[COMPLETE] [[**Sequel, The Hybrid Harold, is up!**]]
The first generation past the war has settled and the result is something no one from the past would recognize. In the United Human Alliance, the human run country that takes up much of the land m...
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Michael needed me to help him out, to help him find the emotional block, to think about it but... There wasn't really much to think about. It was my flame, something that had been in me for nearly as long as I could remember. It didn't always behave, but it was always there, burning however it liked. I could feel it, the ripple of fire always inside me, just as constant as my beating heart. It seemed to want to protect me, but like an overly emotional toddler it often went out of control. I couldn't trust it, and yet I couldn't contain it, couldn't keep it from hurting people and things. Usually, it simply filled my body, but it could expand, burst from me without permission and form a barrier. It was a barrier between me and everything- the good and the bad.
It wasn't that I hadn't tried to control it, but that it seemed hopeless, and joining a club had never been something I was willing to do. Even now, as a member of Lore, I didn't support it. People seemed to think that they were better than humans, clubs a way to show how better they were. To separate themselves. I bristled just thinking about it, humans weren't below us, they were people too. Weren't we people first? Wasn't that why a djinn and an empath could be friends? A fae and a scar mage? We were all sentient humanoid forms, we all had emotions, bonds, thoughts, opinions...
Would accepting my dragon side mean letting go of that? If I was a dragon first, would I forget that we were all still people? Would I look down on my mother, look down on my friends?
"Alenia," This time when Michael spoke he didn't pull out of my mind, his hands still on my temples, his eyes open while our foreheads gently touched. "Why are you so scared?"
"I-" How could I deny it? He was in my mind, looking through my emotions, and he knew what I had never put into words. "I don't know. I don't- I don't want to forget that we're all people."
"You won't," Michael said.
"I can't," I said, tears welling up in my eyes. My emotions were out of control, but I didn't seem able to do anything about it. "My mom-"
How could I let go of her? Let go of the humanity she had given me? All for this flame inside me, this burning, uncontrollable, dangerous thing that I never wanted. This thing my father gave me, this thing that hurt my mom, tore me from my home, kept my friends away, prevented me from living a normal life. Mom had always loved me, always supported me despite our differences, despite the fact that she'd never planned for this. She'd never planned to give birth to a dragon, a burning monster, a ticking time bomb. She'd just wanted a normal life, and then she'd only wanted a family, and then she'd only wanted a healthy child... Not- not a monster.
Michael's eyes were confused, his emotions more open than I'd ever seen them. No doubt he could feel what I was feeling, and yet he didn't know why, and I couldn't bring it to myself to break it to him. Yet another innocent whose life was trapped to a dragon. Tears began to fall on his face too, and I hated myself for doing this to him, for not just allowing his father to do it. I'd been selfish, again.
