A Pet for the Dragons

128.

ZORGE

It started when I saw flashes of pictures from Arika's nightmare, but the more I tuned into her emotions, the more intense everything got. At one point, I couldn't tell if the intense feelings coursing through me were mine or Arika's.

I had trained long and hard to distinguish my feelings from others' while reading others. Still, everything bled together until I couldn't differentiate between my emotions and hers. This threatened to overwhelm me. It reminded me of the first time I discovered my powers and struggled to draw boundaries while exercising them.

The emotions I felt through Arika were so intense that they rocked me, clouding all my senses until I found myself floating in a dark sea. I tried to tune back into my emotions to free myself from all this chaos until I realised I somehow seemed to have lost the ability to do that, too. It seemed like Arika had somehow trapped me in her dreams until I was forced to see everything she was seeing, feel everything she was feeling and see everything she was seeing.

I experienced everything so vividly that it scared me. I shouldn't be able to read other people so intensely. My powers weren't that potent, but I could do it with Arika for some reason. I could read everything that was going through her mind.

I experienced extreme guilt, shame, and self-loath. She was experiencing all these emotions vividly and with an overwhelming intensity. For a moment, I felt on the verge of choking over it.

Before she could drown me with her intense thoughts, I tried to force myself out of her head. It took a monumental amount of effort until I was finally free from the cage of her nightmares. After feeling everything so intensely, numbness washed over me. My senses took a few moments to start working again.

I lay beside Arika, my eyes closed, breathing heavily to compose myself. Meanwhile, I felt her stir beside me gently. She seemed to be waking up, too. I wanted to wake her up from her nightmare, but I was too shaken to do anything.

But as I tried to regain control over my abilities, I couldn't help but direct them to Arika's mind again. I wanted to free her from the nightmare and bring her to reality.

The strained look on Arika's face deepened, and beads of sweat formed on her forehead. I tried to wake her up, but she didn't wake up at all. This made me anxious. Was she going under some sort of a spell? Why was this happening all of a sudden? Was someone manipulating her?

I tried to sense if an outer force was influencing her to be so tense, but I found none. I tried to probe into her head again, but I was met with a raging storm that threatened to swallow me. This time, I forced myself through, determined to pull her out of her nightmare.

This time, my effort was successful, and I finally got a hold of her. I could read her thoughts very clearly.

'Maybe the dragons weren't mating with me because they found me unworthy,' Arika's thought echoed in my head, taking me back. Why would she think that?

I tried to follow her thoughts, but her thoughts were all over the place. However, her nightmare finally ended, and I was glad. It didn't take her long to open her eyes and blink at me sleepily.

My dragon stirred, watching her in her sleepy state. She looked adorable; her dark hair messily spilt over the pillow, and her eyes were puffy with sleep. Seeing her made me want to sweep her into my arms and give her rain kisses, but I waited for her to wake up fully. I didn't want to dilute the brief, peaceful moment when she sleepily stared at me.

"Good morning," She croaked. Even her sleepy voice was adorable. Whatever crankiness I'd felt due to the whole night's training had evaporated completely, leaving me with nothing but giddiness for having this moment with her.

I just couldn't stop staring at her. I wanted to do more than stare at her, but at the same time, I didn't want to disrupt this precious moment. I liked it even more when Arika blinked at me cluelessly and slightly shifted under my attention while blood rushed to her cheeks.

"What is it?"

"You were having a nightmare. Tell me about it." I needed to know everything about it. Even though I'd seen flashes of pictures, it didn't make much sense to me. I wondered if the nightmare she was having was woven from her memories or if it was purely a terrible product of her imagination. So many questions were running through my head. I wanted to know who the other woman I saw in her dream was. Was that her sister? Why was the woman chasing her and had her pinned down with a knife?

Arika's eyes widened at my question, and all the hints of sleep were immediately gone from her face.

"H-how did you know?" She asked as her face turned red.

"I saw it in my head. I saw everything," I told her, and a look of terror and panic crossed Arika's eyes. She sprang up with lightning speed, glaring at me.

"W-what? Get out of my head, you!" She hissed at me. I did the opposite and probed into her head, only to be slapped with her intense thoughts again. This time, they were much more comprehensible.

If anything, the panic on Arika's face intensified. She feared I'd find some dark things about her and leave her. This corresponded with her previous thought of being unworthy of mating. She was worried we'd find out she was a terrible person and leave her. Her thoughts confused and enraged me.

After all this, why would she think that we'd leave her?

"We will not leave you. That should be the last of your worries, pet. You should be more worried about disobeying your master. After all, a pet that obeys their master is worthy of all the good things," I told her, caging her under me. I couldn't keep myself from touching her anymore. I'd spent too long without her and needed her to sate my hunger.

The time I had with her yesterday was good, but Radrox was there. I wanted Arika all by myself, and this was the best moment. I didn't want to waste more time than I'd already wasted.

However, her thoughts troubled me. They overwhelmed me and clouded my head. I could only imagine how she'd feel as an owner of such thoughts. No, she was a prisoner to those thoughts, and they terrified me. She seemed to have a lot going on. Whenever I probed into her head, her thoughts were a punch straight to my guts. Her mind was such a dark place that it could swallow everything. I wanted to free her from that darkness.

"You bastard! Get out of my head!" She glared at me, but I found it more adorable and heartbreaking. She wanted to hide her suffering from me. I wouldn't allow that.

She thought we weren't mating her because we considered her unworthy. I wanted to break that misconception of hers most deliciously. I wanted to show her she was worthy of everything despite her past.

"Seems like it's time for today's lessons,"

~

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