When she looked up, she saw that her feet had taken her past the first line of the trees. Her chest felt as though it were contracting, and she found it hard to breathe as she looked into the yawning darkness ahead of her.

She closed her eyes and tried - really tried - to force away her misgivings, her worries. Instead, she found herself wondering why Ash wanted her with all of the dedication obvious in a hundred-year commitment to tormenting her and only her. And after how she had shunned him at every turn since she had grown up.

Late bloomer, cruel, plain-looking at best, poor at magic use...

She had walked longer than she had thought that she had. When she raised her head, she found that her legs had brought her into the entrance of the wood's heart.

When she rose her gaze, her eyes were drawn to his, as though by lure.

She could feel her mouth opening up in a gasp, then she could sense nothing. None of the others that surrounded them in the wood's heart mattered.

There was only him.

She walked, almost as though in a trance into the clearing. Netta felt her mind wiped clean of everything that she had been trying to make herself understand, cope with.

She strode to him with her arms opened wide to accept him as he appeared in front of her.

As he wrapped his arms around her, she could feel his nearly crushing, trembling embrace.

She longed for the touch of his mind on hers, the way that they had played with before. Then she realized that the meaning of this ceremony was to lock their psyches together. To make it near impossible to unlock their thoughts, feelings from each other's minds.

In that moment, Netta felt a joy unequaled in her life, a feeling that astonished her in its ferocity.

For a moment she thought that it was Ash's influence in her mind. It pierced her and drove her closer to his massive chest.

When she breathed in, her mouth and nose was filled with him, as surely as she could feel the rough fabric of the black peacoat that he wore.

She dared to look up after a moment. She felt it, painfully raw, saw his red eyes looking down at her, the color now truly no longer irises, but rather roiling, heaving flames. They encased dark, still black centers.

The world had not stopped spinning since Netta had accepted Ashwood's hand in her own. Words had been spoken, she repeated what Lucia told her to, then watched, enthralled, as those powerful lips spoke his own vow.

"I honor your blood, cherish your mortality - am humbled to transmute aspects of my true form, to become a part of your flesh, your mind, your very soul."

When he took her hand and lead her through the trees, Netta couldn't muster the mental powers to look at her new family (and, yes, friends) as she was lead beyond the trees. She could not tell which of the women had spoken them, only that they had.

"Will you face the future, although Humans and Witches may find their time on this Earth to be short, transformed?"

"Yes."

"Do you readily give up some aspects of your humanity so that it may be shared with this creature?"

She looked into his - Its - eyes and felt his gaze like mercury as it rippled through her body. She could hardly speak, let alone think.

Perhaps he saw her reaction, for the burning, still expression on his face broke. Ash barely managed to suppress his chuckle, rising a hand to cover his mouth.

The sight of his gentled mouth and the softened warmth in his eyes made her heart feel as though it were floating out of her body.

He never has to rely on the use of his pheromones ever again. All he has to do is smile at me, because of how stupid or awkward I am.

"Yes."

"And, finally, do you accept the transformations of your body as cherished representations of this Monster's symbiotic attachment to your mind, your soul?

That carefree, errant smile disappeared from Ash's lips, hidden behind a strong, golden hand. He turned to gaze at her fully, looking at her expectantly. Hesitantly.

He hates Witchkind so much. How is it possible that he could put aside something that must pain him so much - some horrible memory - to - to -

"Yes."

Ash's lips parted, and his mouth fell open as a shocked sound seemed to struggle free from his chest. He rose a hand to his chest, pressed it, blindly, there.

"May your vulnerability, your only armor allowed to you, protect you from the danger of complete Possession."

Ashwood extended that hand to her, the one that he had pressed to his chest. Even in her daze, Netta saw how it trembled, that aspect of so powerful a man.

It was as though his hand had transformed into a blade of grass in a high wind.

It was the sight of his eyes that shocked her.

When she rose her gaze to his, Netta found that she did not need to hear his thoughts, his emotions, to recognize that expression in the velvet red of his eyes. It was like recognizing something that turned out, after all of this time, to only be a long-lost friend.

Even in the midst of what should be a happy moment - there, it was the fear that Netta recognized, knew all too well.

It was the dread of that eventual drop, the ground that he previously thought was solid, falling out from under him.  A phobic terror of the abyss, one that her knew all too well, as it waited below for him.

Even dragons are frightened of being exiled for the entirety of their long lives. Of being forever denied mutual companionship.

