mouth falls open. Pure offense.

“Our dragons are mated.” He arches one brow as if this was indeed inevitable. “It was inevitable.” 

You step backward slightly unfortunately, your body betrays you again with another sharp wave through the bond, warmth curling low and immediate enough to make your knees feel briefly unreliable.

You grip the doorframe. Jungkook watches the motion. Entirely too calmly. The fire crackles behind him. Outside, thunder rolls faintly somewhere over the ocean. There has been a storm the whole day.

“I’m fine. I just needed air,” you lie, taking a step back toward the hall. He turns then and the intensity in his eyes makes you freeze. 

“Don’t lie to me, Y/N. I can feel it too, you know. What they’re doing.”

Another pulse of heat courses through you at his words and you grip the back of a nearby chair to steady yourself. 

“That’s them. Not us.”

“Is it?” He rises slowly, muscles flexing with the movement. “Then why does your heart race when I look at you? Why do your pupils dilate like you want me to devour you?”

He crosses the space between you, stopping just short of touching. The heat radiating from his skin feels like a physical caress.

“You can’t hide from this," he murmurs, fingers tracing the line of your jaw. “From us.”

“We shouldn’t—” Your body betrays you, leaning into his touch despite your mind screaming at you to pull away. 

“Why not?” he challenges, thumb brushing your lower lip. “This is not the last time they are mating, it will help to ease the–”

The mating bond surges again—stronger this time—and you gasp as pleasure coils tight in your belly. Jungkook’s eyes darken with understanding and something else—primal satisfaction.

“Feel that?” His voice drops to a husky whisper.  “Your body wants this. Wants me–” 

His voice drops to a husky whisper as his thumb presses harder against your lip, parting them slightly. “Tell me you don’t feel it. That emptiness inside you that only I can fill.”

You can’t answer. The mating bond of your dragons pulses through you again, a searing wave of desire that makes your knees weak. Your hands, which had been clenched at your sides, now reach instinctively for him, fingers curling around his biceps.

“That’s it,” he murmurs in approval, his other hand sliding around your waist to pull you flush against him. “Stop fighting me.”

His tongue sweeps against yours with practiced dominance, tasting and taking as his hands grip your hips, pulling you flush against him. The thin fabric of your clothes does little to dull the sensation of his hard body against yours.

You moan into his mouth, hands coming up to grip his shoulders as the dragon bond pulses through you again. Every nerve ending feels electrified, hypersensitive to his touch. His fingers work the fastenings of your tunic, deftly loosening them until cool air kisses your heated skin.

“Jungkook,” you gasp as his lips trail down your neck, teeth scraping lightly over your pulse point. “We can’t—” 

You’ve said these words today already, but this time you don’t believe yourself one bit. It’s easing the painful knots in your body. 

“We fucking can,” he corrects, nipping at your collarbone. “We will.” His hands slide beneath your tunic, palms rough with calluses from dragon riding as they map the curve of your waist, the dip of your spine. 

The mating bond intensifies again and you arch against him helplessly as pleasure coils tight in your belly. Jungkook chuckles darkly, the sound vibrating against your throat.

“Our dragons are enjoying themselves,” he murmurs, lifting you effortlessly until your legs wrap around his waist. The position presses you intimately against his hardness and you both groan at the contact. 

“Why shouldn’t we?” He moaned. Jungkook carries you in front of the fire, laying you down gently on the armchair near it despite the urgency in his movements.

Jungkook kneels before the chair, his eyes dark with hunger as they sweep over your body. “I’ve been wondering what you taste like,” he murmurs, fingers tracing the edge of your tunic. “Since that first day I saw you.”

Your breath hitches as he slowly lifts the fabric, exposing your stomach, then higher still until your breasts are bare to the warm air and his heated gaze.

With practiced movements, he strips away the last of your clothing until you’re completely exposed before him. The vulnerability should terrify you, but all you can feel is anticipation as his eyes drink in every inch of you.

“Perfect,” he breathes, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to your inner thigh. “All mine.”

His mouth continues its upward journey, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. When he reaches the apex of your thighs, you’re already trembling with need. His thumbs part your folds gently, exposing your slick center to his gaze. 

“Look at that…your body knows who it belongs to.” He teased, voice thick with satisfaction, smiling into your sore skin.

Before you can respond, his hot mouth kisses your sex making you moan from satisfaction. His tongue flicks against your clit, exploring every inch of you with a thoroughness that makes your head spin, until you’re writhing in the chair. Your legs slide onto his shoulders, covering the dragon tattoo on his back. Your hands fisting in his hair as you hold him to you.

Jungkook groans against you, the vibration sending another wave of pleasure through your body. 

“Jungkook–” you gasp, hips bucking against his mouth.

He responds by sucking gently on your clit, drawing it between his lips as his tongue continues its wicked dance. The dual sensation is overwhelming, pushing you closer to the edge with each passing moment.

“So close,” you manage, breath coming in ragged pants. His tongue delves deeper, thrusting into you in a rhythm that makes your toes curl. One hand slides up to grip your breast, thumb circling your nipple in time with the movements of his mouth. The combination is too much—too intense, too perfect. 

