Blood and Claim: A Night
in the Shadow-Cursed Woods

I should have known better than to trust the pale elf who smiled with too many teeth. Yet every night by the campfire I let him get closer, drawn to the hunger in his eyes that mirrored my own. When he finally pinned me down in the woods away from the others, it wasn't tenderness—it was claim. His fangs scraped my throat while he fucked me into the moss, whispering filthy praise between desperate thrusts. I came with his name in my mouth and his hand over my lips to keep the others from hearing. Afterward he licked the blood from my skin like it was a promise. The tadpole in my head pulsed in time with his heartbeat. I already knew I would let him do it again.