NMP 3.1

Chapter 3. I Don’t Need A Prince

“…Damn it.”

That was the first thing the Flame Dragon, Jeno, said after opening his eyes. Damn it. He couldn’t find a better way to put it. Ah, actually, he knew a few more appropriate expressions.

Get out and die, you unscrupulous son of a bitch?

What the prince bastard, who even if he tore him to pieces a hundred times was not enough, sprayed on him was an aphrodisiac that made him lose his rationality. He thought it was some kind of extremely deadly poison to spray it with such a determined[efn_note]A determination that would sacrifice anything to achieve his goal (good or bad).[/efn_note] expression. But at this moment, Jeno wished that what he had inhaled had been a deadly poison.

He embraced Mikaela.

No matter how intoxicated he was because of the aphrodisiac, he could not forgive himself for what he had done.

I embraced Mikaela. He, who avoided even the light first kiss she had wished for as a birthday present, bit, sucked, and licked her like a man in a rut as if he had been waiting for this day.

He could still smell the princess’s fragrant body odor on the tip of his nose. He remembered forcing her until dawn when the effect of the drug was completely gone.

How… sweet it was.

“I still haven’t come to my senses.”

Jeno washed himself with hot water and put on his robe. He had to see Mikaela’s face. She had since left the bed with a reddish-brown stain on the sheet.

He remembered being together until dawn, so did she leave the room early in the morning? She must have passed out from exhaustion, so why did she go outside? Has her condition gotten worse? If so, it was a big deal.

But if that was not the case either.

“She doesn’t want to see me…”

Jeno stopped talking and closed his mouth. It was absurd that a corner of his chest throbbed with pain. His stride increased. Normally, Mikaela ate breakfast on the balcony overlooking the courtyard at this time. But today was different. Mikaela was nowhere to be seen.

After wandering around the castle in search of her, Jeno finally made his way to her tightly closed door like a person accepting final judgment. The hand that was about to knock on the door stopped several times in the air.

He felt that all his three thousand years had been in vain.

His initial determination to talk to Mikaela was overshadowed by his hesitation, unable to even knock on the door.

Knock Knock

Jeno laughed at himself and knocked on the door. And he listened to the sounds inside. He heard something moving. There was someone inside.

“Kid.”

He had the urge to bite his tongue at the same time he spoke. What did I just say? He called Mikaela the way he would usually call her on the subject of soothing her and talking to her. This was why habits were scary.

When was the first time he called her that? Probably from when Mikaela was a real kid. Five or six years old. He didn’t remember exactly, but it was around there anyway.

When they moved into the castle together 10 years ago, the name was not strange. He just laughed when she asked him not to treat her like a child anymore and the princess was eight years old at the time.

But at some point, Mikaela was really not a kid. Everything changed, both inwardly and outwardly. The moment he saw an emotion that was difficult to pin down on her slender face, Jeno’s heart sank.

Certain expressions, in and of themselves, meant that she has become an adult. If Mikaela had lived in the palace as she used to, he would have left after her wedding.

Since then, Jeno has even more desperately stuck to her previous appellation. It was a pathetic struggle.

Ha, what did he do with that ‘kid’ since late afternoon yesterday? He remembered burying his face between the legs of the ‘kid’ until dawn and licking the petals that were covered in saliva and honey.

Let’s die. Just quickly die, Dragon.

“If you’re inside, I’d like to talk to you.”

“… Not inside.”

A sullen voice was heard. She sounded like her heart was broken. It was understandable. Yesterday, he acted as if he were her lover, and when the day dawned, he was acting as if he had returned to being a stern guardian. Yet, even if he woke up after being sealed for 10,000 years, Jeno could not call her the same way he did yesterday.

Was that truly an aphrodisiac? He understood that aphrodisiacs were originally used to abnormally arouse someone. It was not about awakening another personality like a madman.

[Good, you’re taking it well. It’s going to be hard, but lift your waist a little more. I’ll drive it deep into the corner.]

[Your inside is so warm and it’s clinging on to me.]

[Mika, my lovely princess.]

Was he crazy?

If it had the effect of erasing memories altogether, he wouldn’t be as suicidal as he was now. Jeno continued to speak, swallowing the anger towards himself from yesterday.

For now, he has to apologize to Mikaela.

“About what happened yesterday, I.”

His voice didn’t come out, as if something was stuck in his throat. It was not that apologizing was difficult. He was worried about how Mikaela would take this apology. The image of her crying and clinging to him came to mind.

[Jeno, don’t stop… Aang… eut! So good, Jeno.]

“I apologize.”

It was the right thing to do.

“Go away!”

A word that made the flame dragon close his mouth bursted out of the door.

Normally, he would have asked where she had learned to say that, and no matter how much people treated her like a princess, Hildian and himself would have reproached her because they never taught her such things.

“Mikaela, you are now.”

“No, no! I don’t want to see Jeno’s face!”

“That is why I.”

“Are you going to talk to me now after you’ve done that? A calm conversation? What do you mean you want to do that kind of thing? Go away. How shameless of you. I don’t want to hear a word, so leave me alone!”

He hadn’t said such a thing like that even in his stormy days. Ah, was the passionate period of humans not over yet because she’s still eighteen? That’s not it. At Mikaela’s age, she would have had a coming-of-age ceremony and even got married two or three years ago.

Perhaps the atmosphere of the human world has changed in the meantime?

Everything changes fast in their world. It has always been a time of marriage between relatives to consolidate power, and while he was gone for a while, that custom became a barbaric thing of the past. Even though only a hundred or a hundred and fifty years have passed.

He wouldn’t be surprised if she was considered an adult at about forty-five years old instead of fifteen or sixteen years old anymore. Even if a forty-four-year-old man with a beard was treated generously even when he was crying clamorously, he wouldn’t blink an eye.

For a dragon, the ‘standard’ of the human world was an ever-changing concept.

But Mikaela was isolated from the normal human world. When she was younger than she is now, even when she was angry, she didn’t slam the door.

‘…That kind of thing? Go away?’

The dragon was speechless at such an unfamiliar expression. Even so, the weight of the crime committed by a foster parent was too great to lament that 18 years of hard work that went in vain.

Inside the room, there was a cry as if the sky was falling. It was a cry that fitted the expression of wailing.

What’s the point of the locked door?

He couldn’t even laugh at it. He had smashed the thick door of the castle tower that blocked the winter wind, and now he couldn’t even put his hand on the handle of Mikaela’s door.

For now, he should retreat.

“I’ll make you lunch. I’ll be back later.”

The crying sound was so loud that he didn’t know if she could hear him. Hoping that the princess’s feelings would somewhat subside until he came back, he left the door.

Why was he alive, he suddenly wondered.