“Then I will only go outside to get food and come straight back.”
Orpheus slowly started to rise, slipping his hand up her leg until he was almost at her thigh, then he let her dress fall so he could hold her side.
“I will not be here to place the salt circle if it breaks. If its windy or if it rains, you won’t be able to go outside at all.”
“I-I can fix it myself, Orpheus.”
His eyes flashed bright crimson.
“Never,” he growled lightly, staring down at her. “You are to never go near the circle if it is broken.”
Her beautiful green eyes bowed, and she began to nibble at her bottom lip. “But I want you to help him.”
He shot forward and startled her when he caged her against the kitchen counter with his arms.
“Do you care for that Mavka?”
His sight deepened in its reddened colour, his growl becoming more prominent as he rumbled from his chest constantly. Does she care for him more than me? The idea of it made those invisible hands sweep over his brain, caressing it like they might start squeezing it and force him into madness.
“You are mine, little human. I will not let him take you from me.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“You are mine!” he roared, feeling his fins and fur trying to raise beneath his shirt. Those hands gave their first tentative squeeze, and he felt himself growing more agitated by the second. “Only I can touch you, hold you, smell you, taste you. You are my human, and if I cannot have you, then no Mavka can!”
Reia reached up and cupped his snout in comfort, but a part of him had wanted to bite at her hand in aggression. To show her that if he couldn’t have her, then he’d eat her. He didn’t, had to snuff the violent urge in him as not to harm her. He dug his claws into the wooden counter and felt himself slicing through the timber.
“Shhh, shhh,” she soothed, brushing her hand over the bone of his snout. “It’s okay. I only care about you, Orpheus. I’m not going to leave with him, ever. I promise.”
She was pacifying him… and it was working. He nuzzled into her hands, pleased to feel them on him as he closed his sight just to bask in their softness, their warmth.
“It’s just… I feel bad for him.” He opened his sight, his vision back to normal under her caring touches. “He is lonely, and pretty stupid. It’ll be a long time before he finds a human if he stays this way. He lives in a cave, Orpheus. No one will want to live like that.”
“So? He will learn, just as I have.”
“Don’t you feel bad for him?”
Her brows were creased together once more, and her bottom lip was doing that pouting thing.
“No,” he answered truthfully, unable to stop the urge to lean forward and lick that pout away.
She laughed, but even he could hear it lacked any true humour.
“You have all this humanity in you, and yet you can’t even sympathise with a creature just like yourself.” She brushed her forehead against the tip of his snout. “Orpheus, you have been alone for a long time, yes?”
“Eons,” he rasped.
“And you have lost many humans? You miss them, don’t you? You’re sad that they’re gone, and that you couldn’t protect them, even from yourself.”
“Yes,” he grated, feeling the familiar pang of emptiness and guilt in his heart.
“If it were possible, wouldn’t you have wished for someone to give you the answers you needed? For someone to help you so you didn’t have to lose them?”
“Of course, but then I wouldn’t have you.”
He would have kept another human, and they wouldn’t have been his little Reia.
She backed her head away, the smallest smile curling her lips. She is smiling at me again. He almost groaned in satisfaction.
“But what if I had come sooner then? What if I came near the beginning when you hadn’t learned everything you had and you hurt me?”
White flashed in his orbs. If Reia had been the first offering he’d brought here, he would have frightened her with his actions. He’d learned to be hesitant around humans because he’d upset many of them. He knew to give them space, to not sniff them or try to hold them like he wanted to.
She must have known by his eye colour change that he understood.
“That’s what I’m saying. You are leading him on the path to being hurt like you are. He will lose many, and he’ll be sad. What if he loses the one human that might be able to accept him? You will have aided his pain, and that’s not fair.”