Chapter 24: Good Person
Veles held his breath within Alan’s embrace.
No words could describe how he felt at this moment.
A heart that had long been frozen was now soaking in a hot spring; warm honey flowed through his veins, and the vast hollow in his soul was filled to the brim with something soft and sweet.
Yet dragons were, after all, terrifyingly greedy creatures—
Veles couldn’t stop himself from lifting his arms and tightly returning the hug, but immediately afterward he sensed another change stirring within his body.
The scorching heat spreading from deep inside him, the intense thirst, his steadily rising body temperature, the restless twitch of tail and scales.
Absurd and base impulses rampaged through his flesh. From an angle Alan could not see, Veles’s pupils shone with the brightness of a true beast.
Worst of all, accompanied by some unutterable, secret yearning, Veles’s already inhuman senses were heightened even further on this night.
The frail, slender black-haired human was right there in his arms. He caught Alan’s scent—the softness and warmth of human skin, exuding a sweetness as enticing as honey.
At this moment, Alan held no guard against him at all—and damn it, Veles could sense that.
A wave of dizziness overtook him.
In a daze, he seemed to see a starving beast—one that had wandered this world alone for far too long, driven nearly mad with hunger by endless cold and solitude.
And that foolish, fluffy little rabbit came right up to it, even coquettishly presenting its utterly defenseless belly to the beast.
All it would take was a single opening of the jaws, and the beast could easily take the rabbit into its mouth.
Gently pierce that thin skin with its teeth, and draw out the sweet juices within.
Even though the image vanished in an instant, the bestial nature hidden within Veles’s body still boiled up rapidly.
What was that word again?
Oh, right.
Salivating with desire.
The dragon part of Veles was salivating over the human in his arms.
His throat bobbed as he struggled with all his might to restrain his draconic instincts, the effort leaving him faintly dizzy.
“Mr. Veles, are you all right?”
He heard Alan’s slightly puzzled voice, as though it were coming from very far away.
“You’re shaking,”
Alan asked with concern.
“I—”
Veles tried to suppress his heavy breathing as he spoke, only to realize that his voice had turned strange and hoarse.
After a brief pause, he forced it back under control.
“I’m fine. I’m happy, Mr. Alan. Very, very happy,” Veles said in a low voice.
“You’re the first person willing to accept me,” He continued. He wasn’t lying—though at the moment, his mind was hardly on explaining himself.
He sensed that Alan had loosened his arms and was starting to pull away from his embrace. Like all ordinary people, a comforting hug between friends was meant to be warm yet brief.
But Veles’s solid, powerful arms were still locked tightly around Alan’s waist.
Half consciously, half unconsciously, he was trying to confine the small, country mage within his embrace—if he could, he would willingly keep him there forever.
“You’re a good person, Mr. Veles. It’s just that other people never had the chance to see that.” Alan looked up at him and said earnestly.
He vaguely sensed the awkwardness of their current posture, but didn’t think too much of it. After all, unlike the world he was familiar with, people on this continent often did all kinds of astonishing things—let alone that Veles was clearly still in an emotionally charged state.
To comfort Veles, Alan reached out and lightly patted his arm.
The silver-eyed man lowered his head to look at Alan—at those gentle black eyes, the pale cheeks, and the slender neck exposed above the collar of his sleepwear.
Veles felt thirsty again.
And when Alan’s fingertips slid just like that over his arm, Veles faltered for a split second.
He almost bent down directly, and then—
Then a small, hard tree seed struck the corner of Veles’s forehead.
It shattered the desire he himself hadn’t even noticed into pieces.
Seizing this chance, reason struggled back into control of the man’s body.
Veles straightened up at once. Another volley of tree seeds flew toward him, but before they could hit, his tail flicked swiftly and knocked them aside.
Several hazy shadows were scurrying furtively through the bushes by Alan’s doorway—it was those damned, irritating fairies. The rude tree seeds were clearly their handiwork.
Obviously, Veles’s behavior tonight had once again refreshed the fairies’ level of disgust toward him.
They hadn’t even used their usual weapons—those berries—but had instead switched to foul-smelling, inedible tree seeds.
(Of course, the change of weapons might also be because the fairies had once hidden nearby and personally witnessed Alan handing those berries to that nauseating dragon-blood hybrid to eat. Damn it, those had been the sweetest berries they’d carefully picked!)
“Ah—sorry—”
Not a single seed had hit Alan, but the fairies’ protest made him immediately jump out of Veles’s arms.
Flustered, he hurried a few steps toward the bushes.
“We didn’t mean to disturb you.”
The fairies scattered and vanished in a flash.
Alan had no choice but to turn back and look at Veles with a helpless expression. “…I think we disturbed their sleep.”
Veles cast an icy glance toward the now-empty thicket. Sensing the chill radiating from him, the fairies had already scattered in a panic.
And Alan had already stepped out of his embrace.
Now, no matter what excuse he might use, it would be hard for him to pull Alan back into his arms again.
At the thought, Veles’s tail lashed about restlessly.
