CHAPTER 64: BOND THAT BURNS

Urzara’s pov

"Your bond feels... strange."

Urzara stood outside the tent, her massive frame tensed like a warrior preparing for battle. But this wasn’t an enemy she could face with axe and fury. Through the bond she shared with Arthur, something writhed like a wounded animal—dark, hungry, and utterly wrong.

Inside the tent, Arthur’s voice carried desperation she’d never heard before. "Stay back, Urzara. Please. Just... stay back."

The orc queen’s tusks gleamed as she bared them in defiance. In thirty-seven years of life, through countless battles and three previous mates, she’d learned one truth above all others: you don’t abandon your bonded when they’re in pain.

"Like hell," she growled, pushing through the tent flap.

Arthur stood in the center of the pavilion, and for a moment Urzara forgot how to breathe. Shadows clung to him like a second skin, writhing and reaching toward her with unmistakable hunger. His eyes—those dark eyes she’d gazed into during their bonding—now held depths that seemed to swallow light itself.

"I said stay back!" Arthur stumbled away from her, pressing himself against the far wall of the tent. The shadows followed him, coiling around his body like living things. "Something’s wrong with me. The evolution Lyralei warned about—it’s accelerating."

Urzara took a step forward. "Then we fix it. Together."

"You don’t understand." Arthur’s hands clenched into fists, and she could see the effort it took him not to reach for her. "I can feel your System, Urzara. Every beat of power running through you. And all I want to do is take it."

The confession should have frightened her. Instead, it ignited something primal in her orc blood. Fear was for prey. She was Urzara Bloodfang, Queen of the Northern Tribes, and she’d be damned if she’d run from her own mate.

"Your eyes," she said, moving closer despite his visible panic. "They’re different. Darker. Like you’re seeing something I can’t."

She was right. Through Arthur’s corrupted vision, Urzara glowed with System energy. Golden threads of power ran through her body like veins of liquid sunlight, pulsing with each heartbeat. The orc strength enhancement made her shine brighter than any normal human, a feast laid out before a starving man.

*Take her,* whispered the voice from the void. *She’s strong. She can survive a little feeding. Just a taste...*

"Get out," Arthur snarled, but whether he was talking to Urzara or the voice, even he wasn’t sure.

Urzara ignored both possibilities. She crossed the remaining distance in two strides, catching Arthur’s face between her massive hands before he could retreat further. "Whatever’s wrong, we face it together. That’s what the bond means."

The moment her skin touched his, Arthur’s world exploded.

Power surged through the contact—her System calling to his evolution like fire to oil. Every nerve in his body screamed with need. The shadows around him reached for her eagerly, barely held back by his fragmenting will.

"Urzara," he gasped, her name both prayer and warning.

She silenced him with a kiss.

It was meant to comfort, to ground him in their connection. But the moment their lips met, Arthur felt his control shatter like glass. He kissed her back with desperate hunger, hands tangling in her dark hair, pulling her massive frame against him.

Through their bond, Urzara felt his need and misinterpreted it. Her mate was suffering, fighting something alone, and her orc instincts knew only one way to chase away demons—through physical connection, through the primal joining that had sealed their bond in the first place.

"Let me help," she growled against his mouth, hands already working at his clothes. "Let me in."

*Yes,* the void whispered. *Let her in. Let her feed you.*

Arthur tried to speak, to warn her again, but Urzara’s mouth was on his throat, her tusks grazing his skin in a way that made rational thought impossible. His shadows responded to his arousal, wrapping around them both in a cocoon of darkness that shut out the world.

Her strength was intoxicating. When she lifted him—actually lifted him like he weighed nothing—and pressed him against the tent wall, Arthur’s hunger spiked beyond control. His hands roamed her body, but with each touch, he felt himself pulling more than just sensation.

Tiny threads of her System energy flowed into him through every point of contact.

"Your touch," Urzara gasped, pausing in her ministrations. "It feels... different. Electric. Like lightning under my skin."

She should have been alarmed. Would have been, if the sensation wasn’t so intoxicating. Arthur’s corrupted power made every caress feel like fire and ice, pleasure and pain wound so tightly together she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

Arthur knew he should stop. Could feel himself draining her with each kiss, each touch, each desperate grinding of their bodies. But the hunger had its claws in him now, and Urzara’s System energy tasted like ambrosia.

