⚠ Content note for this chapter: explicit sexual content.
← The Doomed Mercenary’s Last Chance
Chapter 194
“Asad’s world.” Heavy words. But Kinain was ready to bear their weight. It had probably been so ever since the moment he reached out his hand to the man covered in scales.
Looking at the food laid out on the table, Kinain shifted his gaze to Hwei.
“Thank you for inviting me, but I should be going now.” Now that he understood the situation, he could not leave Asad to endure his rut alone.
Hwei nodded without a trace of disappointment. Seeing that, Kinain realized the meal had only ever been a pretext — Hwei had summoned him from the start to give him this advice.
“Oh, before you go, take this.”
Hwei held out something wrapped in cloth. It seemed to be the gift mentioned earlier.
“It’s a wine that brings good dreams. I brewed it myself. If you’d like anything else, I’ll give you those too.”
“Are there others?”
“There’s a wine that makes you laugh all day, and one that makes you cry, conversely. There’s also one that makes you speak only the truth, and one that lets you have a lucid dream. Shall I give you those?”
They all sounded fascinating, but Kinain shook his head.
“This is enough. Thank you.”
“Just say the word whenever you need anything.” As Kinain gathered the gift and rose, he hesitated.
…But where do I even start looking for Asad?
“Is something the matter?”
“I’m wondering where to begin searching for Asad.”
“Why, that’s easy. The two of you are imprinted, so you can find each other no matter where you are.”
“…The imprint can do that?” Hwei wore a bewildered expression for the first time.
“You didn’t know? I understood that you and Asad had imprinted before the wedding.”
“Hmm…”
Certainly, when Helio gave him the ring, their souls had imprinted on each other. But Helio hadn’t even known he was a dragon then, so the imprint had been incomplete. It had even nearly vanished the moment Kinain’s breath stopped.
The imprint that had continued since then was still incomplete.
Kinain recalled the golden light he had seen at the wedding. That was probably the shape of the imprint.
Hwei spoke.
“Truthfully, I don’t know much about imprinting either. It’s a matter of the soul. But what I do know is that those who are imprinted sometimes share each other’s senses and emotions.” Sharing senses and emotions. Come to think of it, the fact that he could see the shapes of magic was also the imprint’s power. He had become able to see what Asad saw.
‘Wait, then…’
Heat and hunger were the basic symptoms of rut. Perhaps the reason he had felt unusually hot since the wedding, and hungry no matter how much he ate, was Asad’s influence. No —it was certain. It was only that the imprint’s power was weak, so the shared sensations were weakened too. Asad’s rut pain reached Kinain as mere heat and hunger…
Just then Hwei spoke as if something had occurred to him.
“Oh, this I’m not sure about, but I believe I’ve heard that imprinted mates share each other’s dreams as well.”
…Dreams?
The moment he heard those words, a lightning-like realization struck Kinain’s mind. It was closer to instinct than thought.
Kinain stared at the wine bottle in his hand, then shifted his gaze to Hwei.
“Chief Hwei.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a favor I’d like to ask.”
***
“Asad, wake up.”
A soft voice tickled his ear. Slowly lifting his eyelids, Asad confirmed the face before him and started upright in surprise. This was someone who shouldn’t be here.
“How are you here…!”
His voice trailed off. Asad looked around.
A summer-blue sky, warm sunlight, willows swaying in the breeze. And a clear lake.
It was a landscape that reproduced some moment from his memories exactly. His tension finally eased.
“It’s a dream.”
Kinain sat on the big, flat rock where he always sat. Had he been swimming in the lake? Through his wet shirt, pale skin showed through. Water that had run down his jet-black hair trickled down his cheek, over his collarbone, and between his chest.
Asad’s gaze followed that trail as if licking it. His lower belly throbbed. In truth, it had been doing so all along. Ever since before this dream. He had simply had to endure it.
But now he could find no reason to endure any longer.
Because this was a dream.
“Ah.”
