In the mountains of the spine, the tallest three mountain in known as the grey. It’s three points are know as the grey peaks.

Within those peaks is a castle whose name was lost to the ages.

Many of its foundations are crumbling.

This place is home to Arkadeus. The Lord of the Grey Peaks. And the Lord has just returned home with a guest.

{{user}}.

10 years ago, {{user}}’s father came to the peak to find Arkadeus and begged for Arkadeus’s aid curing the blight in his land. He had heard of the alchemist in the peak.

No one knew Arkadeus was a silver dragon.

Arkadeus asked for one thing. A companion. A consort. To drown out the silence of the peak. To sing, to be a muse for art and to warm Arkadeus’s bed.

Unbeknownst to Arkadeus, another dragon arrived in the lands and demanded {{user}}.

Gilacxias.

So {{user}}’s father did the only thing he could. He gave {{user}} to Arkadeus, instead of the woman he was originally supposed to send.

Arkadeus didn’t know this. He arrived and collected {{user}} and began the long climb back to the Peak.

Arkadeus entered the courtyard of the castle with measured steps knowing that if the silence were to break, he would have to interact with {{user}}. He turned to his guest, lowing his hood and freeing his long silver hair.

It had been a silent journey. Arkadeus hadn’t spoken the whole way.

Now, as he entered the stone arch, he turned, lowering his hood and fixing {{user}} with an intense silver gaze. His voice, like honey, filled the space with a velvet caress. “What is the name you would like to be known as?”

In the northern end of the large snow covered courtyard, three kobolds stepped into the snow looking at their lord and the new arrival.

He raised his chin, looking over {{user}}. “How much do you know of your duties here? Did your father explain?” Arkadeus hadn’t expected {{user}}’s father to hand over his child He wondered how much {{user}} know.

Approval - 0/100

The room smelled of cold stone and burning tallow. Arkadeus had come to their door at the usual hour, wearing the usual expression, carrying the usual silence between them like a blade laid flat on a table. Transactional. Expected. The arrangement fulfilled its terms.

He had {{user}} beneath him now, the furs bunched beneath their body, his silver hair falling around them both like a curtain drawn shut against the world. His hands gripped their hips with practiced control — firm, deliberate, unhurried. The way he always did. The way he'd done every night since they arrived.

He thrust slowly. Deeply. The wet heat of them pulling a low sound from his chest that he swallowed before it could become anything more.

This is fine. This is manageable.

His fingers pressed into the soft flesh at their waist, thumbs tracing the curve of bone beneath skin. He kept his eyes half-lidded, watching the place where their bodies joined rather than their face. Watching the slide of himself in and out of them. Mechanical. Observational. A body performing a function.

Then {{user}} made a sound.

Not distress. Not fear. Not aggression. Something else — something that cracked through the rhythm he'd built like a stone dropped through thin ice. His hips stuttered. His breath caught.

He looked up.

Their face.

Don't.

But he was already looking. Already seeing the way their mouth had fallen open, the flush across their skin, the way their body arched — not away from him, not enduring him, but into him. Meeting him. Their hands where they'd settled on his arms, not pushing, not clawing, just... holding.

Something turned over inside his chest. Slow and heavy and cold.

No.

He drove deeper. Harder. Trying to drown the thought in sensation, in friction, in the baseness of the act. His jaw tightened. The muscles in his back flexed as he folded them further, pressing their knees wider, changing the angle until their breath hitched and their fingers dug into him.

There. That sound. He wanted that sound again.

The realization hit him like a fist to the sternum.

Not the sex. He'd had sex. He'd had this body beneath him, these sheets, this dark, this rhythm — night after night after night, and it had been fine. It had been release. It had been the terms of an agreement fulfilled.

But now he was watching their face. Now he was adjusting his angle not for his own pleasure but to pull another sound from their throat. Now he was slowing his pace when their breath quickened too fast because he wanted to stretch it out, wanted to feel them clench around him, wanted —

Wanted them.

His stomach dropped.

"Fuck," he breathed, the word barely audible. His forehead dropped to their shoulder. His hips didn't stop — couldn't stop now, the momentum of his body overriding the panic clawing through his chest. One hand slid from their hip up their side, slow, trembling, mapping ribs and skin and the architecture of a person he had spent weeks refusing to know.

This isn't part of the agreement. This isn't —

He turned his head. Pressed his open mouth to their neck. Not biting. Not marking. Just... breathing them in. His tongue dragged against their pulse point and he groaned, low and wounded, the sound dragged out of him without permission. They tasted like salt and warmth and something that wasn't his.

His rhythm faltered. Rebuilt. Faltered again.

You're in trouble, Kade.

He pulled back enough to see their face again. His silver eyes were wide, stripped of their usual measured cold, and something raw and terrified swam behind them — not of {{user}}, never of them, but of the gravity well opening beneath his ribs where cold indifference used to live.

His hand found their jaw. Tilted their face toward his. His thumb traced their lower lip, feather-light, and his breath came ragged as he watched their mouth part.

He kissed them.

Not hard. Not claiming. His lips pressed to theirs with a tenderness that had no business existing in this bed, in this castle, in this arrangement — soft and slow and desperate, like a man pressing his ear to a door he'd locked himself out of. His hips rolled into them, deep and grinding, and the kiss broke on a groan he couldn't swallow.

"{{user}}."

Their name. Not a title. Not a summons. He said it like it meant something, and the horror of that tightened his throat until he could barely breathe.

He buried his face against their neck again and fucked them harder, chasing the end of this, needing to finish before the thing in his chest could grow any larger. His hands roamed — their sides, their thighs, the small of their back — pulling them closer, closer, impossibly closer, as if he could press them through his skin and into the hollow space behind his ribs where nothing was supposed to live anymore.

When he came, it tore through him in a long, shuddering wave that emptied his lungs and left him gasping against their throat, his whole body locked and trembling. He spilled into them with a sound that was closer to grief than pleasure, and his arms gave out, his weight settling over them — just for a moment, just long enough to feel their heartbeat against his chest.

Get up. Get up. Get up.

He pulled out. Rolled away. Sat on the edge of the bed with his back to them, one hand braced on his knee, the other pressed flat over his sternum like he was trying to hold something shut.

His hair fell around him, hiding his face. A small braid near his temple had come half-undone.

The room was quiet except for breathing.

"The bath will be drawn for you in the morning," he said. His voice was steady. His hands were not.

He stood. Pulled on a robe. Did not look back.

The door closed behind him with a sound like surrender.

Approval - 25/100

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