Archive of Our Own

Night remembered Sir Lancelot first.

Nimue found him when he was a baby, where the river made a thought of mist over black stone. It was as if the water itself had laid him down when it lost the strength to carry him farther. He did not cry. He only watched the trees with an old, unfed patience that did not belong to something so small.

When Nimue gathered the baby up, the air prickled along her forearms, making her pink fur rise, and the sensation traveled into her bones. There was an immediate darkness that lived in him, not like a stain, but like a second pulse.

She named him Lancelot because the name tasted like a promise on her tongue and because promises are what you give to things that could become someone worthy. She could tell he came from an odd ancient bloodline, one of vampiric background. However, she was also sure he wasn’t a complete vampire, more so half blooded.

For a while, that part of him was quiet, but eventually things took a turn.

His teeth were too sharp when they budded, and he had eyes that reflected torchlight like a beast’s, the way his listening turned toward heartbeats was a fear Nimue couldn't help, yet still she didn’t turn away.

She called for gold and for wards, for workmen who knew how to listen to a sorceress’s breath and shape metal to it. She sealed constraint into beauty: bands for the wrists and the ankles, etched inside with scripts that drank hunger and returned him his will. The first time she fastened them, she pressed her thumb to each circle of gold until the runes woke and hummed.

“You must never take them off,” she told him. “They are not punishment. They are a door only you hold the key to.”

Lancelot nodded in understanding despite still being young. He turned the bands in the light and learned the sound they made when he breathed through wanting.

He grew as others do, but he healed fast... and ran faster. There were pieces of him that behaved like they had been born grown. When huntsmen taught him the bow, he saw the line of the shot before he loosed. When Nimue taught him to call up chaos from the well of himself, it came obediently to his hands, bright and clean, as if determined to be different than the other thing that was still caught in his veins.

He hated that he also favored that energy. Even as a boy, he could see the fear in Nimue's eyes, so he did his best to shape it into disciplines: balance, blade, and controlled breath. His hunger tried to will itself free, but he forced it to learn the lesson of disappointment.

He wanted a sword long before he was tall enough to carry one, and not because the metal could cut (he already understood cutting in a way no child should), but also because a sword could tell a story. It told the world what you stand for, and he wanted it to be good.

So finally, after much training in keeping his other half at bay, once he turned thirteen, he arrived at Camelot.

⋆༺ ─── ❤️ ─── ༻⋆

Everyone greeted him well, as they trusted Nimue's word, and he stood with his hands folded over the gold that circled his wrists, as if to remind himself what he had promised.

The training yard took him as if it had been cut with a space exactly his size. He learned the castle’s hours: how the light fell on the tilting yard at dawn, how the kitchens made steam and bread, how the stables breathed. He learned the other young knight’s edges and how not to humiliate them when he could have. He learned what it felt like to hold the line and to be trusted with it.

Prince Arthur noticed him the way a hawk notices a weather change. Not instantly, but inevitably. He was not yet king; he was a future spoken into every lesson, a boy-made-blade with a laugh that arrived like a flare and a will that set rooms alight. He circled Lancelot once during drills, then stepped in without introduction and corrected his guard with two fingers and a precise, “Here.”

“Here,” Lancelot repeated, and adjusted.

They did not test each other so much as they set their strengths side by side and looked for the seam. Arthur pushed like summer heat. Lancelot yielded like shade and then returned pressure where it mattered. When the prince said, “You’re the strongest,” it wasn’t a boast thrown at a wall to see if it would stick. It was an assessment, borderline clinical, but softened by the bright ruin of a grin. “I want you at my side.”

Something in Lancelot that had stayed coiled ever since. “Then that is where I will be.”

This was what he wanted. To be good and to help others.

Years turned like pages made of steel and council parchment. The gold bands stayed and helped quiet his hunger. He learned to fasten the prince’s armor without looking, to step into rooms before Arthur did, to stand exactly where a blade would want to go if it wanted the future of Camelot dead. He learned the weight of the king’s name before even the crown learned it from him.

The friendship did what friendships sometimes do when fed by danger and the long, honest study of another body in motion. It grew into something that didn’t fit neatly on a shelf or under a word. It lived in how Arthur said “enough” at the end of a brutal day, and Lancelot stopped with all the obedience of a right-hand knight. It lived in how Lancelot said “Your Majesty” years later, with a note no court could read, but Arthur did. It lived in closeness that never needed witnesses, and in distances kept because duty is a jealous steward.

So for so many years nothing had happened, and Lancelot stayed true to his beliefs. But that didn't stop every hidden desire that had nothing to do with the knight’s secret.

Because sometimes at the end of a day, after a long battle session or council, Arthur’s eyes would catch on Lancelot’s fierce red ones. How they seemed to glow in a way that only occurred when their meeting lingered too late into the night.

Arthur had always thought his right-hand knight handsome since they were young, and the years have only made him more so. The king’s mouth would tilt, proud and tired, and he would say, almost to himself, “At my side, then.”

Lancelot would incline his head, the old patience intact, even as the moon pulled him into wanting more at times. “Always, my king.”

⋆༺ ─── ❤️ ─── ༻⋆

Night also taught him to count.

Lancelot tracked the heavens the way other knights tracked borders—minute shifts, the wideness of a month, the hush that came before a turning. He knew the constellations by their old names, not from romance, but because one wrong moon could ruin him.

He recalled when the blood moon had come for him once as a child. Nimue had burned herself quiet restraining him as runes bright as bees splayed along his wrists. The forest around them had lit like a prayer said too loudly.

