Chapter 94: 94-Demoralized
Sseraphis sprawled lazily on the soft, king-sized bed. He lazed about unaffected by the chaos around him. His detachment from mess was on another level.
"I am trying my best," Nytherael argued. Everything that he let out felt like an excuse with all the eyes on him. The expectation in those gazes made his skin itch. "It might work better if someone tried and put in a little effort," he said, taking a jab at Sserephis.
The snake turned a deaf ear to him. No matter how many eyes fell on him, he pretended as though he hadn’t noticed them.
"Why don’t you try again?" Aenyra encouraged Nytherael. With Sseraphis tuning them out and Aeltharion still recovering, he was the last resort.
Nytherael breathed out through his nose and raised his hands in the air. He gave up. The task was difficult to pull odd by himself, and the hours of his afternoon that he had given up in trying to make it work were time that he was never getting back.
"What are you doing?" Zeyron asked, not understanding why the male got up before he succeeded in pulling off the task at hand.
"I give up," he said and jumped on the empty spot on the bed next to Sseraphis. Sensing his arrival, the snake rolled over to the corner of the bed, avoiding contact with him. Nytherael saw the move and scoffed. "I don’t want to touch you either!" He laid down and faced the opposite direction to the snake.
With their backs to each other, none of them dared to turn over or initiate a conversation with the other.
Sseraphis didn’t feel like starting a conversation with Nytherael. In the wee hours of the morning and the previous night, he had gathered enough about the past to understand what Nytherael had done and how badly it had affected.
He was surprised that there was version of him willing to open up to love and let someone in to the point if becoming his weakness but what shocked him even more was the fact that Nytherael broke his heart, took away his peace and cost him his sanity and the fox was still alive with all his nine tails intact.
That didn’t sound like him at all. Even now, with nothing but tales of the past from different sources to go on and he wanted to force the fox into his true form and fight out. He was prepared to fight on until he stripped the arrogant fox of all his tails and fur. He could think of a dozen things he could make such rare materials.
However, for reasons unknown to him, he couldn’t move his body to act on such feelings and hence he could only resort to ignoring Nytherael or showing him his displeasure when forced in the same space as him.
On the other side of the bed, Nytherael clutched the sheets and rested. He had been woken up at the break of dawn to activate the tri-soul bond in an attempt to awaken the light from before so that they could use it to save every beast still paralysed in the world.
With Aeltharion resting and Sseraphis being unco-operative, the task fell solely on his shoulders. And every attempt he made proved futile. Aeltharion’s side of the bond was weakened so badly. It was barely there, and Sseraphis’ side was still blocked by Hadrian’s tinkering in the past and didn’t react to him.
So, despite trying for what felt like forever, he received no response. He was tired.
He was exhausted with the world looking to him to fox things all the time. He wasn’t a hero, and he’s never dreamt of becoming one, and one mistake doesn’t mean that he can be guilt-tripped into a selfless journey of saving beasts.
"You can just rest. The world depends on..."
"Tell the world that I need my rest," he interrupted him. There wasn’t an ounce of strength left in his body to comply with such a request.
It wasn’t that he was physically exhausted, no. The exhaustion was mental, having tap into a bond thar once bloomed so beautifully and filled his life with so much joy and peace and feel no spark at all demoralised him.
He didn’t wish to attempt to activate the bond again. Every failure was like an echo of a truth that he refused to accept as his reality. His bond was broken, the three of them were falling apart, and no amount of effort could miraculously put them back together.
"Why don’t you just give it one more try?" Aenyra tried to persuade him.
After receiving news that dragons in Drakheiron were also affected and their conditions were getting worse and worse, she was determined to save them. She had given her mother her word that she’ll find a solution.
With the weight of her sin of forming a mate bond with Sheana without the blessings of her parents weighing down on her. She felt determined to solve the crisis to soften her parents’ hearts before she dropped the bomb of what she’s done to them.
"You are mated to someone now. The day that you wake up and realize that you can’t feel your better half, you’ll understand why it is difficult for me to continue," he said, his eyes distant.
Aenyra froze. The mate bond, thinking about it, was one thing, but having someone say it out loud made it more real that she would like to admit.
"It was to save a life," she argued, even though no one asked.
Princess Sheana glanced at her. She saw Aenyra’s eyelashes tremble as she commented on their bond and realized that she was far from winning. The ice dragoness was far from accepting their bond, and she couldn’t tell if it was because she was a woman or that she wasn’t a dragon.
"Regardless, unless you walk in my shoes and understand half of what I am feeling right now. I encourage you to stop pressuring me," Nytherael shut the topic down.
He slipped under the quilt and pulled the blanket all the way to his head. He covered his body from head to toe, disappearing from sight.
"Just great. You all create a mess, and then when it comes to fixing the mess, you are all too lazy to go through with it," Zeyron spat out in accusation.
Nytherael heard, but following Sseraphis’ lead, he shut the noise out and focused on catching his breath under the blanket.
Just as he got ready to close his eyes and disappear to the comfort of slumber. The other side of the bed shifted, and the snake pulled the quilt up before sliding inside and rolling up to him.
Nytherael held his breath, and his heartbeat came slowly. He anticipated a lecture or a venomous confrontation, but when those purplish-black eyes locked onto his so clearly, he couldn’t tell what Sseraphis was thinking.
"What?"
"Why does it affect you that you can’t feel us when you want to go away from us to begin with?" Sseraphis asked in a serious tone.
"Nothing I say will change your hatred towards me. I’m too tired to argue," Nytherael let out.
Sseraphis’ body went still momentarily, "Then why is it that you think anything you do can change what you did?"
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