Netta had been denied anything resembling a happy ending her entire life. It occurred to her, only then, that such things could never be taken or kept.

They could, however, be given.

Even to those who believed that a life without intense, even unjust suffering for them was nothing but an impossible wish.

She reached forward, imagining that she was banishing the darkness that surrounded them. Denying it its right to exist as she took that large, shaking hand into her own.

I know what I've done to you is inexcusable, proud, ancient man. But believe in me. Believe that I won't let in any more shadows, at least in your heart, your mind. I won't allow myself to ever infect you with my own, not ever again.

Ash gasped and seemed, for a moment, to almost retract his hand in shock.

Netta reacted instinctively, clutching that massive hand with all of the strength in her own, bringing her other hand around to capture it like an injured, struggling bird.

His shock disappeared, the briefest flash of flinching disbelief.   In its place -

His hand swallowing hers was hot, and for a moment he clenched so hard that it squeezed painfully.

Ash turned with her hand in his, leading her further into the woods, away from her new family. The way he led them was where the snow had not been cleared. She watched as he rose his free arm, the one not connected to her by his hand, and banished the snow from the ground with a flick of his wrist.

Down, down, down the path they wandered, speaking softly, the topics inconsequential at best. They spoke of the sort of things that a couple whispers late at night, the kind of soft, harmless secrets that bind when shared, hidden from each other in the sacred darkness of a bedroom with the lights turned off.  It was exactly the sort of talking that had been denied to them, in light of the severity of their situation.  The interference of others in their lives.

Netta didn't know if she had been told what was to come, but she found that if she had, she could not recall it. Even as she walked in the brisk cold, she felt a lack of reality in the world around her, splintering away until the only permanence she could find was in the man's large hand that she grasped.

For a moment, she thought that she could see something all too-familiar in between the thick vertical lines of the trees - a temple.

When she turned to look, she saw that there was nothing there.

"What's the matter?" Ash asked softly, leaning down so that he could place a kiss on top of her head.

"Nothing." She murmured.

Netta looked up, knowing that her eyes were as soft as a puppy's and not caring, at the face of her - her husband.

His hair was combed softly to the side, like waves rolling past the twisting spires of his massive, onyx-black horns to fully expose a face whose flesh was a warm honey in color.

The harsh lines of his face were softened by an almost drugged expression of intimate, raw affection. The lines of his mustache had been trimmed so that their bars now only partially reached down to his chin, stopping to meet across the line of his lips.

When he looked at her, Netta thought that her heart was going to burst in her chest - or that she would run the risk of fainting.

His gaze seemed almost drugged, eyes half-covered by heavy lids.

On they walked, until it became apparent to Netta that they had walked well and past where the forest reasonably should have ended.

As if guessing her thoughts, Ash remarked, "We are getting close now. I was making this place for our time together - actually, once we walked five minutes away from the others, we entered a bubble I've constructed for us."

Netta looked up and to her right, looking at a shadowed Ash. "A bubble? You mean, we're frozen in time?"

For a moment, she felt an instinctive fear as she realized that if his words were true, she was in a place governed only by his mercy, in his control.

When Ash spoke, his voice was husky, a thick quality to it that surprised Netta, given the tame line of conversation before.

"It's so that we can explore each other without the fear of your wretched ex-Coven to consider."

When Netta looked away, bothered by the thought of her old Coven, Ash reached forward and swept her face in his overlarge hands.

"None of that. I will be selfish with you tonight, and I ask for a night of pleasure to make up for the human's lifetime."

Netta looked up at him, shocked by his words.

She opened her mouth, only to find that Ash had bent down to press his lips to hers.

His tongue thrust, lashed, pumped into her mouth with ungentle ferocity. Not some gentle parody of a human man's, but powered by raw, unnatural power.

She didn't pull away.

He pressed lips that she secretly imagined, a forbidden, erotic fantasy that she had long dreamed of. Had secretly wished for for so long that it ceased to be anything except white noise in an otherwise mundane life.

Netta felt her mind melting, melding...

When she fell backward, she was vaguely aware of the fact that she had fallen into a bed.

As she started to tear first at Ash's clothes and then aided him in tearing off her dress, she was incapable of pausing for a moment of drooling anticipation to expend any sorrow for the destruction of the dress than she had borrowed.

When their naked bodies pressed together, Netta felt his name choke out of her throat.