Since then, she had managed to attach an even more potent spell around the gold bands at his wrists and ankles. It was discipline layered over discipline; thirst trained to heel. Half vampire, half Mobian, but with this stronger spell, he could pass for what he chose to be.

It did work and helped him keep the disguise for years. Kept Camelot safe from him, and himself safe in Camelot.

Until one night, the moon rose wrong… again, and not only that, but at a time he hadn't been prepared for. He had measured the stars for so many years and so he did not expect the red so early in the week, but here it was, a damned bruise blooming across the sky.

Lancelot felt the knowledge before the color took, and his hidden vampiric powers moved under his fur like cold water at first, but then went to fire. The runes inside the bands flickered against his wrists, and he hoped the spell would satiate them like before, but this time the gold warmed and then went slack.

Immediately after… the hunger he felt was astronomical. His gums ached and his fangs lengthened. Behind his eyes, a deeper red opened, not as light but as permission. His throat went sand-dry in a breath, and when he attempted to swallow, it came back empty.

He crossed to the window and closed the drapes, but that was useless because the moonlight found seams, and where it struck the edges of his quills, they lifted in a defensive ripple from nape to shoulders.

Every sound sharpened into edges, and he could literally hear everything: a cup settling two rooms away, the scuff of a guard’s boot on the corridor stone, the slow pulse in his own neck answering the sky’s drum.

“Not now,” he said to the room, trying to will the red aura away, but, like a mockery, the gold at his wrists sparked, sputtered, and still failed. The inner script, which was Nimue’s voice of a thousand prayers, hammered into a circle, then dropped into silence. The bands did not fall away; they never would. But they stopped being enough.

He breathed the way she had taught him when he was smaller and his patience larger. In for the shape of a blade. Out for the weight of a shield. He took water from a glass in both hands and let it sit on his tongue before risking a swallow. It hit his tongue and vanished into a thirst that was no longer metaphor.

He emptied the glass but the ache remained so damn mercilessly. Worse than any ache he had ever endured. It was as if all the years he had chosen to be less were now arriving at once.

The Round Table was waiting for him to talk about upcoming plans. He should already be moving through the corridors to voice an opinion, but instead, he set his palm against the cool wood of the door and did not open it.

If he stepped into the corridor like this, every heartbeat between this tower and the council chamber would tempt him, and he did not trust himself to be a knight instead of a creature.

He dragged a heavy trunk full of extra clothes and armor to the door, then set it against the bolt. He wound a strip of linen in his palm, then bit down on it and tasted dust and old soap. It gave his jaw something to argue with that wasn’t a throat.

The room’s scent then began to warp. His body was seeking blood, no matter how much he tried to subdue it, and with that, he could not only hear everything but also smell everything.

The ink by his desk tasted metallic, the beeswax from the candle turned to sweet rot, and even the leather used to sheath his blade smelled like the inside of a beast. His dark fur prickled at the wrists where the gold bands pressed. He rubbed a thumb along one of them as if touch alone could wake the runes, but still they didn’t stir.

He could feel the change settling. His body felt stronger, faster. The edge of the world would come into focus, cutting inside of him. He could ride it. He had ridden worse... but riding wasn’t enough tonight because tonight was about surviving without harming.

“King Arthur,” he whispered to no one, to the wrong moon, to the bands, to the stone that knew his weight by now. “Do not come... please.”

Arthur had a habit of ignoring decorum and locked doors. The king checked on his knights when he should have slept and showed up at thresholds as if summoned by the moment you thought of him. He could come for Lancelot if he didn’t appear in the hall within the quarter-hour. 

Lancelot leaned against his desk. He could feel the pulse in his throat beating time with the red outside. He closed his eyes against the moon’s seams and counted again: in for blade, out for shield, in for his name, out for his oath.

He prayed that the king would be too busy to make a note and that the meeting would run without him.

Please let the moon ruin him alone.

⋆༺ ─── ❤️ ─── ༻⋆

In the council chamber, Arthur kept the meeting moving. His long, blue royal quills lay sleek down his neck and between his shoulders, lacquered to obedience beneath the crown’s weight. He listened, measured, signed, and redirected the conversation.

Though there was a tight ache threaded beneath and across his abdomen. It was dull at first, then a clean tug that made the edges of sound brighten. He did not wince. He shifted one palm to the table’s carved rim, let the grain cool the pads of his fingers, and spoke as if nothing inside him had just tightened like a strap.

It was the month’s old rhythm, and it was ever inconvenient as always. He’d joked once to Percival, in a tone that could not be repeated, that the universe should exempt kings from such grievances. The universe had declined.

He counted heads. Percival was on the left and already cataloging stores before winter. Galahad was on the opposite, and patient as ever. Gawain, reeking of stable and rain, offered a report. Yet... the space where a certain quiet knight would have been was unoccupied.

“Have any heard from Sir Lancelot?” Arthur asked mildly, eyes back on the map.

“Not yet arrived, Majesty,” said Percival. “The watch noted his chamber door remained closed all evening.”

Arthur’s quills prickled one notch. How odd... Lancelot was not one to miss a council. When he did, his absence arrived with a reason tucked under it like a signature. Arthur traced the border of the highlands with a clawtip, but his attention faltered.

He had been doing this a long time—long enough to make the habit look like grace. But still there were things a king could not force on the day. Hunger could not be argued with just like tides, either. The body least of all. The ache in his belly pulsed another small warning, but he forced it to fade and continue his duty.

