The Devil's Cursed Witch

"Is she not allowed?" Morpheus countered and smirked. "Well, she just told me her name as we were parting. Such a nice name."

Draven only smirked and kept quiet, not bothering to tell him that he was the one to give her that name. "If you are done with your useless talk, leave."

"As a friend, I am here to share my thrilling experience with that human female but you simply want me gone," Morpheus said with a complaining tone, but Draven knew it was his act to annoy him.

"I do not have a friend like you."

"Denying won't change the past," Morpheus smirked.  "Who knows? Maybe, we can resume our friendship as I share my feelings about the human you saved."

'Feelings?' Draven's hands clutched the armrest lightly, though from the face he looked cold. 'What feelings?' he could not help but wonder.

Morpheus' grey eyes seemed to sparkle, but whether it was interest or mischief, no one knew. "After meeting that female, I feel like it won't be a bad thing to keep a human around. She can be a great way of entertainment. As you know, I live alone as thanks to your grace I had lost my family. I can keep her with me. She can be a good pet like how Midnight is to you."

'Pet!' Once again the grip of Draven's hand tightened on the armrest of his chair.

The shapeshifter continued to speak, "In tomorrow's council meeting, if you decide to send her to the human villages, then I will offer to take her with me. Since there is such a rule of not keeping humans inside our race's territory, I will just build a nest in the habitable part of the forest surrounding Agartha. It is technically outside the kingdom, so there wouldn't be an issue. Though I hate humans in general, I have taken a particular interest in this adorable little female. Who knows, once she grows up, I might end up liking her and decide to make her my mate…."

'Mate!'

Crack!

The armrest of the chair was crushed in Draven's hand the moment he heard the word 'mate'. Morpheus could not help but smirk at it was exactly the reaction he wanted.

"Oh, poor chair." Morpheus looked at the crushed armrest with pity. "Living or nonliving, both are meant to suffer in your hands, Your Majesty."

Draven realized he could not control his anger in front of the nasty eagle who was provoking him intentionally. "If you don't disappear from my sight, you will know exactly how this armrest felt."

Unfortunately, Morpheus was not one to be scared of his threats. With a grin, he even leisurely walked towards Draven. "Tsk! Always threatening others. You must have tormented that little one, pushing her so far that she decided to jump to death."

The winged man stood in front of the King and looked into those red eyes.

"What exactly did you do with her?"

This question made Draven freeze as he felt another strange feeling tug at his heart.

'I did not torment her.' Draven thought about what he did to her inside the tree house. 'I did nothing.'

He merely tried to find out the mark from his dream, as his gut feeling told him it was a clue to his past. At most, he glared at that clumsy thing for not cooperating well.

"You seem hesitant to answer, Your Majesty," Morpheus probed.

"I am the one who brought her to my kingdom. Whatever I do with her doesn't concern you."

"Here I am, telling you of the possibility of making her my mate and you say it doesn't concern me." Morpheus put on an offended expression. "The way she was happy and comfortable with me, I am sure she won't mind becoming my mate as soon as she becomes an adult."

Draven swallowed his rising anger as he continued to listen to Morpheus' provocation.

"Also, she seems to love my wings," he claimed with pride. "She enjoyed flying with her in my arms. She clung to me so tightly, pressing her body against mine. Such a small and frail body, I was worried I might crush her if I put even the slightest pressure in my grip—"

The next moment, the man in the chair was no more. Flickers and sparks appeared and disappeared within the chamber like lightning, their movements so fast that even the sound of the collision came only several seconds in delay.

The bodies of the two men moved from one end to the other end of the chamber, only to stop when Morpheus was pinned against the broken wall behind him, strangled with the King's strong grip.

The chamber was thoroughly thrashed, but the pair of red eyes with overwhelming murderous intent only had the shapeshifter in sight.

Morpheus could not deny that this time he might have touched the King's bottom line. Draven was truly angry and his grip on his neck was no joke. Unlike a while ago when Draven just strangled him out of annoyance, there was bloodlust in the way he tightened his fingers around his throat.

With the setting sun barely seen from the horizon, shadows danced within the darkening chamber, making Draven's red eyes look like flames summoned from hell. If the person targeted by his glare was not Morpheus but another person, he would have fainted with fright.

Rather than backing down, Morpheus felt his warrior blood boil. The beast inside him was ready to show up.

'When was the last time I had seen you like this?' Morpheus could not help but wonder.

To drive Draven to this point, the shapeshifter had spent countless years without getting any real result. At most, he could only vent out his anger against the King through small quarrels. But now…

'Did you not realize or are you pretending not to realize, Draven?'

Morpheus was initially just probing around, wanting to mess with Draven using that human female purely to annoy him. However, it seemed like that human meant more to him than anyone could have thought. Morpheus felt like even Draven himself didn't realize how much that human female affected him.