“Okay,” Buffy said slowly, trying very hard to stay calm, though Anya’s statement had her completely and utterly freaked. “I *know* that I don’t have the first clue what I’ve done. That’s why I’m asking you. Anya -- *what*?”
Anya took a deep breath before she spoke, trying to calm down herself. “Okay,” she said in a carefully controlled voice. “Okay -- Buffy – maybe you should just start at the beginning. That’s the only way I can know for sure, is for you to tell me from start to finish what happened. Then, I’ll tell you what I know – but I’m not promising anything. I don’t know *everything* about these things…”
“But you know more than Giles does,” Buffy pointed out quietly.
“Well – it might not look like it,” Anya admitted with a little shrug. “But I’ve got a good thousand years on Giles. But if it’s what I think…” She stopped, shaking her head and holding up a hand to stop herself. “Go ahead. Talk.”
Buffy took another deep breath as she prepared to speak. She hated to tell Anya *everything* about her night with Spike – she was not even sure if she could bring herself to, when it came right down to it – but she was just terrified enough at this point to try her best to be open.
“Okay – so – we got there, I waited until I knew that the spell had kicked in to deactivate Spike’s chip – and I challenged him. I said the things you told me to say. And he said ‘I accept’.” She paused, frowning at the memory. “*After* punching me across the room. And then – we fought.” She shrugged slightly.
“So far so good,” Anya said. “If I didn’t already know that it’s *not* good. So – that’s when he tried to bite you? While you were fighting?”
Buffy shook her head. “Not then. And not tried. He did. He bit me. But that wasn’t until – um, later. See – Anya,” she hesitated, before going on uncomfortably, “This is really embarrassing for me to talk about – but – it was almost like – something came over me. I don’t know why I did it, but – but he was beating me, and I was scared, and he was so in control – I – I just sort of – made him -- *lose* -- control,” she trailed off slowly.
“You came onto him. Used sex to subdue him,” Anya concluded bluntly. “To catch him off his guard.”
“Pretty much,” Buffy admitted. “I don’t know why I did it, but – but it made him stop fighting, and I managed to pin him down on the floor. And see – I’m pretty sure that’s when things started to go wrong.”
“What happened?”
“Well – I told him to admit that I’d won – to submit. And he nodded, like – like yes, I’d won.” Buffy looked up at Anya to see if she was still following her, and the ex-vengeance demon nodded to show that she was. “So – I pressed him to say it. I said, ‘I won – right?’”
“And he said?” Anya prompted her.
“Right.”
Anya frowned, confused. “Right, what? What’s right?”
“That’s what he said,” Buffy clarified. “ ‘Right’.”
Anya gave her a blank look for a moment, that slowly changed to a disbelieving, almost pitying look at the ignorance of the girl before her. “He didn’t say anything else?”
“Not…right…then,” Buffy admitted, wincing slightly at her foolishness that was so clear to her now. “I guess – I guess I thought what he said was enough. So I – um – initiated the dominance ritual…”
“Jumped his bones,” Anya translated.
Buffy glared at her for a moment before nodding. “I took him into the bedroom and – well – yeah. But um – Anya, this whole time – it was so weird – it was like – like it wasn’t really me…I mean, it *was* me…but…not *just* me?” Her tone was questioning as she searched for the words to describe the sensation that had seemed to go beyond words.
She looked to Anya, but all she got this time was a puzzled frown and a slight shake of her head.
“I don’t know,” she went on, giving up. “It was just really weird. And I mean, this whole time, I thought I’d already won. It was supposed to be a symbolic act of dominance, right? *After* the actual ritual itself was over.”
Anya nodded, still just listening.
“But then – right when…um…we were almost done,” Buffy went on, blushing furiously in spite of herself. “He bit me. But – I pulled him off, and then – it was the strangest thing, Anya – I bit him back.” Her eyes were wide, horrified, as she made her quiet admission. “I don’t know why. Again, it was like I was – out of control. Like someone else was in control of me. But – it just seemed like the thing to do. And I – I made him say it then, once I realized that he hadn’t said it before…”
“Say what?”
“Huh?” Buffy had to struggle to focus on Anya’s question, having nearly lost herself in the vivid memories of the night before as she recounted them.
“You made him say *what*, exactly?” Anya asked.
“Well,” Buffy tried to remember her exact words, her eyes widening as she did. “I said – he was mine. I told him to say it – and – and he did. He said ‘yours’…”
“Did you draw blood?”
“What?” Buffy frowned, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
“When you bit him. Did you draw blood?” Anya clarified.
Buffy hesitated a moment, thinking back. She could clearly remember the wild fury that had overtaken her, sinking her teeth into his throat until she broke the skin, her own warm blood flowing down her throat from his body…
“Yes,” she replied in a low, frightened whisper. *Oh God…what’s happening to me?* she wondered desperately.