They moved through upcoming summits and patrol rotations. He made notes that were really instructions, and instructions that were really promises. Somewhere between one signature and the next, his thoughts misstepped once more and worse than before into an old corridor of memory and did not apologize for it.

He remembered Lancelot at thirteen. The knight had a gaze that received the world instead of pushing into it. He then remembered Lancelot at nineteen, quills bound flat for battle, and his dark blade work so clean it made other steel look noisy.

He especially remembered last winter, the nights they spent in the war room with the fire a calm flame and Lancelot standing just near enough that Arthur could catalog the quiet of him. Despite his iron restraint, there was an unbidden hunger that looked at Arthur like a question.

With all the years they had spent together, learning from one another. The king, despite his role... his chest had done that soft, stupid ache not too long after they met. A crush was a childish word for the thing that grew alongside him like a second banner. It was not a single want. It was hundreds of small reliances braided together: the tea that arrived, hot, without being asked; the shoulder that found him when motion ceased; the way Lancelot said “My King” or "Your Majesty" in a tone the others didn't.

He was everything Arthur wished a partner would be. Someone who was unafraid, and exacting where the world went slack, lived in his knight.

Yet they never had time. That was why nothing had come to be. Duty sanded moments down and the rest of the world pressed in.

So Arthur filed it under later, perhaps when the borders stopped bleeding... he would let want become a kind of weather that could be noticed and worked through. Maybe he could put his body to its tasks and instruct his heart to follow.

The ache in his belly tugged again, and this time it was enough to cut the thought.

“Your Majesty?” Percival prompted.

“Double the northern patrols,” Arthur said, smoothly returning to the present. “We will not be surprised by hungry roads.” He closed the meeting with three sentences that sorta left everything unsorted and stood. The room bowed around him. “I will review the lists at dawn. So everyone can now rest.”

They scattered with the relief of being given permission to do what their bodies had been asking for an hour. Arthur left by the side door and the corridor’s cool met his fur. The ache settled to a thread he could ignore by choosing to and refused to by nature. He moved anyway and couldn’t help the curiosity of where his right hand was.

So he walked until he was where he intended to be.

Once he was in the hallway that led to the knight’s chambers, his quills lifted a degree as the air around him changed. He then went up to Lancelot’s door and tried to listen. There was a stillness inside that was not sleep, as if there was a held breath. The ache in his belly tugged once more, and this time more companionably, now, reminding him that the body is honest even when kings are not.

Arthur knocked on the wooden door. “Lancelot?”

Lancelot’s ears perked at the noise. His worst fear had come to light. The king did notice he was gone and was now here. He willed his anxiety down, trying to swallow down the hunger that wanted to consume him.

When his answer finally came, it sounded wrong at the edges. “My king... You should return to the council.”

Arthur’s ears pricked at his odd... tone. “The council is dismissed. You not being there today was odd. You never miss a meeting. Lancelot… whatever it is, you can talk to me about it.”

The answer arrived faster, harsher. “Leave.”

Arthur’s quills lifted another fraction from the sudden coldness his knight never gave. He immediately felt something was wrong, so he turned the latch.

“Your Majesty—” Lancelot attempted, but Arthur didn't care to listen right now. He pushed the door, making it thunk against the trunk Lancelot had dragged across. Arthur’s expression turned to one of confusion. He exhaled once, put his shoulder to it, and the old wood yielded a finger’s width, then a hand’s, and after another push, he slipped through and stilled.

The chamber was dim with the curtains closed, so that only a seam of the red moon was leaking between them. Lancelot stood with his back to the door, hands braced on his desk as if persuading himself not to move. His quills were lifted high as if tense, and his tail was lashing with unease.

When he looked over his shoulder, Arthur’s chest tightened. The knight’s eyes were not their usual quiet garnet… instead, they were as scarlet as the moon outside, practically twin flames. His breath came hard out through his mouth like that could help him not breathe Arthur’s scent in.

Arthur’s ears drooped from concern. “Lance?”

“My king,” Lancelot managed with politeness by force of will. “You cannot be here. You cannot be around me.”

Arthur stepped forward and reached for Lancelot’s wrist the way he always did, which was meant to be comforting and unassuming. However, Lancelot pulled away fast. The flinch was small, but it… hurt. Arthur’s ears fell further, and his face looked wounded.

Lancelot’s jaw tightened as if the sight hurt worse than hunger. “I need time alone… Something is wrong with me.”

Arthur stepped a little closer. “Whatever it is, I can help. You have been there for me for years. Allow me to return the favor.”

“My King...” Lancelot’s claws bit down into his dark gloves so harshly that he ended up making his dark paw pads bleed. He was trying to keep his hands from the door, from the king, from anything too alive and warm. “Stop.”

But Arthur was close enough that a candle’s weak light found the curve of his throat, the soft lay of his dark blue fur above the collar, the place where pulse lived. Lancelot didn’t mean to inhale, but his body did it for him, and the moment he took his first breath from his nose, the world sharpened into scent. There was no wound or blood he could see along the king’s fur, yet… the hunger recognized something older than sense. The scene was iron, and sweet threaded faintly through the king’s frame.

Lancelot’s mouth immediately watered, and his fangs ached against his lip. “Are you bleeding?”

Arthur flushed immediately under fur, pink rising along his cheeks and the edges of his ears. “I’m not—” he tried, then faltered because he and his knight had never spoken about… that. He had only ever confided in Percival on the matter before. “It is nothing.”

Lancelot stepped before his mind could stop him, drawn in and without willpower, no… without his knightly resolve, a mindset that never let allowed him before. He did not touch the king yet… but he did bend down. He was close enough that his nose brushed an inch from the king’s throat. He inhaled once, and it was still involuntary, making Arthur shiver so finely it looked like a chill.

