1. Her Arrival**
She arrived like smoke through a keyhole.
Mystique didn't need permission. The SHIELD helicarrier granted it anyway. She strode onto the main observation deck flanked by two cloaked mutants — neither speaking, both vanishing once she entered.
Jon stood at the far walkway, overlooking storm-tossed clouds. His posture was solemn — the quiet before storm or surrender.
But Mystique wasn't one to be intimidated by silence.
She leaned against a pillar, arms folded beneath her leather catsuit.
"You're taller than you looked in psychic transmissions," she said lazily.
Jon turned, eyes tired but sharp. He didn't reach for his weapon.
"And you're Mystique."
"I prefer Raven," she said, walking forward. "But you can call me whatever you like if it keeps you warm at night."
The shadow stirred across her shapely figure. Her blue skin shimmered faintly beneath her woven illusion, and mystic sigils, likely stolen from Kamar-Taj, faintly glowed across her clavicle. A mutant with mimicry, magic, and ambition in her blood.
Jon said nothing.
Until: "Why are you here?"
Mystique stopped close — uncomfortably close.
"Because realms are watching you. Realms where men like you don't survive. And I've made it my business to slip between realities. Which means I know exactly what sits inside you." Her hand brushed lightly over his chest.
"The First Flame," she whispered. "Older than Phoenix. More ancient than the Targaryen line. A spark from the fire the gods feared."
For a moment, he couldn't breathe.
"Let me help you harness it," she said.
"And in return?" he asked.
She smiled.
"I have very few boundaries."
### **2. Sparks and Spies**
Wanda wasn't amused.
"Are you insane? She's an infiltrator. She's betrayed mutantkind, Avengers, Brotherhood—hell, she's probably impersonated half the KGB."
"But she also knows more about interdimensional physics than Strange admits," Daenerys added, arms crossed in silver Dragonstone robes. "And she has information on **The Seed Words**."
Sif stood silently, arms folded, her gaze unreadable.
Jon was once more the center of a circle of powerful women — each watching the other for signs of affection, ambition, or betrayal.
Mystique? Unbothered. She sipped tea slowly, sitting on the edge of Jon's desk like she owned the place.
"I know you're worried I'll seduce your king," she said, lazily tossing her curls over her bare shoulder. "Maybe I will. But for now—" she unrolled a scroll of bio-coded glyphs "—I'd rather help you stop Dormammu from breeding flaming eldritch eggs inside the multiverse."
Jon chuckled.
The others didn't.
Wanda tapped her fingers against the chair arm. "Touch him without consent and I'll make sure your tongue grows back backward."
Mystique winked. "Darling, I never touch anyone unless they beg me to."
She looked at Jon.
He didn't deny the tension quietly boiling under his skin. He only said, "So what's the price?"
Mystique leaned in, her tone cooling.
"When the time comes... don't lock me out."
### **3. The First Flame**
Late that night, Raven met Jon alone in the lower archives. She disrobed her illusion, letting the blue scales of her true form breathe in the cold air. Her figure glowed faintly under ancient glyphs as Jon looked through old magic archives lit by dragonfire.
"I found this in Kamar-Taj," she said, producing a scroll made of dragonhusk vellum.
It pulsed. When Jon's fingers touched it, symbols aligned... and flame spilled across the walls like a memory.
**Vision:**
⨳ A throne beneath stars.
⨳ A creature—dragon-like but faceless—carving the first sun from raw magic.
⨳ A man with silver-black hair standing over broken gods, a sword drowned in light.
⨳ "THE FIRST FLAME CANNOT BE KILLED — ONLY REBORN."
Jon saw his own face, twisted in fire not from anger... but desire.
He gasped, staggering, as the vision ended.
Mystique was beside him, arms steadying him.
"You felt it, didn't you?"
He nodded. "…It's not just in me. It *is* me."
"Yes. And it's choosing you. And every time you give in—when you love, when you lose yourself in the arms of your queens—it grows stronger."
Jon looked up. "Then why don't I feel in control?"
Mystique touched his face tenderly. "Because you haven't surrendered to it yet."
She kissed him.
It was not forceful — it was purposeful. Slow. Calculated. Intoxicating.
Her body molded against him like water over flame. Jon allowed it—not because of seduction, but because her kiss rang with truth.
Control was the lie.
**Dominion**... came from surrender.
They fell together on the runes.
And when Mystique cried out his name, Jon saw the fire behind her eyes match his own.
Not domination. Not possession.
**Something shared. Something ancient.**
He was becoming something more.
And *every* woman drawn to him — witch, warrior, queen, shapeshifter — was part of that becoming.
### **4. Fracture in SHIELD**
The next morning, alarms screamed through the hull.
Nick Fury appeared via emergency feed.
"We have a problem. Internal SHIELD consensus broke. Some of our scientists want to extract the First Flame from Snow. Experimentally."
Jon frowned. "I'm not staying here like some captive flame-wielding relic."
"You won't have to," Fury replied. "The problem is… they sent for someone who can do the job before I could shut it down."
He typed. A feed revealed a sleek jet already en route.
Inside was a pale-skinned man with silver eyes and a cold smile.
**Nathaniel Essex. Mr. Sinister.**
"He thinks he can dissect you," Fury said. "And I think he'll try unless we stop him fast."
Sif slammed her fist into the table. "Then we fight."
Mystique unsheathed twin daggers. "Funny. I've owed Nathaniel a public assassination."
Wanda turned to Jon, her voice tight.
"You still think this isn't a war, Jon? Because you've already started one."
Jon looked across the room.
At *his* women.
At witches and warriors, assassins and dragons, lovers and blades.
He closed his eyes and spoke a single word, low, steady, ancient—
**"We ride."**
### **End of Chapter 6**