Anya let out a soft little moan, turning away for a moment before turning back to look Buffy in the eye. “Buffy – it’s just like I thought. That wasn’t a dominance ritual. Not really. That was a claim. A – a blood bond.”
“What?” Buffy did not like the sound of that, even though she had no idea yet what it really was. “But – he’s obedient to me now. Like you said about the dominance ritual. We completed it, we just did it – a little out of order,” she finished weakly, well aware that she knew too little about this sort of thing to speak with any certainty. “But – it seems like it had the result that we were after.”
“No, Buffy. You never completed the actual dominance ritual, because you never finished the fight. When you skipped to the sex before he’d actually accepted your authority, it’s like – you just kind of – abandoned it and started the claiming process instead,” Anya explained.
“So – why is he all submissive and stuff?” Buffy asked, confused. “If I didn’t actually dominate him?”
“I didn’t say you didn’t dominate him,” Anya corrected her. “I just said you never completed the ritual. The thing is, Buffy – blood – it’s very important to vampires. And not just in the whole ‘they cease to exist if they don’t get it’ kind of way. It’s – it’s powerful. It has – mystical properties that most people don’t know about.”
Buffy was silent, waiting for her to go on.
“It’s like – when a vampire drinks someone’s blood, they’re drinking their life force – they’re taking power from them to exist. So – even if it’s a claim and not a dominance ritual,” Anya went on. “If you’re the aggressor – like you were – and you made the claim…and he accepted it – then you’re gonna have a certain amount of power over him. It’s kind of like – the act of turning. When a vampire turns someone, they’re their sire, and they have a lot of power over them, at least at first.”
Buffy was quiet, trying to take it all in. “So I didn’t finish the dominance ritual – but he still is in submission to me – so – it’s not that bad…right?” Her tone was hopeful, but she knew that there was little chance of things working out that simply. “I mean – it’s not what we planned, but – we can work with it – right?”
“Buffy,” Anya said, echoing her dubious thoughts. “It’s not that simple. A blood bond – a claim, turning, whatever kind of blood bond – is – permanent, if it’s returned by the one being claimed – and you said Spike did return it. So it’s permanent. Beyond permanent, really. Eternal.”
“Eternal?” Buffy’s voice held a note of panic.
Anya nodded solemnly. “Yes. And – and here’s the really bad news…um…this particular blood bond…initiated during the act of sex like it was – well, Buffy – it kind of sounds like a – a mating claim.”
“*What*?” More than a note of panic showed in the word, nearly shouted as Buffy stood up. “What do you mean, *mating* claim?”
“I could be wrong, but I think – I think you’ve bonded yourself to Spike as your mate, Buffy.”
Time seemed to stop as the Slayer took in those words, her mind reeling with the magnitude of what she had done. “No,” she shook her head slowly. “No, that can’t be. There has to be a way to – to undo it…” But even as she spoke the words, there was something even more troubling that the truth that had just been revealed to her. Some part of her rebelled against what she was saying, loathing the thought.
She didn’t *want* to undo it.
“No,” Anya said quietly. “There isn’t.”
“So…that’s why I – I want him so much?” Buffy asked, her voice little more than a whisper, making the admission and the question at once as she met her friend’s eyes. “Because I do, Anya. It’s like – I can’t be in the same room with him without wanting to – to touch him. And there’s this weird, like – it’s like I – care. A lot. And I didn’t before, at all. I just – is that all because of the claim?”
Anya nodded slowly. “I think so. When a claim is made, the person doing the claiming is saying that the person being claimed is *theirs*. And that doesn’t just mean they have to do what they say. That means the claimant feels the need to protect them – to care for them, as their own…because they are.”
Buffy thought about that for a moment. “I don’t get it,” she said softly. “So – if it’s a mating claim – why is he acting so submissive? It’s like – he does whatever I tell him – he just *let* me…”
Her words suddenly cut off, and she glanced up at Anya in alarm. The girl had *not* missed her near slip, and was looking at her expectantly with raised eyebrows. Buffy did not want to go there – not yet – not at all, if possible, though she was beginning to doubt that that would be an option.
“It’s like – he *wants* to please me…you know?” she went on, resolutely sticking to her original question. “I mean – it’s totally not like *Spike*. It’s gotta be an effect of the claim, right? But if it’s a mating claim – shouldn’t we be like – equals? Shouldn’t I want to please him too?”
“If it’s a mutual claim,” Anya agreed cautiously. “Like, if he claimed you too. When he bit you…did he say anything?”
“Yes,” Buffy remembered slowly. “He said ‘mine’.”
Anya’s eyes widened in alarm and she drew in a sharp breath. “Did you – did you respond?”