“Lance…” Arthur said warily, feeling more flushed from the sudden proximity. “You are acting so… unlike yourself.”

The knight’s shoulders jerked back. He withdrew a pace like a warrior bowing out of a fight he could win but shouldn’t. Every trained piece of him rose, trying to remind him of protocol, distance, the necessity of deference. He had spent years learning where not to stand. He found the space and stayed in it, even while the other half of him that was older, red-lit, and much more honest begged him to step back in, to brace the king’s jaw with a careful hand and sink his teeth where pulse beat.

Arthur’s eyes caught Lancelot’s mouth, and that was when he noticed his fangs were too long, and even too bright in the dim. The king’s ears tipped, not with fear but more with a soldier’s curiosity.  “Something is wrong with you,” he said, still not retreating. “Your eyes, your fangs. They appear like a vampire’s…”

The moment the last word left his lips, images shifted behind his eyes. He recalled the burned farms he’d seen as a prince, the old stories that never ended with mercy. Then his eyes refocused and stopped on the knight who had stood between Arthur and those stories for a decade. The math refused to balance into fear.

Lancelot swallowed and debated on denying it, but after all these years and with his restraint leaving him, he chose to be honest, hoping it would make Arthur fearful and leave. “Yes. I am… half vampire.”

Silence found the room and sat down.

Arthur did not step back nor call for guards. He instead looked at Lancelot’s face as if re-reading a book he always admired and finding a page he’d missed. The ache that had been there for days in his belly tugged harsher than before, and he wasn’t sure what that exactly meant, but their world narrowed to breath and decision.

“Are you hurting?” Arthur finally asked.

Lancelot’s eyes widened at him with confusion. “Pardon? Is that your question? How could you be concerned for me after what I just told you? Are you not frightened?”

Arthur tilted his head, considering. “Suppose I should be.” A wry line ghosted his mouth. “Yet, still you look as if you are in pain. That, more than anything, to me is unacceptable.”

“King Arthur...” Lancelot said hoarsely. “This is inappropriate. I just told you a horrid secret... I am a monster. You should leave.”

Arthur reached again, and this time, Lancelot didn’t retreat fast enough. The king’s hand closed around his wrist over the gold band. “Yes,” Arthur started softly. “I am your king, and I can help.” He swallowed once, and the motion lit a fuse under the knight’s control. “What do you need? Just a little blood?”

Lancelot’s pupils pinpricked to red stars. Gaia, the thought of Arthur’s blood. The one he had guarded through winters and sieges and lonely hours at maps. The one he had admired in private and, against sense, wanted. The ache rolled through him in a wave that almost bent his knees, but duty hooked talons in his shoulder that reminded him of his status and oath. What he was to the king.

He opened his mouth to refuse, to say the correct thing that would put the world back on its rails, but then… Arthur did something Lancelot never expected.

The king leaned in and set a kiss against his cheek. It was small and barely there. It was just a press of warm mouth at the line where the knight's dark muzzle had been quivering already. It made Lancelot feel too damn much. His breath came to nothing, as if the room had emptied of air. He closed his eyes for half a heartbeat to only open them again and find the king still close, still… offering?

“My king,” Lancelot whispered, every edge in him ringing in warning. “What are you doing?”

Arthur considered his words. He wasn’t sure why, but being in this room with his knight, his mind was somewhat muddled. He tried to grasp some knowledge, but only came up with the thought that he wasn’t sure why he never attempted to do more years ago.

Neither the king nor Lancelot was aware at this time that Lancelot's vampiric powers were already affecting them both in a way that differentiated their typical roles to one another.

Lancelot attempted once more to stop him. “Please… do not tempt me now… I am dangerous.”

Arthur ignored his words and kissed him again. This time it was at the edge of his mouth, and it felt like a better answer than any verbal response Lancelot had spent a decade refusing to imagine. “I do not believe you are… I’ve always admired you,” Arthur said against the knight’s mouth. “Since you were young and gave me your first smile. Since the first time you fought my blade with yours when we were adolescents. Since… always. You could never truly hurt me, Lance.”

With those words, the moon pulled at every seam in Lancelot, and with it came the part of his nature he had trained to silence. He did not mean to, but hunger and desire overtook him.

Arthur’s typically prideful emerald eyes caught the line of Lancelot’s and went soft at the edges, light blooming inside them like glass catching a distant fire, and in this case, the fire that was in his knight’s. The king’s ears flushed more than before by his own mix of want and Lancelot’s pull. The fine fur along his muzzle turned scarlet, and his breath shortened, but still he was not frightened.

They didn't waste another moment.

So they kissed, and restraint turned to a language with too many words missing. Lancelot leaned in and drew Arthur deeper, adamantly mapping shoulder to waist with both palms. Armor buckles murmured as Arthur’s careful hands found them, loosened them, learning the fastenings he’d never let himself know before. Lancelot’s armor slid to the floor though his helmet stayed; all motion soundless except where the king’s breath broke it.

“Lancelot,” Arthur whispered, and the tone made him pause. The knight discipline remembered itself for a moment, until Arthur swayed a fraction closer and set his brow to Lancelot’s. “You can take me to bed if you prefer to do the feeding there.”

Lancelot gulped but didn’t refuse and guided Arthur’s back onto his bed. Lancelot’s hands were reverent where they touched: a thumb at the hinge of Arthur’s jaw, fingers circling a wrist.

