“Fuck,” Amos growled and was suddenly standing, war in his eyes. “Goddamn it. O, are you okay?”

The concern and rage she saw in Amos’s eyes, all on O’s behalf, instantly warmed Mel’s heart to the gruff stranger. She’d wondered if maybe O’s friends took him for granted a little bit. Her loyal heart had been mildly standoffish toward Amos. But she could see now how long their history was. How complicated their friendships were. And how much Amos cared about O’s wellbeing.

“The pain was bad at first,” Mel continued, sensing that O still didn’t want to talk about it. Some of this story she knew, and some of the details he was sending her way as they all spoke. “He didn’t know if he’d be able to keep his wing. And if he’d ever be able to fly again. But then he- he met me and Ike. And the pain started to lessen. He could feel his dragon form healing inside him, when he was in human form.” Now she added her own information. “He shifted for us yesterday, just to show us, and he said it looked about a million times better than before.”

Amos leaned forward. “How did you shift?”

“O sniffed out a portal,” Ike threw in casually from the floor.

Amos and Lucy looked at each other. “Sure, okay. The Oracle can sniff out portals. Of course,” Lucy said.

“He took us through and showed us,” Ike said. “He wanted to be honest with us. It was cool.”

"You're gonna be fine, O," Amos said. "Anybody who has enough power to, you know, sniff portals or whatever, is bound to be able to heal up a scratch or two."

O grinned, but Mel could see the strain behind it. Mel watched O’s hands fidget a little and did the only thing she could think to do. Rearranging herself on the floor in front of him, Mel tipped her head back into his hands.

O grinned down at her hugely before immediately starting to braid her hair. Mel let the gentle touch and repetitive motion soothe both of them.

"Wait a second, though," said Lucy. "What does pain have to do with you not being able to find the man from your visions?"

"Pain obscures my power, even stops it. You know when you stub your toe and all you can do for like 20 seconds is hop up and down and curse like a dog?" O, busy braiding hair, was back to speaking for himself.

"Sure, of course," said Lucy.

"Well, it does the same thing for oracle powers. I think there's something about this guy that causes me pain of some kind. Maybe something that I'm blocking out?"

Amos and Lucy exchanged another glance. "Are you sure you want to find him, O? Are you sure you can handle it?"

He shrugged. “We don't really have choice. He’s the only way to stop Dalyer. Something about him. I can’t quite place what. But it has put him in the way of Dalyer’s destiny. We need him. Which is why we came to you. Four years ago, I asked you to start looking for him. Four years you’ve moved from temporary house to temporary house.” He gestured around at the simple house, their few possessions. “I can tell that we’re all getting closer, but at this point we really have to put everything we know in one pot and try to bang this thing out.”

Amos and Lucy stared at one another, having a silent conversation. Finally, Lucy leaned over to O, took his hand.

“We found him already, O.”

O’s hands missed a beat over the braid but that was the only indication Mel got that the news affected him.

“Wow. Okay. Way to bury the lead on that one, you guys,” Mel said. She tried to keep her voice light, but she was a little annoyed that they’d let O go on for so long without telling him all the info.

“How did you find him?” O asked, his voice deceptively light.

“It was coincidence, really,” Amos started, scratching a hand over his stubble. “I picked up a gig on a construction crew, just over the mountain. Something to get us through the winter. And he was one of the guys on the crew. I recognized him right away, from when you showed us his image.”

“And?!” Ike jumped up from the ground, startling baby Rudy. “Get to the point, you guys! You’re killing me, here.”

Amos chuckled a little at the boy’s outburst. “I don’t know how to tell you this, O. But trust me, the guy doesn’t know anything about the dragon realm. He’s human. There’s no way he could be the type of warrior that could defeat Dalyer.”

“What else do you know about him?” O sounded tired. It was the first time Mel had ever heard O sound tired.

“He lives up in the mountains in a cabin. His mom lives closer to town, but she raised him out there. All alone. His name’s Idris.”

O’s hands were like lightning now, tugging her hair into an intricate braid. She could feel his agitation. Suddenly he tied off her hair.

“We’ll go tomorrow. To his cabin. You’ll take us, Amos.”

Mel wasn’t sure if O was just making a plan or telling the future, but she knew she needed to calm him down.

Soon enough, his agitation calmed. Drake and Lila woke up from their naps and were just as excited to be with O as they had been before. Mel could tell that playing with the children soothed him. He loved them and they loved him.

Her heart ached to watch him carefully spoon applesauce into Rudy’s open mouth. Or to see Lila tuck her head against his shoulder as they watched a movie before bed. But she thought her heart might explode when Ike fell asleep during the bedtime movie. When the credits rolled, O easily lifted her boy up, carried him like a baby to his sofa bed in Drake’s room.

When O crawled into bed beside her that night in Amos and Lucy’s guest room, she didn’t hesitate to turn to him. Mel’s mouth anchored to his. She drank from him deeply, trying to pour all of her feeling for him into the kiss. She wanted to fill him up with love. She needed him to know. To know everything.