“If you come–” he heaves “you’ll come clenching my cock.” 

He doesn’t wait for your answer. Instead, he doubles his efforts, tongue thrusting deeper as his thumb presses harder against your nipple and when he senses your trembling, he tears himself away from your cunt.

He wipes his chin from your juices and looks into your eyes for any kind of resistance. When he finds none, he grips your hips, pulling you down to the ground with him, only to spin you so your ass is up. 

His large hand presses your naked chest onto the chair. His hand remains firm between your shoulder blades, holding you in place as you hear the rustle of fabric behind you. He hooks one of his fingers into the black sleeping trousers and pushes them down. 

You daren’t look back to see him. Afraid of your own body’s reaction upon doing so.

The head of his cock presses against your entrance, teasing, threatening. You push back instinctively, desperate for the fullness he promised, but his grip on your hip tightens, holding you still.

“Promise.” He demands. 

“Promise what?” you manage, voice ragged with need despite the position of submission.

His free hand traces the curve of your spine, a stark contrast to the firm pressure holding you down. 

“Promise you won’t run again. That this—” he presses forward slightly, enough to make you ache without giving you what you need to release the pain that is holsting through you “—is ours. Not just tonight, but always.”

The mating bond keeps surging through you one with his words, a searing wave of desire that makes your knees weak, that makes you not think clearly. You need this to stop and he…is your only release. You want to resist, to maintain some semblance of control, but your body betrays you, pushing back against him again.

“Say it, Y/N.” His voice drops to a husky whisper. “Swear that you’re mine.”

“I—” you begin, but the words catch in your throat as he circles his hips, the head of his cock teasing your entrance in a way that makes you tremble.

“Say it, love” he commands, thumb pressing into the dimple above your ass. “Or I’ll stop. I’ll leave you here, painfully wanting, while our dragons finish what they started.”

The threat is effective. The thought of being left like this—aching, empty, desperate—is more unbearable than surrendering to his claim.

“I promise,” you whisper, the words tasting like defeat and something else—relief. “I won’t run again. I’m yours.”

“Good girl,” he praises, and then he’s pushing into you—slow, deliberate, stretching you until you’re completely filled. The sensation is overwhelming, a perfect mix of pleasure and possession that makes your head spin.

“Feel that?” he murmurs once he’s seated fully inside you. “This is where you belong. Wrapped around me, taking what I give you.”

His movements start slow—deep, measured thrusts that stoke the fire building in your core again. Each push forward is punctuated by a possessive word or phrase.

“Mine.”

Thrust.

“Made only for me.”

Thrust.

The bond pulses in time with his thrusts, amplifying every sensation until you’re pushing back against him, meeting him thrust for thrust. His pace increases, one hand gripping your hip while the other slides around to find your clit. 

There is something so satisfying about the way his head hits all the right spots inside of your  cunt, your walls clenching around him as a silent thank you for pleasuring them. 

You are lost in him, in between his praising words how good you’re for him and the way his cock stretches the rim of your cunt. The pressure builds like a storm gathering over the Drakskar—inevitable, devastating, absolute. Your cheek presses against the chair, the leather texture sticking to your skin as Jungkook drives into you with a rhythm that has lost its patience. He is no longer teasing. He is claiming. 

“Look at you, love” he pants, the sound of his voice ragged, ruined. “Taking me so well. Made to be fucked by your husband, weren’t you? Even if you won’t say it yet.”

The word husband sends a spike of heat through your belly, dark and forbidden. You want to deny it, to remind him that you ran precisely to avoid that title, but your body arches into him, meeting each thrust with a desperation that makes a liar of you.

“Jungkook—” You gasp as his fingers on your clit press harder, circling in time with the snap of his hips. “I can’t—it’s too much—”

“Not yet.” He pulls out suddenly, leaving you hollow and keening at the loss and before you can draw breath to protest, he’s flipping you onto your back on the furs before the hearth. The firelight paints his skin in gold and shadow, highlighting every lean muscle, the dragon-scale scars that mark him as Kaelor’s rider, the absolute focus in his eyes as he settles between your thighs.

This position is different. Intimate. Inescapable. Woman and man. Wife and husband. Apart…you are yet to be wed and this would be absolutely scandalous if anyone got to know he bed you before you tied the knot. He isn’t…your first. But he sure thinks he’ll be your last.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, the word almost a purr as he settles his weight more fully against you, his cock pressing hard and insistent against your entrance. “I’m the one whose name you’ll scream when you’re desperate, whose seed you’ll carry.”

He enters you slowly, torturously slow, watching your face with an intensity that feels like it could burn through steel. You are stretched around him, filled completely and the intimacy of this position—face to face, heart to heart—makes you want to look away. But his hand catches your chin, holding you captive to his gaze. 

“Look at me,” he demands, his thrusts becoming relentless, punishing, the sound of skin meeting skin filling the chamber like war drums. “Look at me when I claim you. When I fill you. When I breed my future wife for the first time.” 

