Smoke escaped from his flared nostrils. "Welcome to your forever."
Her forever?
She turned and surveyed the expanse in front of the castle again, her gaze following the winding path that snaked its way to the ominous entrance where they stood, the same path her carriage had climbed before, to bring her here.
A detail, not tiny, had escaped her attention earlier —the dragons. How did she miss them?
Each massive gray pillar flanking the path was, in fact, adorned with a colorful dragon sculpture on the top.
Painted in vivid hues, the dragons breathed life into the stone. Some appeared regal, their heads held high, while others seemed to be sleeping. The craftsmanship was remarkable, capturing the essence of these mythical creatures in all their fearsome glory.
"I didn't notice the dragons..." she trailed off.
The eerie dragon-pillared path, the castle cloaked in that shroud of ashy mist and the Lord belonged to her.
When no answer came, she glanced behind her shoulder and realized why.
Zerberus had simply walked away from her!
Rude!
Curse him.
"Wait!" Odette chased after him, his natural stride too much for her to catch up with without running.
Since he didn't try to pace his strides with her much shorter ones, she had to half-jog to keep up. Did he try totire me so I wouldn't keep talking to him?
She reached him when he was almost well inside the monster he called home. "Wait!"
Their footsteps echoed off the stone floor as they passed through an entry chamber and then into a vast hexagonal room with long tables arranged in lines. A smaller table rose from a stony platform at the far end of the room. The wall was covered in intricate carvings of eerie birds, twisted vines, and malevolent flowers; another time Odette would have touched that ancient art.
"You didn't notice the dragons because they weren't there when you arrived earlier," he explained with a reptilian monotone. Ah! So, he did hear her when she had mumbled that question yet decided to be a rude cold-blooded beast and ignored her.
Her hand clenched at her side. "Did you ask your people to redecorate your castle for me?" She wanted to irritate him just as he did. He didn't seem to find the need to answer her as he just stared at her.
"What am I supposed to do here?" She asked before he would leave again. She needed answers.
He didn't need to think. His answer came swiftly. "Please me."
How dare he? "I'm not a concubine!"
He snorted, another whiz of blue smoke out. "Nay. You certainly aren't." Was that an insult?!
She took a deep inhale to calm herself. Snapping at him would not help her cause.
"But we will not spend all our time in...doing...um," She stuttered, he lifted a white eyebrow.
"Kissing." Brilliant remark, Odette. "You will have things to do..." Like raiding villages, stealing sheep, she kept that part to herself.
He frowned and pursed his lips.
"Won't you?" She said sheepishly.
"That I will. I do now."
She decided to be diplomatic; besides, she didn't think she could keep chasing him. "But what am I supposed to do with my time when you are so busy with your dragon lordship things?"
He shrugged, without glancing down at her. "I don't want you to concern yourself with any kind of work. I want you to rest."
She was certain she hadn't heard him correctly. "Rest?"
"Yes."
"In God's name, why?"
"God?" His nostrils flared, "I don't know if you noticed but-" She was shoved to his chest, a scaly forearm around her small waist, her feet had abandoned the floor, "God doesn't come around here."
Odette was too shaken to produce more than a squeak.
"There wouldn't be any need of him here."
"Do you believe in a God?"
"Your god? Yes. He fears us and stays away from my domain."
Odette remained silent.
He seemed satisfied with that. She was placed on the floor again.
"Don't get in the way of other people's duty." He added, crossing his massive arms over his massive chest.
"But what exactly do they do?"
"They collect treasure, food. Maintain the castle and the grounds. Warriors train dragons and other warriors."
Her eyes rounded. "Dragons are trained by humans?"
He threw her a look. "Warriors are the dragons. They train in their true forms."
It seemed to Odette that every statement, every detail of her 'new forever' filled her with a fear, a chill that came straight from her soul. I fear dragons but I'm mated to one.
Zerberus resumed his long strides.
She rushed behind him, grabbing his large hand. "Wait! Where are you going?"
"As laird of my species, I have duties to attend to."
"Can't they wait?" She was out of breath.
"I had been away for a while." Amusement danced in those inhuman eyes, the crimson ring surrounding his glacial blue eyes had thickened, and those disconcerting thin pupils had thinned even more. It was a reminder of who hid behind the human facade.
"Your eyes..."
"What about them."
"They are different..."
"Because I'm starving."
"You aren't eating...humans, are you?"
"Good Hell, of course not." He winced and gazed at her as if he had offended his taste. "They taste awful."
She laughed then. Unsure whether for using Good Hell instead of Good God, or his expression at her suggestion.
Feeling he wanted to leave, she needed to ask more questions. "Do you have any other superpowers?"
"For a mouse like you, mine are considered powers," he said without derision, plain honesty laced in his words. "For a mole, your sight is considered a superpower. To a maggot, your ability to walk tall is a superpower. But you never pause to think what these inferior beings would believe. You ignore them. You let them live out their short existences. But you look at us, infinite, primordial beings, as if we were gods with superpowers. It's just the way we are. And the way you aren't." He snorted. "Ah, humans were so entitled! That was why I stopped eating them."
She gasped, needing a few second to recover from that information. He was eating humans before. "What other characteristics do you have that I, being inferior and all, do not possess?
He did something she did not expect. He opened his jaws and emitted a blue blaze that swept over her, accompanied by a ravenous roar. Odette half expected the monster castle behind them to rise up and run away, with all its heads and towers, frightened of its master. The castle didn't, the servants scuttered away like mice.
"You are not inferior. Never call yourself that again," he grabbed her chin and squeezed, "Your blood is warm." His chest pressed against her soft curves, "You are warm. You have a heart."
Odette bit her lip. "Don't you?"
Zerberus nodded. "Yes. You."
Her head began to throb.
"But here," The small, velvety hand pressed against the hard rock in his chest. "In here, what's in here? Anything at all?"
"Nothing. We don't possess the muscle you call a heart. Our cold, blue, sometimes green blood pumps from our brains." He tapped his forehead twice, with index and ring fingers. "Your heart beats for me. Now, do you see how you are not useless?"
"I'm your heart."
His unblinking, reptilian eyes gleamed. "You are."