#mating instinct

For years he wandered on his own, drifting among cultures and cities, watching and learning what he could. The Rito taught him to listen to the wind. The Gorons taught him the language of earth and fire. The Zoras taught him to tame water. The Hylians he avoided, though he masqueraded as one. They were the singers of the song.

Sometimes he indulged in trueshape, when he was in the most isolated places—in Hebra, or beside the Akkala Sea, where he wouldn’t be noticed or bothered. And sometimes he thought, for all the strangeness and diversity of the world, those were the times he liked best: the stolen moments of peace, of silence, where his nature didn’t feel so burdensome.

Maybe that was why Father taught him that loneliness was necessary—not just for the safety of others, but because he knew, in some small way, it would mean his own contentment.

And then he heard the song.

It struck him like a mallet to the spine, so earth-shattering his vision went red and milky and he fell to his knees. He sloughed off his disguise, writhing into the air, obeying the call. Following it east, east, east, where he could hear it clearest, where the pounding in his head eased enough that he could see where he was flying. Following it straight to Mount Lanayru.

His eyes were sharper in his trueshape. He could make out the posts they had fastened to Naydra’s altar, and the girl, dressed in white, tethered to them by the wrists, her arms spread in offering. He could see the way the ropes dug too tight, the way the exposed flesh on her arms pebbled in the mountain air, still frigid in the midst of summer. He could see the way her eyes, green, glistening, turned skyward hopelessly, the way her golden hair tangled across her shoulders when the wind struck her back. He could see the crowds around her, chanting to the rhythm of so many drums, their song torturously similar to the one screaming in his head. The one that was coming from her.

He could see his reflection looming in her irises as he got nearer, shadowy, fearsome, leathery and scaled and his wings full spread as he angled his talons to tear her from the altar.

Run, the last, lucid part of him said. Don’t do this.

But it was such a small voice, and the song was so strong.

The dragon ripped her from the mountaintop and carried her as far from there as he could.

He flew mindlessly toward Hebra, toward the loneliest peak, the loneliest place. Toward the closest thing he had to a home. The song still pounded a fierce refrain in his head, coloring his vision rosy, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. It wasn’t dragging him east or in any other direction. It was with him, pulsing out of the girl clutched in his claws.

He barreled into the cave nestled beneath North Peak and set her down. She was shivering and gasping, her skin too red and raw from the flight and her breath escaping her in puffs of mist. He leaned closer, letting his breath wash over her in a great, white whorl and block out the perpetual Hebra winter. Her scent rushed up into his nostrils as he made to breathe on her again, heady and perfect, fueling his drunken stupor. It made the song pulse louder. It made the fire in his chest burn brighter. The ambient temperature in the cave must have gone up a few degrees.

But oh, her scent. He couldn’t get enough of it. He wanted more. He wanted to taste it. He wanted—gods, what did he want?

He shed his trueshape in a flutter of wing and shadow, receding into his disguise.

“You’re Hylian,” she breathed, and her voice and the song weaved over one another in perfect harmony.

“I can be,” he murmured, very disinterested in talking even if her voice was so lovely, closing the sudden distance between them and kneeling.

He brought her hand to his mouth, inhaling, tasting, letting her fingertips spread softly over his eyes as he experimented with her palm, tasting with his lips, with his teeth, with the flat of his tongue. It went straight to his head, clouding it until he was dizzy, until his chest was alight and bothersome. He tipped his head back and loosed the fire in a great spiral, singing his own lips in his haste, and the cave warmed a little more.

He was on her again quickly, sliding down to her wrist, and exploratorily sucked the soft flesh there. She gasped from the heat when he swirled his tongue over her pulse, and the haze got thicker, hotter. He dragged her closer by the back of the neck, ignoring the startled cry that shot up into the cavern ceiling, searching for her heartbeat in other places, savoring that tantalizing flavor when he found it in the artery in her throat. He trailed upwards in a daze, sipping her jaw, her chin, dismissing the strangeness of the salt on his tongue as inconsequential.

It was the song, drowning out everything else.

The song.

He blinked sluggishly, his eyes drawing properly into focus for the first time since that hypnotizing aria had brought him to his knees, lingering inches from her mouth. Her people had offered her up to the dragon, and he had taken her, dragged her across the world into Hebra—to what? Assault her? Devour her? He didn’t know.

He let her go. She stayed perfectly still, her breath shallow and quick—and not necessarily looking terrified of him, either, he noted with an ugly mix of curiosity and self-loathing. He stood to give her some space—to give himself some space. And as soon as he did the song crashed down on him again like a hammer, crippling and painful and insistent.

He gripped his head, falling to his knees again, and tried not to listen. He tried to hear the wind, hear the language of earth and fire, hear the mountain whispering all around him, but it was no use. The song was a river he couldn’t tame, roaring louder, and louder, and louder. He blocked his ears and clenched his teeth as it reverberated down his spine, as it shook him so hard he was sure his bones would crack. But the more he tried to get away, the farther he tried to drag himself from her, the more ear-splitting the sound.

He trapped himself against a wall and collapsed beside it, hands still clawing at his head even though he knew it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. His throat was parched and his lungs were seared from the heat. His skull felt like it was splintering. He wanted to melt back into his trueshape, but he was afraid of thrashing, of accidentally crushing the girl with a whip of his tail or beat of his wing.

He looked for her, watched her rise to her feet through dappling red and blinding flares.