It met her

Our Sanity

'Was she praying?' Asmodi thought while watching her with amusement. '"oh ye have little faith" ' His father's favorite line ran through his head. Something he'd said a lot when Asmodi was first trying to learn how to fly. Glancing at her again he kicked off with his hind legs. Asmodi pulled his wings back and began falling in a stream line position. He was approaching her at a swift pace. His disgust for her growing the closer he got. This wasn't right. Once his claws wrapped around her body he spread his wings and glided upwards. He didn't look down at her; right now he was furious at himself and didn't want to aim it at her. Not yet. They needed to talk.

Once back on the mountain he took her with his tail and began walking back inside. She hadn't said anything yet. 'Was she scared quiet?' On any other day that would've pulled a laugh out of him... not now. He walked pass the twins who were still sleeping and brought her into his room. He set her down in the center of the room and nonchalantly curled up by the door, blocking it. He could feel smoke rising from his nostrils, a sure tell sign that he was enraged. He took a few moments to breathe deeply.

"Uh, thank you." He heard her say, her hands were still clasped and she purposefully directed her gaze to the floor. The fear was gone from her eyes and replaced with confusion. He could tell she was not her original self.

'It wasn't her fault.' He told himself before speaking. "I don't know where you're getting this from. And it's extremely problematic." He sighed; if she was as she was before he probably wouldn't have bothered telling her anything but now that she actually seemed like a sentient being... This was his first time experiencing guilt. "Elizabeth, that contract I made is formally known to us dragons as a mating pact." The words felt like poison dripping off of his tongue. "The things I said after clawing your neck..." He paused, he should've known replacing 'mine' with 'my pet' wouldn't have changed a thing. "Seeing as I have no intention of going out to find an actual mate I thought it would've been fine to use it as a means to oversee you as your owner." Especially since he'd thought he'd end up killing her anyway but what did he do instead, he saved her... twice thereafter. "It's no different from a marriage except, unlike humans and marriage, we tend to take it seriously." Yet here he was using it for such a stupid reason. What had he been thinking? He hadn't been. At the time his mind was full of noise and he grabbed anything he could to quiet it. He'd made a stupid decision and hated himself for it. He had considered himself the perfect male predator, a gem among his species. Mistakes like this were below him, yet here he is confessing his mistakes to a human female.

His nostrils flared. "The ritual doesn't suddenly turn two dragons into soul mates. It just makes any other male dragons know they'll have a male to fight if they try to court that female. In addition to allowing me to track you and your health." His nostrils flared and he had to again remind himself that she wasn't the source of his anger. He knew he had a habit of lashing out at anything when angry but he never viewed that as a bad thing. Anger and aggression, to him and his father, was strength but never when aimed towards a woman. He looked at her; she was just silently standing there taking all this in. He couldn't read her mind but he could tell she was processing a lot.

"So then..." Her voice was quieter than usual. "Why are you telling me this now?"

His eyes widened. 'Why was he telling her this now? Guilt?' It had nothing to do with the magic from the resurrection or the strange way she'd been acting yesterday. His desire to tell her came from the fact that someone else's magic was affecting her. He saw her as a possession and couldn't stand the idea of someone else's magic inside her. That level of possessiveness only came from fondness. The same was his species was fond of the items of their hoard. Now that he had admitted that to himself there's no point in lying to himself. What he was doing was venting; like a male would to his female and expecting her to provide solace like a female would to her male. He wouldn't tell her that though. He had no interest in taking her as a proper mate. He had no interest in truly mating at all. He began to wonder about when he'd come to that conclusion but then something urgent occurred to him. 'She's human; she had no magic to add to the ritual. She should be the only one affected, not me.' The pact plus the resurrection should've pumped her full of his magic but he couldn't sense any of his inside her. What magic she had inside her came from someone else. He narrowed his eyes at her.

"What are you?" He knew something wasn't right about her but she smelt human. He couldn't trace any magic emanating from her soul, just the unfamiliar one that settled under her skin. That should've been his. All of this was wrong, nothing was making sense and that enraged him.

She took a step back. "I'm human." He could smell the lie now. He was sure she had said that before and he'd verified it was the truth. So why was it now registering as a lie.

He growled, he didn't have time for this. Lies were a human thing. Most creatures connected to magic didn't bother to lie because it was easy for others of their kind to detect. Humans did it all the time, they're completely untrustworthy, no wonder Titania had hated them, how could anyone ever come to love humans? How could Asia come to choose one over him?

The thought surprised even him. "Just get out." He said in annoyance but he never moved from the door. He was in a simmering childish rage. "Leave now."

Elizabeth looked at him. There was more she wanted to say. She still had so many questions about her situation but even she, a human, could tell he was dealing with something. Every time he went silent he was having his own internal monologue, conversing with his own demons. That is why she stayed silent, because she understood that. Now he was telling her to leave without allowing her passage.

She looked down at her fingers, now, while she was someone else, was the perfect time to do something she wouldn't usually do. She stepped closer to him, slow and cautious but determined in her movements. He eyed her like a cat that didn't know her scent but he didn't back away like one. She put a hand on his scaly body and rubbed back and forth. It didn't feel rough or scratchy, more like fine leather. She could feel his muscles beneath her fingers relax but the way he looked at her stayed the same.

"We'll figure something out, Asmodi." She said, with a sigh. She needed to push her worries away for now. "Maybe this can be undone; for the sake of both of our sanity."