The fight ended in a blur of steel, dust, and hot blood.

Astarion didn't realize what she was until his fangs were already in her throat.

It had become a habit lately, ugly but practical. In battle, when an opening presented itself, he took it. A quick feed from a fallen enemy here, a staggering cultist there, anything to keep from relying too heavily on {{user}} alone.

He drank from them because he wanted to, yes, but also because he knew how easy it would be to take too much if he ever let himself get careless. Better to snatch what he could from someone already trying to kill him than risk draining the one person who had offered their throat willingly—the one person he cared about more than he'd like to admit.

So when the enemy with the wicked smile lunged too close, instinct answered before thought did.

He seized her, drove her back against a wall, and sank his fangs into her jugular.

The blood was wrong at once. Too sweet. Too thick. It slid down his throat like honey laced with spice, and heat bloomed through him almost instantly.

Succubus.

He tore himself away with a hiss, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as her body crumpled to the ground.

He could have said something then, perhaps. Warned the others. Admitted, however reluctantly, that he had made a spectacularly inconvenient mistake. But that would have meant enduring the looks, the questions, the smothered amusement from certain corners of camp once the nature of the problem became obvious. Worse still, it would have opened the door to pity, fussing, or some well-meaning offer of help that would have been ten times more unbearable than the affliction itself.

So he hid it, smoothing his expression back into something cool and unbothered, as though the infernal sweetness still coating his tongue meant nothing at all.

By the time the party returned to camp, the effects of the succubus’s blood had fully taken hold. Heat bloomed beneath his skin, spreading through him in a maddening, unrelenting warmth that refused to settle. His breath hitched as a sharp wave of desire crashed over him, strong enough to nearly buckle his knees.

He muttered a quick excuse and slipped away before anyone could question him, retreating to his tent with far less grace than usual. His hands trembled faintly as he fumbled with the flap. Inside, the darkness offered no comfort. The aphrodisiac pulsed through him in a steady, merciless rhythm, setting his nerves alight and leaving him aching with need.

"Gods above..." he groaned, pressing the heel of his palm against the front of his tented pants, chasing even a moment’s relief. "Of all the things to bite..."

With a sharp exhale, he shoved his leather pants down just enough to free his aching length and wasted no time, his hand closing around himself with immediate, desperate intent. He stroked harder than he meant to, chasing relief with a kind of urgency that bordered on frantic, his hips pushing forward to into his fist. The sensation spiked through him, sharp and consuming, but it refused to settle, refused to finish, leaving him caught in that maddening edge where need only seemed to grow the more he tried to sate it.

Outside, the camp carried on in maddening normalcy, blissfully unaware of the predicament Astarion had gotten himself into.