That was when he noticed the King wasn’t wearing any gloves, and that was rare. He had only noticed them before, but never stared like he was now. He could see his pink pads were more flushed than usual… just like his face. It showed just how heated Arthur’s body had become.

Lancelot raised that wrist, pressed a kiss to his pink pad, and asked with his eyes to his king for what he truly needed. Arthur gave him a small nod, already knowing, and without further hesitation, Lancelot brought it to his mouth.

The first touch of fang was painful yet not. Lancelot’s mouth curved and sank down, and Arthur's eyes widened at the sight. Lancelot drank enough to barely quiet the gnawing edge, and he hoped it would help, but it didn't. Arthur tasted divine... like royal nectar. He had never tasted another's blood, but he knew already no one else could ever compare.

He sealed the mark with his mouth and moved down to trail along the king’s forearm, a press of lips to the inside of the elbow, a kiss at the band of linen where cotton met fur. Arthur shivered and let his head tip back, the crownless line of his throat bared in trust that made Lancelot greedier.

The pulse beneath his mouth drew him higher, to the slope of Arthur’s neck. He bit again because he couldn’t not. The pulse fluttered there like trapped wings. The first pull of blood sucking was gentle, but then the second was deeper. Arthur’s breath that had been hushed now slid into a sigh that trembled into something else entirely.

It was meant to be just feeding. That was what they told themselves, but the rhythm shifted, and the line between hunger and heat blurred. The air grew thicker, humming with a somewhat eerily strange current as Lancelot’s control continued to fray.

Arthur didn’t realize it either. He could only feel that his body felt too hot, that each drink left him feeling a bit more waxy, and light-headed in a way that wasn’t just from blood loss. His hand went to grasp at red and black quills, and Lancelot's eyes bled redder with every minute. His body leaned closer of its own accord, drawn by the sound of the royal heart. Each beat made him suck in more warmth from the king. He couldn’t believe he was tasting the man he never got to claim before, despite the hundreds of nights he thought of it. The hunger throbbed until reason gave way to need.

He stopped only because Arthur gave a small whimper. He licked at the wound to close it, and without reason began to kiss lower, drawn by a different scent, and the motion was much more desperate than before.

The edge of Arthur’s belly jumped under his mouth, and Lancelot paused only long enough to give a long inhale. This is where the scent was coming from?

Lancelot continued with a primal need, wanting to find the source, giving small nibbles and licks on the journey down. He was gathering the king piece by piece as if memorizing a ritual.

Now, after feeding twice, his power surged and spooled through the air, softening Arthur’s guard more until those bright emeralds went starry with want and the strange, gentle fog of Lancelot’s nature.

“Lance,” Arthur breathed hoarsely yet sounded sweet. “Please more… where I need you.”

Lancelot looked up, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if he weren’t so full of pent-up desire. This was his king, his very reason for living for longer than a decade. They never had time to truly consider this… but on this fateful night, desire pushed past reason for both of them.

The knight bowed his head and removed the rest of his clothes, and despite Arthur having one last layer of silk hiding his core, the smell hit him hard. The king was bleeding. It was the time of the month.

So that was what Lancelot had smelled before, and it made something deep inside hum. Lancelot’s fangs grazed blue tender fur and lifted his head to meet the king’s eyes. “I won’t be able to stop.”

Arthur nodded, and his hand went down to the knight’s muzzle. “Then don't.”

That earned a rough sound from Lancelot’s throat, and he bent once more and pressed his lips to the king's inner thigh, licking the pulse in a place he’d only dreamed before. Arthur gave a needy moan, and his head fell back.

The hypnotic fog around Lancelot thickened. It wasn’t only hunger. It was now a compulsion, a power that poured from him when he wanted to fiercely. The knight's pupils dilated until the world narrowed to that one living place. Hunger tore through his chest, and his restraint cracked again.

He struck, and the bite was clean, deep, a pulse bursting against his tongue. Blood flooded his mouth once more, but perhaps due to this more erotic location, it was rich as heady wine and burning like prayer.

Lancelot drank, too long, too deep, each swallow pulling power through him until he felt the king’s life beating in his own veins. His power once more unfurled around them. It was a red haze blooming from his dark fur, filling the room with heat and static. Arthur shuddered beneath the touch, his body yielding, eyes unfocused, lips parted as though caught between pain and rapture.

It was perilous, wrong, and perfect.

Lancelot’s hands cupped the king's thighs, pulling them apart, needing more. The hunger howled, and he fed until he could hear Arthur’s heartbeat falter because that sound broke the spell.

He tore himself away with a ragged snarl, blood slick on his lips, panting slightly from barely giving himself a chance to breath during the feeding and the world spun crimson. He quickly sealed the wound again needing the king to have a breather from blood loss.

Arthur sagged back against the bed, blue fur a bit more pale, breathing fast as well, but smiling faintly through the daze. Arthur didn't realize what had happened, and if he could have thought, being too drunk on pheromones and vampiric aura, he would have chalked it up to his feelings of happy bliss for the knight he had long adored. But it was also because it was a natural vampiric reaction to Lancelot drinking his blood.

Lancelot was slightly worried, but his hunger remained dominant, so he gripped Arthur's hips with the kind of devotion that left bruises on him. The velvet fur beneath his touch twitched, warmed, parted at his coaxing. The knight dug his fingers deeper into the muscle, prompting his king to open further, and he did. Arthur's spine curved as if tugged by strings unseen. His tail wagged in needy circles underneath him, and his legs fell wider with a hypnotic pull.