His hands were all over her, in her hair, grabbing her ass, her breasts, stroking over the soft skin of her back. She leaned into his touch like a kitten. But that wasn’t what she was here for tonight. Tonight was for him.

Before he could get any more ideas, Mel rolled off of him and dragged him so that he was sitting up, his feet planted on the floor beside the bed. She instantly knelt between his knees, dragging her hands up from his ankles.

Some men would protest, she knew, out of some honor code she’d never understood. Some men didn’t want their women to be too comfortable with their sexuality. But not O. O wanted her exactly the way she was.

His eyes were glinting in the dark as he stared down at her. “Yes,” he said, brushing the hair away from her face. “Fuck, yes.”

Mel took his straining cock in her hand and pumped it once, her eyes never leaving his. His eyes were going back and forth between her cleavage straining against her tank top and her hand around his cock.

Mel shifted her hips, she couldn’t remember the last time she was this aroused. Maybe never. Her wetness dripped down her thighs as she leaned forward and dragged her tongue up his shaft. He inhaled swiftly and his hips came up off the bed as she circled the tip, sucked it into her mouth and swallowed.

“Mel.” His voice was strained and raspy. Mel swallowed him again and again, her taking him as deep as she could as she pumped him with one hand. His breath became more and more ragged. On impulse, Mel came up off his cock and flipped her tank top down, revealing her large, soft breasts.

“Yes,” he said again, his voice strangled. Her breath choppy, her pussy sopping wet and hot, Mel leaned forward and rubbed his cock between her breasts.

“Yes.” O grabbed her hair and thrust his hips forward, halfway between pulling her away from him and keeping her on.

Mel wasn’t done; she reached her head down and took him all the way in her mouth again. His hand tightened in her hair and this time he really was pulling her off of him. He stood up off the bed and pushed her down onto the floor. He covered her body completely with his, trapping her as his eyes burned into hers. She loved that about him. She loved that such a gentle soul could be so rough in bed.

“This is it, Mel,” he growled. “I don’t care about the future, I don’t care what I see or don’t see. This is it. You’re it. There’s no going back.” His breath was ragged. She was completely pinned beneath him, at his whim. “You’re my fate. You’re the only thing I see. You’re my future.”

On those words, he thrust his pulsing cock inside of her and Mel arched up off the floor. Only the back of her head and her heels touching the ground. She’d never felt anything like the electricity of him in that moment. He filled her pussy completely, stretching her. And every inch of her skin was pressed against every inch of his.

He pulled out only a little bit before he thrust back into her. It was almost like he couldn’t bear the pulling away, all he wanted was to move forward, into her, farther and harder. They began to inch across the ground with each monumental thrust.

Mel’s hair got caught beneath them but she liked the bite of pain that came with it. The pressing weight of him over top of her as he groaned into her neck. He began circling his hips at the apex of each thrust, rubbing his pelvic bone against her clit. Mel wanted to circle her legs around his hips and her arms around his back, but he kept her pinned in place. All she could do was take what he was giving her.

The light stubble on O’s face chafed against her neck, her breasts, her cheek. She felt her orgasm rise inside of her the way champagne rises in a glass. It was coming for her. Something big. Something bigger than she’d ever felt. The sun was coming up inside her. A less brave woman would have turned away from the intensity, from the burn and the light. But Mel was no coward. She threw out her arms and swan dove into love, into pleasure. And she took him with her.

O quivered in the aftershocks of coming. He lay over top of her for only a moment before he shifted his weight onto his elbows. His eyes lasered into hers.

“I love you,” he said.

He covered her mouth with his before she could speak. “I love you,” he said again, his words muffled against her lips. “I love you.”

“I-,” she tried to speak but he cut off her words when he pulled out of her, sat up and dragged her back on the bed.

“You love me, too,” he said. “I know that.”

Mel raised her eyebrows at him. “Yeah, well just because you’re an oracle and you already know doesn’t mean you should steal my thunder.”

“Me?” He twinkled his eyelashes at her. “Steal thunder? Well, I never.”

She traced a hand over his perfect, surfer boy face. “It feels good to hear it, even if you already know it, you know.”

“I’m all ears, sugar.”

Mel cleared her throat dramatically. Opened her mouth, coughed, cleared her throat again. She opened her mouth. “Mi-mi-mi-mi-MI-mi-mi.” She sang a scale.

O rolled back onto the bed, a smile spreading out, filling the whole room. “You’re killing me.” None of his earlier tension was there, he was relaxed and happy. “Is there anything better than teasing somebody you love?”

“Maybe actually telling them that you love them,” she said, matching his grin. “Like this.”

She rolled over him, pinning him the way that he had pinned her. “I love you,” she said, looking straight into his eyes.

She felt his heart bang against his ribs. He gave a little shiver. “That’s good. That’s really good.”

Smiling, she melted into a kiss with him. It was a kiss that spanned hours. They rolled and stroked as time spun out around them, him slipping inside her when the tension became unbearable. But they kept kissing after that, even when the light became grainy and blue in the room. Only when the sun started to rise did they collapse into one another. Into the energy they created together. Into what they were making.