My heart pounded like it had lost its mind.
With this unpredictable dragon in rut, I didn’t know what he’d do next, and I swallowed hard on a dry throat.
“...No.”
But Varen cut my offer off in a bleak voice.
Now, as if he’d never cried, there was no moisture in his blue eyes—only heat shimmering. I’d seen him aroused more than once, but this was a different order of temperature.
In that instant, a single sentence flashed through my head.
We’re fucked.
“Augh—Varen! Wait!!”
“Haa... Ceryl, your scent is too strong....”
“Right, I didn’t wash. I didn’t wash, okay! Hey, stop lic— ugh....”
I’d only tried to soothe him because he was crying.
But what I’d done had, in effect, thrown me into the arms of a dragon in rut. It was no different from telling him to eat me.
Ignoring my reactions, Varen really set his hands to work. As if this were exactly where they belonged, they slid under my clothes and kneaded everywhere.
“Hold on, calm down! Varen, calm....”
Then I froze head to toe at a brief meeting with those blue eyes.
The sea I’d always thought beautiful flashed with a sinister gleam. It was a predator’s gaze before prey.
“Eek!!”
I locked up without a hint of resistance, and his bare hand grabbed one of my buttocks. With no control of his strength, he only gripped—but it felt like my flesh would split.
The emotion I’d barely corked under the physical pain blew out.
“Hh... ngh, Varen... wait, just....”
It wasn’t anything like what I’d briefly imagined at the door. It wasn’t the shallow question of whether I could sleep with a man.
It was the fear of being unable to move by my will, unable to twitch a finger, doing nothing but shiver in a dragon’s arms.
This was the terror prey feels before an overwhelming presence. It was like being inside a dragon’s mouth.
“I—I’m... sca...red....”
If I relaxed, I’d burst into tears, so I had to grit my teeth.
But no matter how hard I clenched, I couldn’t stop the trembling running through my whole body.
Thankfully, at my voice Varen stopped moving. He only repeated deep breaths, trying to bring the surging arousal down.
Only after a while of ragged breathing did he slowly touch his lips to my forehead.
“...I told you to go back, Ceryl.”
Hot flesh brushed me and fell away.
At the same time, the heat that had wrapped my body vanished.
“I don’t want... you to fear me.... So please, go back.”
Varen, forcing his instincts under control, turned his back on me. He went straight to a corner of the room and braced a hand on the wall, panting hard.
I stood there blank, swallowing my sobs.
Varen had said I was confusing him, but the same was true for me.
Sometimes Varen felt like a child I had to be responsible for, and sometimes like a fearsome being beyond human comparison by nature.
Right now it was decisively the latter.
Varen, in human form and calling me “mate,” had made me forget for a moment.
Humans might become a dragon’s food, but they couldn’t become a dragon’s partner.
“I’m sorry, Varen....”
I forced out an apology in a crawling voice. My hands still shook, and I clenched them tight.
If I left like this, Varen would suffer a fever for three years. He’d jab his thigh every day and endure rut’s instincts.
But this time there was truly nothing a human could do.
In the end I offered a farewell to my dragon I wouldn’t be seeing for a long while.
“This time there’s nothing I can do for you. I’m sorry I’m human, Varen.”
“......”
“I’ll wait for three years...”
“Please go back, Ceryl!”
Varen cut me off and barked. The sound boomed through the cavern and my shoulders hunched on their own.
When I looked at him with frightened eyes, he was now bracing against the wall with his shoulders heaving.
Was he going to cry again? The habitual worry rose up.
“Please, I can’t hold it... even now I want to...”
At his weary voice, I scrubbed the wet from my eyes and turned to go.
My hand closed on the golden door handle, and I looked back at Varen one last time.
But the moment I registered what he was doing, my body lunged before thought.
“Varen! What are you doing!!”
Varen was holding a blade the length of my forearm, who knows from where. He lifted it high and, without a flicker of hesitation, drove it into his own thigh.
Human weapons hadn’t left so much as a hair-thin mark on him. A dragon’s blade bit deep into Varen’s thigh.
I’d thought he might stab his thigh to endure.
That had only been a stock metaphor. I hadn’t imagined it would be this horrific.
“Haa... go, quickly....”
Varen ground his teeth through the pain and muttered.
When he clenched his # Nоvеlight # grip and yanked the blade free, blood geysered from his thigh.