Kinain, nearly flattened beneath Asad in an instant, wore a startled expression. But Asad didn’t stop there. He stripped off the wet shirt as if tearing it, and sucked at his nipples as desperately as a man dying of thirst.
“Ngh, wait!”
A flustered voice tried to stop him, but Asad had no intention of stopping. Wasn’t enduring enough in reality alone? Rolling his chest on his tongue, a moaning sound slipped out. A body just as sensitive in dreams as in reality.
“I don’t like this…” A lie. When he actually liked it.
Fundamentally, Kinain was not a bashful person. But in bed alone, even trivial things by Asad’s standards shamed him. Feeling it in his chest, or the act of sucking a cock, especially. He had originally been an alpha, and there was the conservative sexual education he’d received in the kingdom. Asad, by contrast, had learned nothing of such things, and so felt no shame.
As his already pink-tinged skin flushed red, Asad’s mouth watered. Only after making both breasts the same red did he take his lips away and hurriedly try to strip off his pants. But the wet pants wouldn’t come off easily, and Asad’s patience ended exactly there.
‘What!’
With a ripping sound, the pants tore away, and Kinain was horrified. Experienced as he was, this was surely his first time having his pants ripped off. The startled Kinain tried to rise, but that only provoked Asad.
A dragon does not let go of a mate trying to escape him.
“Ugh!”
Kinain, his back pinned in an instant, ended up sprawled over the rock. Asad raised Kinain’s knees and peeled away the remaining scraps of fabric — barely pants anymore —like unwrapping packaging. Soon a round, upturned backside came into view, and a vein stood out on Asad’s forehead. His pupils had already narrowed to needle points.
Asad took out his cock and brought it between those cheeks. His cock, already fully aroused, bobbed on its own and slapped against the buttocks. Each time, thin fluid left round marks.
“Asad.”
Kinain called him in a small voice then. Reaching back to feel Asad’s skin, he spoke with more certainty, as if confirming something.
“Are you all right? You feel like you’re burning up.”
…Truly, sometimes Kinain seemed to forget who he was.
Asad exhaled hot breath. The Kinain in this dream was so utterly ‘Kinain’ that he could find no reason not to be aroused by him.
“I’m fine.” You’re the one to worry about.
Asad slowly rubbed his cock between the cheeks. A bead of sweat that had run down somewhere dripped onto the back of his hand.
Just as Kinain said, he was not in a normal state.
‘So hot…’
It felt as though his whole body had become a fireball. He even saw the illusion of everything before his eyes turning red.
He had often dreamed of Kinain, but never like this. The rut’s heat was clearly affecting even his dreams.
Asad knew the one and only way to quench this heat, but he had no intention of using it.
That was why he devoted himself to this dream all the more.
“I don’t want to hurt Your Highness.”
“Uhnngh, ah, ngh!”
“But this is a dream.”
He thrust his hips up hard enough to make a slapping sound, and Kinain gasped for breath like a man pulled from the water.
“Hah, it’s a dream.”
“Hngh, mm.”
Kinain, red all the way to the nape of his neck, slowly nodded. Asad wondered whether this dream was showing him what he wished for, or whether it flowed this way because Kinain truly was such a person. But right now he had no leisure to unravel such questions.
“Ha, so hot. Your Highness, too…”
‘But, ah!’
Was it the heat? His head was foggy. The only thought surfacing in his mind, melted like jelly in the heat, was that he wanted to keep driving himself into Kinain’s body just like this. Not noticing that Kinain was trying to say something, Asad lowered his head. As the change in position deepened the penetration, Kinain trembled faintly, but Asad only pulled his waist in tighter and drove deeper.
“Ha, uhnngh!”
Without restraint, he bit down greedily on the nape, and the teeth marks stood out clearly. Seeing the mark he had left, an unbearable rapture welled up. Asad called Kinain’s name endlessly, pouring his desire into him.
But no matter how many times he spent himself inside Kinain, no matter how he bit his whole body and left his marks, the torment of being trapped in flames remained.
As long as this was a dream, no method could erase this torment that felt like his soul was burning.
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