The knight's eyes glowed like crystal rubies rimmed in silver, and now his hunger turned different, quaking through him, ancient and sinfully alluring. It made his fangs ache in his mouth and his blood throb like a song that was long forbidden. He removed the last layer of silk and finally found a treasure he still wasn't sure he deserved.

Arthur's entrance was pink, swollen, parted, and glistening with slick. Blood shimmered in the crease, half-dried where it had mixed with arousal. It was a desecrated altar. A holy contradiction, but still a contradiction, Lancelot wanted to worship until his king screamed.

The scent hit him even stronger than before, now that there was no barrier left. It was metallic, sweet, but especially ripe. His mouth parted immediately, and his fangs ached again. His heart was hammering so loudly he wondered if Arthur could hear how excited he was.

Arthur let out a moan before the knight even touched him. His hands clawed at the sheets below him, and his hips twitched with desire. That pulse. That bloom. Lancelot could see it all, the way his cunt clenched around nothing, slick with cycle and need.

Lancelot didn’t want to waste any more time. He brought his head down and gave a long sniff, nose almost buried in something he knew was a dream, had to be a dream...?

Arthur, someone who had always ordered him, relied on him, but right now he seemed so needy for him. Lancelot looked up once more, and the king was panting more now, sweating slightly. The vampiric magic only caused him to become more and more frustrated with desire.

Lancelot finally gave in and licked once slowly upward. His tongue dragged from the slit to the rim, tasting it all.

Arthur immediately cried out. “L-Lance!”

The knight's ears twitched in a slight giddiness, and so he gave another lick, then another, and each one was deeper than before. He was losing all sense of control. Lancelot fed on his king like a knight kneeling in prayer and devoured with intention. His tongue circled the rim, then dipped inside as far as he could, lapping us every trace of bloody arousal, and the combination of the two only tasted more divine.

He kissed the swollen lips, sucked at the clit until it throbbed, then plunged his tongue in and groaned at the taste. He wanted to drink it all. Blood and slick. The way a vampire would drink wine from a sacrificial bowl.

Arthur’s thighs spasmed, and his cunt pulsed open around every press, every kiss. Moans shattered from him that were becoming more and more desperate. The sheets beneath were becoming stained, but neither of them seemed to notice.

Then Lancelot, without realizing it, bit, and it wasn’t too deep, just a graze of fang over the pink flesh.

“Ah Gods—” Arthur whined, it stung, yes, but he didn't reach over to push him away, nor did he bark an order to stop him. Lancelot lapped at the slight wound with his tongue, healing the king in tandem. Then he did it again on the other side with another small nibble, and through the pain and pleasure, Arthur’s body would have been confused if this were a normal sex session, but his body was filled with scarlet magic, and every motion only made his body sing in appreciation. “Why… why does it feel so—”

“Perfect?” Lancelot murmured, still between his thighs, his fang brushing the top of his mound this time. “Because you were made for me.”

Then he sealed his mouth over the entrance and delved deeper. He kept this up until he knew his mouth wasn’t enough anymore. The king needed something inside of him. Using his right hand, he pressed on the king's bud and circled it. It was a harsher pressure than his tongue could do, and Arthur whimpered, “Mmmh… more…”

Lancelot's mouth turned into a slight feral smile with his fangs showing, and he rubbed Arthur's clit up and down with his thumb, then in circles, while his other hand traced his entrance slowly.

"Lance... more," Arthur urged again. Suppose the lack of patience will always stay inside him.

So, Lancelot, too eager himself, pushed inside, and Arthur let out a gasp of relief at the pressure. He pressed deeper and moved both fingers in such a way to stretch the king properly, but his blood was coating them, and with every shift, the knight could see more seep out of him, and he delved down to lick up at the mess, not wanting a drop to go to waste.

He continued to pump steadily inside the king, but he was being so cautious, and again Arthur was never one for patience and pushed downwards, trying to gain more access to the knight's fingers. “More…” the king whined, which he meant to be more of a demand, but came out much more pathetically.

Lancelot curled his fingers just right and, in a nice, speedy rhythm, pumped inside of the king, while his tongue lapped at his now swollen bud. He licked, he circled, he pushed harder inside, curving his fingers fast, while his free arm trapped his legs in such a way he could remain bare to him.

Arthur's ears lowered even more in submission, and he panted hard with his mouth open, eyes falling back. He could no longer try to time in with Lancelot's ministrations because the knight had his lower body in a lock.

Lancelot kept up this motion again and again, until finally the king shuddered from his climax and fluid poured, blood and slick gushing out of him. The bed sheets stained only slightly beneath him because Lancelot held him through it, tongue and mouth never ceasing.

He didn't want the king's fluids to go to waste on the bed like it already had before, so he made sure he drank every drop and spasm. He enjoyed every little movement and gasp. He felt awed with pleasure humming through his blood as Arthur’s soul began to beat inside him now, tethered by shared magic and an ancient bond.

When Arthur finally slumped back, twitching and spent, his thighs still parted, his chest rising in stuttered breaths, and his eyes were glowing. They weren't just dazed like before, either, but entranced, lost to the glamour now fully wrapped around his mind like silk ropes.

“L-Lance…” he whispered. “You…”

But the knight wasn’t done. He dipped again and bit the inside of the king’s other thigh that he had never gotten to before. Arthur cried out again, but it was weaker this time, still trembling as Lancelot’s powers crashed through his veins like a drug.

“You taste like royalty,” Lancelot whispered against his blue thigh, lips wet with blood and spit. “Like fate.”

Arthur blinked slowly, feeling ruined, aching, still wanting. “You’re... i-insatiable.”

