Page 64 of The Naga Lord's Pretty Little Mouse

“The human stays,” I say.

Veltren’s eyes darken. “This is not a request.”

My tail snaps against the floor, the impact sharp. “Neither was my answer.”

The tension fractures, thin and splintering.

Ithros watches me for a while longer, then sighs, shaking his head. “Then be prepared for the war that follows.”

I welcome it.

Night stretches over the stronghold,drowning the stone walls in flickering firelight.

Her presence lingers, even when she is not near.

She does not come to me. I do not seek her out. I’m not sure I can handle being near her. I might commit an act that will damn both of us.

She drifts like a ghost through my halls, slipping past warriors, refusing to engage with the world around her. The fight has not left her, but something in her eyes has changed.

The kiss remains an unspoken thing between us, a wound neither of us dares to touch.

I do not regret it.

I regret that it was not enough.

The need to claim her, to mark her as mine, has only grown sharper, crueler.

I do not know what to do with it.

28

SEREN

The halls of Xirath’s stronghold have turned into a prison, one I pace through like a restless beast.

Days have passed, but the walls still hold his presence, his power woven into the stone, the shadows, the silence that lingers in his absence.

I do not seek him out.

I do not need to.

His presence is everywhere, and that alone should be enough to drive me to madness.

The kiss, our kiss should have been the end of it.

It should have severed whatever invisible chain has been tying me to him, burned through the fragile thing inside me that refuses to die.

Instead, it has poisoned me.

I feel him in my skin, in my blood, in the spaces he has never touched but somehow still claims.

This is insanity.

This is not who I am.

Yet, my feet drag me toward him like a blade drawn to a battle it has no chance of surviving.

The door to his chambers looms ahead, shut, unyielding. I could turn around. Walk away. Pretend this sickness festering inside me will burn itself out.

---