“Well,” Buffy went on, looking away, remembering, “I told him that I rejected his claim. And then I claimed *him*. Something kind of told me that that – that would give me the upper hand.”
“It sort of did,” Anya agreed with a nod. “I mean, a claim that’s made and not accepted – it’s still there, but it’s not quite as effective. And it fades away, in time. See – it’s not so much your claiming Spike that’s making him submit to you, want to please you – as the fact that he accepted it. It’s like – your claim is stronger than his – but his is still there.”
“So…what does that mean, exactly? That he’s claimed me? I mean – I guess I haven’t really felt anything from that – not that I can tell,” Buffy asked, confused, and more than a little concerned.
Anya shook her head. “Not a lot, really, at this point. It’s gonna make you want him. Bad. Like, crave him night and day bad. But you won’t have to like, do what he says or anything. That’s where you’re lucky that you didn’t return his claim. Because if you did – then he’d have as much control over you as you have over him.” Anya paused, frowning thoughtfully. “And of course, I guess then it kind of wouldn’t matter either way. You’d be pretty much equals at that point, on the power scale.”
Anya’s words brought back more vivid memories of the night before, and Buffy looked back up at her uncertainly.
“Anya,” she said quietly. “There’s more. I mean – I – I kind of scared myself last night. Well, this morning. I did it last night, but I wasn’t scared til this morning…”
“Buffy,” Anya cut off her nervous ramblings patiently. “How did you scare yourself?”
“Um…well, Anya…I was just so…so aggressive. Like – right after we woke up – after the…the claim…he left, and – and I totally freaked, Anya. Except – I was completely in control. Calm. I mean, *I* wasn’t in control…I think. I hope. It was that whole, someone else in my body feeling I was telling you about? Except that it *was* me…and I’m making absolutely no sense at all, am I?” Buffy stopped, looking up at Anya with a sigh of defeat.
“Surprisingly, you are,” Anya informed her with a nod. “Go on.”
“Well…I was just so…so…like, jealous maybe? Or – or possessive? Like I was just furious that he left, and…well…the things I did…Anya, I was seriously scary last night. Could that be another result of the claim? Because I *so* don’t want that to be permanent!”
“I don’t know,” Anya said slowly, frowning. “Nothing I’ve heard would really explain that sort of thing. I mean – that’s more along the lines of the dominance ritual. The one you didn’t finish,” she added pointedly when Buffy looked hopeful. “I really couldn’t tell you. Maybe you should ask Giles?”
“*No*!” Buffy immediately replied, sounding nearly panicked at the thought. “I’m not telling Giles about this! Not yet!”
“Buffy,” Anya frowned. “He’s gonna have a lot of questions…”
“For now, we’ll just tell him that it went like we planned. I fought, Spike lost, so now he does what I say. That’s it, until I can decide how I need to deal with this.”
“We don’t have the rest of your life, Buffy,” Anya retorted impatiently. “You really need to tell at least Giles about this. This is gonna be a hard thing to deal with on your own at all.”
“But I’m not on my own,” Buffy countered, her eyes wide and almost pleading. “I have you.”
Anya heaved a weary sigh, but the look on her face said she was close to caving. “Buffy – this is a bad idea. The whole lying thing. I mean – you’re gonna slip up somehow, and when the others find out you’re lying, then that’s just one more problem you’re gonna have to handle…”
“Anya,” Buffy interrupted in a voice of quiet anguish. “I *can’t*. I can’t tell Giles that I had sex with Spike and claimed him and now he’s my mate for eternity, and every time I see him I want to throw him down and have my way with him.”
Anya’s mouth quirked up in a sarcastic expression. “Well…no. I couldn’t tell him *that* either…but…”
“Anya…please,” Buffy said softly. “Please, just…just go with me on this for a little while. It’s not that I’m not gonna tell him. I just kind of have to…figure out how.”
“Okay,” Anya relented, sounding very doubtful about the whole thing. “But you need to figure it out soon. Because this is big. Like, life-changing, destiny-shaping big. And you’re going to need the support of your friends to get through this.”
Buffy nodded meekly, just wanting the lecture to end, more than anything. She had so much to think about…so much to process and try to figure out. She knew on some level that Anya was right – she was going to need her friends, her Watcher, to get through this newest development in the insanity that was her life.
And yet, some part of her mind was still focused intently on the vampire she had left at the mansion, the one who was now irrevocably hers, for *eternity*. She was in a state of shock at learning the truth, but on some level, it had not even come as a surprise. It was as if a part of her had already known what Anya had told her. She was terrified of how her friends would take it, what Giles would say, and yet on some level, none of it seemed to matter.
Because on that level, she somehow felt that all she *really* needed – was Spike.
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