“You said don't stop.”

Arthur gave a small choked laugh and, using what little strength he had, dragged Lancelot upward by the collar. Their mouths met and hissed with breath and lust and the metallic tang of power. Arthur moaned into the kiss, tasting himself on his knight’s tongue and loving it. His legs stayed spread. His entrance still twitched, hot and raw and begging. He felt another trickle of blood run down the inside of his thigh and shivered.

Lancelot broke the kiss only to slide a hand up and press a blood-slicked finger to Arthur’s lips, and the king actually suckled, without shame and cheeks burning red. His hips moved on their own, grinding against nothing. He pulled away to mumble, “Will you take me now? Like this?”

There was no need to question it further. They had already passed the line.

Lancelot pressed his forehead to his king’s. “Yes.” He grabbed Arthur by the hips and dragged him to the bed’s edge. His cock, which had already been unsheathed due to the utter arousal of feeding on his king, pulsed with restrained fury, dark and thick. It was flushed near-purple with need. When he looked down again, he could see Arthur’s entrance twitch again, gleaming pink and red, wet and open.

“You wanted this,” Lancelot whispered in an eerily reverent way. “So let me fill you until you forget what it was like to rule without me inside of you.”

Arthur opened his eyes to meet him and did his best to sit up on the edge of the bed. He leaned his chest to meet Lancelot's, and his head fell on his shoulder, “Yes... Please...”

The plea made his power surge from him like a second heartbeat. Lancelot’s will was no longer a suggestion but a command, and it dragged Arthur deeper under with each breath. Lancelot’s hand wrapped around the side of Arthur’s throat in an anchoring, possessive manner, making his king tip his head back, baring his throat by instinct.

Lancelot bit down on his neck and, at the same time, pushed his cock inside, making Arthur cling to his shoulders, holding on while his knight drank from him again. Lancelot buried himself fully and allowed the king to stretch around his thick length.

After a moment, he began shallow thrusting inside of him, and Arthur gave a low moan with each one clinging to the knight as best he could, but he felt himself grow weak from all the blood loss, and Lancelot held him up with one arm, keeping the other on his neck while he drank more slowly.

His thrusts grew deeper and harsher with less restraint, until each one carved devotion into the very marrow of the bed. The sound of them meeting each other was wet and lewd. Arthur’s body obediently met every motion, hips meeting, eyes half-lidded and shining with unholy grace. His fur glistened with sweat and blood. Every breath came out in fragments, like confessions too sacred for language.

Lancelot no longer knew if he was protecting his king or consuming him. He only knew that stretching him felt like sinful heaven. Arthur also enjoyed the stretch, how full he felt. He was grateful that Lancelot was holding him up because the knight pounded faster and faster as the seconds went by. The more blood he consumed, the weaker Arthur became, but it made Lancelot stronger.

The knight continued to rock harshly inside his king, making him writhe and clench around his cock. Arthur could feel the overwhelming sensitivity from Lancelot dragging along his even more sensitive walls with the month's cycle, and he could feel his climax build. Lancelot’s arm grew tighter around Arthur's waist to keep him still as he thrusted deeper into him.

Arthur continued to let out whimpers and unholy moans with each thrust, while Lancelot's groans into his neck filled the room. Arthur’s fingers clenched harder around Lancelot’s shoulders, trying to stay upright as he wasn’t completely limp yet.

Then this is where the king’s blood mixed with his royal magic. It was a magic he had had since he was young, and something only the royal line of Camelot had. It leaked from the wound at his neck in glittering threads, running into the knight’s mouth in a way it hadn't before.

The taste burned Lancelot’s tongue. It was so pure and potent, yet he still drank. Each swallow stoked something violent and reverent inside him, until his body trembled from the force of it.

It was here that their magics collided, and Lancelot knew of Arthur's magic because, of course, he had seen it in battle, but he didn't realize it would affect the king’s blood in such a way. Perhaps it was due to self-preservation, and why Arthur hadn't passed out by now. Despite his submissiveness to the knight, he was still strong enough to hold on.

With their continued passion, their blood mixed, and it was holy and corrupted. They were sunfire and nightwine writhing together until neither could exist without the other.

Arthur’s heartbeat pounded against Lancelot’s lips, and the knight drank in rhythm with it, his breath heavy. He couldn’t stop growling as his hips pounded deeper and more intensely as if drawn by gravity alone. Every motion was rough and instinctive.

“Lance... it feels... different now,” Arthur rasped reverently and raggedly all at once.

At his words, the knight stopped feeding and lifted his head just enough for their eyes to meet. Lancelot’s mouth was smeared gold and red, and his gaze was fever-bright. “Your magic seeped out this time…. You taste like dawn and ruin.”

Arthur’s body shivered from head to tail, torn between surrender and collapse. The teeth marks on his neck glowed faintly, pulsing in time with the knight’s heartbeat, as if their blood could not decide which belonged to whom.

Then Lancelot kissed him again, and it was not gentle this time, but much more desperate. Blood smeared between their mouths, and the king’s own magic flared through the taste of it. Arthur melted into it, eyes half-lidded, his body trembling under the sheer force of what they’d become—this creature and crown, hunger and holiness bound in the same breath.

The knight leaned close so that his fangs brushed the shell of the king’s ear. “Do you feel that? Where our magic meets?”

Arthur nodded, feeling so dizzy and lost. “I-It’s burning through me.”

“That is a blood bond,” Lancelot said, thrusting again, slower this time so that Arthur could feel every inch slide in and out, thick heat against his needy cunt, blood and slick against muscle. Every movement was making a mess underneath them both. “It’s rewriting us.”