"More," he heard himself growl, and he wasn’t sure if it was his voice or the void entity speaking through him.

Urzara obliged, her orcish passion matching his corrupted hunger. Clothes fell away, torn by hands made clumsy with need. When she pulled him down onto the carpet-strewn floor of the tent, Arthur’s last coherent thought was a prayer to whatever gods might listen.

*Don’t let me kill her. Please, don’t let me kill her.*

But when she took him inside her, when their bodies joined in the most intimate way possible, Arthur’s prayers turned to ash.

The connection exploded through him like a supernova. Every nerve ending fired at once as her System energy flooded into him through their joined flesh. It was ecstasy beyond description, power and pleasure merged into something that threatened to tear his sanity apart.

Urzara’s eyes went wide as she felt it too—the pull, the drain, the way her strength was flowing out of her and into him. "Arthur," she gasped, her voice carrying the first edge of fear. "What’s happening to me?"

He tried to answer, tried to pull away, but his body wouldn’t obey. The shadows around them had become solid, binding them together, ensuring the feeding couldn’t be interrupted. With each thrust, each desperate movement, more of her essence poured into him.

Her enhanced strength began to fade. The hands that had lifted him so easily now trembled with effort. Her breathing became labored, not from passion but from exhaustion as her System was slowly devoured.

*Yes,* the void entity crooned in Arthur’s mind. *This is how it begins. This is how you become.*

"No," Arthur snarled, fighting against the pleasure, against the power, against every instinct screaming at him to take everything she had.

Through their bond, he felt Urzara’s growing terror as she realized she couldn’t pull away. The shadows held her as surely as iron chains, and her System—the source of her strength, her power, her identity as an orc warrior—was being torn from her with each passing second.

"Arthur," she whispered, and the weakness in her voice shattered something inside him. "Please..."

With a roar that was part human, part monster, Arthur tore himself away.

The separation was agony. Every cell in his body screamed in protest as he severed the connection, shadow tendrils snapping back into him like broken rubber bands. He rolled away, pressing himself into the corner of the tent, shaking with the effort of not reaching for her again.

Urzara lay where he’d left her, chest heaving, body trembling with shock. She looked... diminished. Her skin had lost some of its healthy green tint, her muscles seemed smaller, and when she tried to sit up, she moved like an old woman rather than a warrior in her prime.

"You were feeding on me," she said, her voice carrying a mixture of accusation and disbelief. "On our bond. On my System."

Arthur couldn’t meet her eyes. "I almost killed you. I wanted to kill you. The hunger, it—"

"Shut up."

The command in her voice made him look up. Despite her weakness, despite what he’d just done to her, Urzara’s eyes blazed with determination.

"You stopped," she said firmly. "Whatever that thing inside you is, you stopped. You chose me over it."

"This time," Arthur said bitterly. "What about next time? What about when the hunger gets stronger?"

She crawled toward him, ignoring his flinch. "Then we get you that phoenix restoration. We fix this."

"What if it doesn’t work? What if I hurt you again? Or Isolde? Or Beatrice?" His voice cracked. "What if I drain all of you?"

Urzara’s hand found his face, her touch gentle despite her warrior’s calluses. "Then we find another way. But I won’t lose you to this thing, Arthur Lionheart. Not when I just found you."

Through their bond, weakened but not broken, he felt her fierce love, her stubborn refusal to abandon him. It should have comforted him. Instead, it terrified him more than the hunger itself.

Because in the darkness at the edge of his consciousness, the void entity laughed.

*Excellent,* it whispered. *Now she knows what you are. Now she’s been marked by your touch. The bond between you has been... altered.*

Arthur felt it then—a new connection, dark and twisted, running alongside their original bond. Through it, he could sense not just Urzara’s emotions, but the flow of her System itself. Could taste her power like wine on his tongue.

Worse, he could feel the void entity’s presence there too, like a spider spinning web between them.

"The hunger was just the beginning," he whispered, pulling Urzara close despite the danger, holding her weakened form as if he could protect her from what he was becoming.

In the distance, thunder rolled across clear skies, and Arthur wondered if it was a storm approaching or the sound of gods preparing for war against the monster he was destined to become.