You feel him swell inside you, feel the tension coil in his spine, feel through the bond his absolute determination to fill your womb, to plant his seed so deep you’ll feel it for days, to ensure that even if you ran again, you would carry him with you. You know it can’t result in  the outcome he’d probably want due to the fertility suppressant you are taking, but you know it’s Kaelor speaking through him and this…is merely a desire for now.

His hips snap against yours with such deliberate precision it makes you catch onto him. You bite down on his shoulder to stop yourself from screaming how good this feels. How good is his cock hitting your cervix, making you gasp loudly each time it does.

“Show me you accept it. Accept me. Show me you want my child growing inside you.”

The orgasm crashes over you with the force of a dragon’s wingbeat, tearing a scream from your throat that echoes off the stone walls. Your body seizes around him, milking him, your walls clamping down in rhythmic pulses that draw out his own release.

Jungkook buries his face in your neck too, his teeth finding the juncture of your shoulder, biting down hard but not enough to break skin as he spills inside you with a groan that sounds like your name and mine and finally all tangled together. 

The bond flares blindingly bright, Virelia and Kaelor’s pleasure cresting and breaking through your consciousness as Jungkook marks you from within, hot and deliberate and endless, his hips jerking in short, possessive thrusts as he empties everything he has into you.

He collapses atop you, his weight a blanket that you should push away but can’t, his cock still twitching inside you, his breath ragged against your sweat-dampened skin. For long moments, there is only the sound of the Drakskar wind and your thundering heartbeats, synchronized through the bond.

“I love you,” he murmurs against your temple, his voice rough, sated, and still terrifyingly possessive. “I’ve been loving you for very long time–”

You go still beneath him, your fingers pausing their tracing of his scars, your breath catching in a way that has nothing to do with the aftershocks of pleasure still rippling through you. He has laid himself bare in a way that frightens you more than his dominance ever could. It is one thing to be claimed by Jungkook the rider, the relentless general. It is another to be loved by him.

“—and I won’t stop until you’ll be truly mine.”

“Truly yours,” you repeat, your voice barely a whisper, testing the weight of the words.

He shifts above you, his hips rolling in a slow, deliberate circle that makes your breath hitch, a reminder of where he’s still seated deep within you.

“Your heart is still running–” He leans down, his teeth grazing your earlobe, his voice dropping to a growl that vibrates through your bones. “And I will chase it. I will chase you. Through every argument, every denial, every time you look at me and see the contract instead of the man.” 

The dragon bond flares, Kaelor’s determination bleeding into Jungkook’s, a mirror to Virelia’s restless stirring in your own mind. You feel his love through it—not soft, not gentle, but fierce and unyielding as stone, as fire, as the dragons themselves. 

“You’re mad,” you breathe. 

“Mad for you,” he agrees. “Mad enough to burn the world down if it tries to take you from me.”

He captures your mouth in a kiss that tastes like desperation and devotion, his tongue sweeping through yours in a rhythm that matches the snap of his hips against yours. 

“So run if you need to,” he murmurs against your lips, his hand sliding across your body, his thrusts intensifies, eager to make you cum again.

“Hate me if you must. But know that I will be here. Every time you fall, I will catch you.” 

The pleasure builds again, relentless and you arch beneath him, meeting his thrusts, your body betraying your fear even as your heart pounds warnings. 

“Every time you hide, I will fucking find you.” 

He drives you to the edge with devastating precision, his cock hitting that spot that makes your vision blur, and when you come—screaming, shattering, breaking apart beneath him, yet again—he follows, spilling inside you with a groan that sounds like a prayer and a battle cry tangled together. 

“Until you look at me and see not your cage, but your sanctuary.” 

I N T E R L O G U E

You exploited her. 

Kaelor is coiled somewhere in the caves below, wings tucked, scales black as obsidian in the dim light, but his rage burns bright enough to sear through the connection.

Jungkook presses your sleeping form against his chest tighter. 

I didn’t.

You let her go through our mating heat when you could teach her how to shield.

I could have, he admits to the darkness, to the dragon, his thumb tracing idle patterns across your stomach—possessive even in his guilt. Jungkook buries his face in your hair, inhaling the scent of sea salt and sex and something uniquely you. 

I felt her burning and I chose to let her burn. 

Why? After all the work you've done to have her.

Because once she learns to shield, she’ll use it against me. Against my love for her.

And that terrifies you? That she could shield herself from you?

I’m afraid of waking up to silence. Of reaching through the bond and finding walls. 

When she wakes—truly wakes, not dazed by heat and hormones—she will know what you denied her. 

Your hand clenches against Jungkook’s forearm, nails digging crescent moons into his skin, and he wonders if you’re fighting him even now, unconscious, building those walls in the dark. 

We’ll see. 

Far beyond the chamber walls, Drakskar breathed beneath the night like something ancient and half-awake, all black stone and sharpened edges, guarding its secrets with the same ruthless devotion as the man beside you.

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THE END.

©pennyellee. please do not repost