Arthur moaned more helplessly, and the noise only seemed to pull Lancelot closer and to urge him to move harder. The red haze thickened, and the room was nothing but the scent of iron and sweat, and the obscene sound of flesh meeting. Lancelot may be in a frenzy, but the love he had never stopped, so he whispered again, “You’re everything to me… You always were.”

Arthur’s reply was a broken moan, his hands moving to the knight’s face, dragging him into another messy kiss that tasted like salt and blood. When their lips parted, he whispered, “Then take what’s yours.”

That shattered the last thread of control. Lancelot pulled out only to push back in, deeper, harder, until Arthur cried his name like a blessing. Red and gold glimmer crawled across their fur where their magic met, corrosive yet exquisite. Every thrust unspooled a bit of heaven and remade it in sin’s image.

Lancelot reached between them, and his thumb found Arthur’s clit, rubbing in tight, furious circles while still pounding into him. Arthur’s tail wagged limply, happy from the lovemaking, but too limp to do much anymore.

So finally, after another moment, Lancelot gave harsher pumps and circles, and Arthur's climax hit with a strong pulse, thighs clamping around his knight.

Lancelot followed a breath later, buried deep, his forehead falling to the king’s as he spilled inside him. Being filled so deeply practically to his womb, drew another wave of bliss that left Arthur shaking, eyes unfocused, haloed by moonlight and ruin.

When the tremors eased, they stayed locked together as one instead of two. Lancelot pulled back just enough to see him. Arthur’s eyes were open, glowing like golden green dawn reflected in wine. The knight whispered, “My star-crowned king.”

Arthur smiled, faint and wrecked. “My cursed knight.”

Lancelot did not move for a long time. The world had gone quiet except for the sound of their breathing, uneven, but shared. The king’s chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm against Lancelot’s, every inhale a fragile reminder that he was still there.

For the first time since the haze had taken him, fear found Lancelot. His hands, once instruments of worship and hunger, began to tremble where they rested on Arthur’s body. The bond still pulsed between them, crimson with gold and alive, but it was quieter now, no longer demanding. He bowed his head to Arthur’s shoulder, lips brushing the cooling fur.

“My king,” he murmured. “Tell me you’re still with me.”

Arthur’s hand moved, weakly finding the back of Lancelot’s neck. His thumb traced the edge of his fur. “I’m here… I’m okay, but I believe you left my neck bleeding...”

Lancelot’s eyes widened and he caught sight of the blood pouring out of the king’s neck. Curses… he was in utter bliss, he never sealed it like before. He immediately kissed the wound, murmuring an apology. The blood and magic cooled, weaving itself closed under his touch.

Arthur reached up again, guiding his knight’s face toward him. “Look at me,” he whispered. The command was gentle, and like he always did before this fateful night, Lancelot obeyed. Arthur smiled faintly. “You didn’t break me.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped Lancelot then. “I nearly killed you.”

Arthur brushed his thumb along the knight’s jaw, tracing the faint streaks of dried blood and gold that marked where their magical blood had merged from their messy kisses.  “You couldn’t. Despite your fervent need… I knew you could never kill me. Not now. Not ever.”

Lancelot, without pulling out, laid them both down on the bed. They were two bodies stitched together by exhaustion and miracle, and for a little while, neither spoke.

Lancelot’s heartbeat slowed, syncing with Arthur’s until it was hard to tell whose pulse belonged to whom. The bond was no longer burning from frenzy passion but a new thing that was fragile and vast.

“We are bonded now, aren’t we?” Arthur murmured, his gaze meeting Lancelot’s through the dim light. “Blood-bonded?”

Lancelot’s hand found his quills, brushing them down. “Yes,” he said softly. “I believe so. It is… part of what I am. My kind’s magic is bound to the blood and… it recognizes the one we cannot live without.” He swallowed hard, guilt and worry crossing through his expression. “By the time I realized it was happening, it was too late. I should have warned you.”

Arthur only smiled weakly but genuinely, his thumb still stroking along the knight’s cheek. “Don’t apologize, Lance, because I… have loved you for many years. The bond only gave voice to what was already written in us.”

Lancelot’s breath caught from the confession, and his ears tilted forward, uncertain if he had heard correctly. “You… loved me? Even before this?”

Arthur nodded, eyes wet with something far older than pain. “I did and I do. I tried to hide it behind the crown, behind duty, but every time you looked at me like I was worth protecting, I knew… I know a king should not confess such things, but I’m too tired to lie anymore.”

Lancelot’s eyes gleamed with tears he didn’t try to hide. He touched the king’s face with both hands, as if afraid Arthur might vanish. “You have no idea what those words do to me,” he whispered. “I love you too. I have for so long that I thought it would consume me. And perhaps it has.”

Arthur’s tears slipped down his muzzle. “Then let it consume us both.”

Lancelot smiled with so much emotion before leaning forward to kiss the tear from his cheek. The gesture was gentle and so chaste compared to what they had just done together. “It already has.”

They stayed like that together until the quiet felt like safety. The bond between them pulsed softly, no longer a demand but a comfort, as if it too had settled to rest. Lancelot reached for the blankets and pulled them over the both of them, tucking Arthur against his chest.

“Rest now, my beloved king,” he murmured, the words carrying the weight of a sweet future. “Let me keep watch.”

Arthur’s eyes closed from exhaustion, and his hand rested over Lancelot’s heart. “Just… don’t go far.”

“Never,” Lancelot whispered, kissing his brow. “We are one now.”