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.”

Orpheus thought for long moments. Sympathy for another wasn’t something he was used to feeling, but he’d often felt sympathy for himself. He’d longed to remove his own pain,

to not feel lonely, forsaken, and desolate. He had wished that someone would help him gain a human’s heart.

Am I the one who can spare this for another Mavka?

Orpheus could never take back his past, couldn’t change it, so was he the one who had to go through all this just to help others of his kind? That didn’t seem fair to him.

However, it did make him understand her plea.

“But if I take him to the village, you will not be safe.”

“Please, Orpheus? He needs to wear clothes, he needs to build his own house, he needs to learn. He’ll scare my kind away as he is now. He’s stupid and overtly inquisitive, but these things will help.”

His heart thumped heavily in his chest, feeling like the thunder of a lightning storm as its loud bangs vibrated throughout his body.

“I would not be able to leave you here.”

She would be unprotected, and he’d be afraid for her the entire time. Eight days away from Reia sounded like hell, not knowing if she was safe but also not being able to be in her presence. He’d miss her like a terrible ache.

“Then take me with you,” she pleaded. “I’m not afraid, and you said you could disguise me.”

“We are not ready for me to take you there.”

“But you took the other human there.” Her lips thinned as she narrowed her eyes. “Why am I so different?”

“Because I made a mistake in taking her there. She left me since it was discovered I had found a companion and she was living with me.”

“You said you might take me there, so when were you going to? In a month, a year? I already told you I wanted to go.”

“It is not about how long, Reia,” he answered, reaching up to brush her long strands through his claws, enjoying the feel of them crawling through his fingers.

“Then when?”

He wanted to answer, to give her the truth.

He remained silent.