I screamed and grabbed onto his arm. The instant my body heat touched him, Varen halted.
“What the hell are you doing!”
“If I don’t... do even... this...”
The stinging iron smell of blood rose from below.
I dropped down and went straight to his thigh. I tore the reddened pants without hesitation and checked the wound.
“You insane bastard—self-harm... really...”
But the shock and horror faded quickly.
The gash that had gaped and poured blood a moment ago closed in the blink of an eye.
When I lifted my head, Varen’s face was pinched tight, but focus had returned to his eyes.
“If I... focus on healing... haa, I can endure....”
“...Hey.”
“Please, Ceryl. Go, now....”
Varen shoved me away where I was crouched. Then he raised the blade again.
In a split second, I weighed two options in my hands.
I become a dragon’s prey, or Varen gets hurt.
If you ask which I’m more afraid of....
“...Why are you really doing this to me.”
I caught the wrist holding the blade and stood.
And I faced Varen’s miserably twisted face.
“How am I supposed to go when you’re like this.”
“Just... go....”
“If I just go, are you going to stab your thigh and hold out for three years?”
“Haa... Yeah, if I don’t... I’ll... come looking for you....”
Varen avoided my eyes, his face drenched in sweat.
He hesitated, picked his words, and spoke in a far more desolate voice than before.
“Ceryl, I’m more... afraid of you... being afraid of me.”
At that, the strength went out of me.
It was absurd that the strongest being in the world feared a single human.
I took Varen by the jaw and made him look at me. Then I looked into his eyes in silence.
The predator’s gleam was gone; in its place were lust and thirst, sorrow and fear all mixed together.
I closed my eyes and pictured the day we first met.
He’d gone hungry for months rather than put his mouth to a compatriot’s corpse out of a straight belief. Then he’d wolfed down the red salmon I brought.
I decided then. At least I wouldn’t let this dragon starve.
“Haaa... dragon punk, you’re going to be the death of me.”
When I opened my eyes on a deep sigh, my resolve was set.
“...Fine. It’s not like this will kill me.”
The feeling of being eaten by a dragon was plenty terrifying.
But if eating me would ease that hunger, I could spare this wretched body.
My care for Varen beat out human instinct.
“Fine—then eat. Eat.”
“...Eat what?”
“Come here.”
I reached out, grabbed the back of Varen’s head, and drew him in. He followed without the least resistance.
For the first time, I was the one to kiss him.
The instant our lips touched, his blade clattered to the floor. As if all hesitation had been thrown to the dogs, he lunged at me.
“Haa, Ceryl....”
He pried my lips wide and swallowed them, and the long tongue surged down to my throat in one push.
I was barely managing to accept it when Varen easily scooped me up.
My feet, with nothing to brace on, dangled in the air. Without breaking the deep tangle of tongues, Varen strode on.
Holding me, he crossed the broad space in just a few steps. He drove me without a breath to spare and toppled us onto the bed.
“U—hh, Varen... a little, slowly....”
The dragon’s fevered tongue raked through my mouth.
My words smeared from it, but I tried to calm him in the gaps of my ragged breathing.
Only after I repeated myself a few times did Varen lift his mouth from mine.
“Ceryl, I told you... to go back....”
The scolding tone and the hands that burrowed under my clothes without restraint moved out of sync.
Contrary to my firm resolve, the unfamiliar feel on bare skin chilled me.
I gritted my teeth and pulled Varen’s head to my chest.
“Wait, just wait. Let’s stay like this.”
“Haa... ha....”
The head in my arms panted in harsh wheezes. From his abdomen I could feel a dragon’s pounding heartbeat, unfiltered.
In front of a dump truck about to floor the accelerator, I calmly fastened my seat belt.
“I’m not a dragon—I’m a fragile human. If you use your strength, you might break something.”
“......”
“So... slow, and gentle. Got it?”
I lifted a hand and stroked Varen’s cheek. I smoothed it softly with a plea to calm down.
Varen quietly watched me, then turned and pressed his lips to my palm. He drew in my body scent and breathed deep.
His chest, rising in rough heaves, slowly settled; inversely, his breath grew hotter.
Smack—his lips touched and left my palm, and even that flesh was hot.
“Mm. Slowly, gentle....”
Varen echoed me, his lips trembling. With those lips he stamped my forehead, my eyelids, my cheeks, and the bridge of my nose in turn.
Instead of devouring me, they were slow, soft kisses.
