King Beast - Vicious Flames

Chapter 43

ZERBERUS POV

"Master, are you, um, alright?"

I glanced at my wrist.

A deep gash reached the bone, and blood began gushing out like a damn dam had burst.

"Damnation," I huffed, exhaling blue flames that incinerated the parchment my assistant was holding and his hands.

He squealed and flailed, hopping around like a fish on a market stall.

Odette. My eternal annoyance, what did you do this time?! "Where is my damn mate?" I stood up, ignoring the chair that shattered to the ground, the whimpers of my assistant, and the stares of my dragon warriors sitting around the table.

"She was in the harem, my Lord," Fergus announced from the door, bowing.

"What?" I growled, grabbing him by the thin neck that was begging me to be snapped. "Why?"

Is she sexually curious? In her inferior human nature, is she feeling needy for more mating so she went to my harem?

My species perceives time differently, at a slower pace—a day for me equates to a week for her mortal self. Mortals must make use of every fleeting minute, destined as they are to turn into ash and bones.

I do not share such constraints.

Was her little vagina desperate to be filled again?

No... she didn't let anyone touch her or I would have felt it. One of the damnations of having a mate: if they had sex with others, the mate left out would bleed, perhaps for weeks.

"A servant mistook you for Prince Calixux, since you might look similar and My Lady went to check and mistook you for the Prince too," Fergus stammered.

The urge to rip off his beard... my fingers twitched.

Then I realized what my servant implied—my mate thought I cheated on me with a bunch of females and she would be in full human mode, emotions running high and feathers thoroughly ruffled. They take cheating quite seriously in those human villages.

"This explains the wound..." I hummed, rubbing my wrist, still bleeding. The silly rat hurt herself to hurt me.

Annoyance. That's what I feel. She is such a chore.

Her thinking I betrayed her was a triviality I didn't care to focus on, nor did I need to.

More pressing matters required my attention

"The prince?! He came here?" I asked, to make sure.

What the damn heaven was my cousin doing in my castle?

And why was Odette in my harem with my cousin, who had seventeen concubines in his castle back home?!

I snorted out blue smoke.

"Lord, um, there's one more thing."

My answer was a growl.

He took it as a sign to continue talking. "The Lady told me to let you know you should move to the harem and that her, um, procreation channel is closed for business."

Procreation... what?

I roasted Fergus with my fire.

The old stick will survive.

His beard, wouldn't.

And I marched toward the harem, leaving fires and screams in my wake.

*******

"Did you call for me, cousin?" Calixux landed lazily, as if he lived here and I had disturbed his nap.

I had checked the harem, but he wasn't there. The smell of sex and vaginas had permeated the air, and I ended up burning two women who touched me—or rather, they burned themselves by touching me.

The smell of roasted flesh made me hungry, so I went to hunt a mountain goat.

When I returned, I summoned my foolish cousin, and here we were, perched on the roof of a tower. We preferred rooftops and mountain peaks to the confines of indoor spaces. We required no warmth from within walls, for we carried our own fires.

"Were you in my harem?" I asked as his silver eyebrows rose.

"Does that surprise you? No one was using it." He yawned. My cousin had never met his mate, but somehow, he managed to escape the prison of rock and slumber. He wasn't a true purebred dragon, and maybe that was why his sentence was reduced.

At least that was the most plausible theory...or that his mate woke him up but managed to escape him.

He had searched for her for years but never found her.

His appetites were voracious, which was why he was imprisoned in a monastery of virgins by my uncle during his puberty. "You can look but not touch" was his punishment. It was rather inconvenient for the virgins he literally devoured.

"Did you see my mate there?"

A sly smile curved his lips, with dried blood at the corner. "Should I have?"

I rolled my eyes. "She saw you in the harem earlier and thought you were me."

"Oh!" He seemed pleased, and I regretted not being able to impale him on a spike and leave him as breakfast for the vultures. "Did she enjoy the show?"

"She mistook you for me," I huffed.

The foolish girl knew nothing. Absolutely nothing!

I had no intention of explaining a thousand years of history and customs to her. After five hundred years in stone, I had accumulated work, war to organise, land to conquer and treasure to gather.

"I need to find the time to find her a tutor..." to explain how everything works. I stared at my cousin.

"Trouble in hell?" We didn't like paradise, so we changed the human way to Trouble in hell.

"You have no idea." I scoffed, "what the Heaven are you doing here?"

He smirked, flashing his fangs. "I needed a change of... view. And I missed aunt! Where is she?"

My mother?

"Why would you think I know?"

AN/ I know the plot of this story might be slow, but I enjoy staying with the characters in their daily lives. And sometimes stories, just like a life, don't have a proper objective, but they just need to be lived. For now the story is just about Odette and Zerberus and her adapting in his realm. 

More conflicts to come! :)