Erza stepped closer, closing the distance between them until she stood close enough to see the individual lashes framing Fiona’s hazel eyes.

For the first time since they had met, since the port, since the hospital, since every bitter interaction that had passed between them, Erza looked at Fiona and did not see a nasty human. Did not see a pathetic creature clinging to a man who had outgrown her. Did not see an obstacle to be removed or an enemy to be crushed.

She saw a woman. By human standards, a beautiful one. Strong jaw, clear skin, eyes that had seen battle and survived. A warrior’s build, lean and capable, the body of someone who had spent years training to protect others. She could keep Yuuta safe. She could stand beside him in ways that Erza could not.

"You are a beautiful human," Erza said.

Fiona froze. Her mind, usually so quick, so sharp, so ready for battle, became a blank wall. Erza had called her many things, nasty, pathetic, insignificant, but never beautiful. Never anything that suggested this monster saw her as anything more than a minor inconvenience to be tolerated or crushed.

Erza did not wait for a response.

"Will you marry Yuuta?"

The question hung in the air between them, absurd and impossible and devastating. Fiona’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Her brain, still struggling to process the word beautiful, now had to contend with marry and Yuuta in the same sentence.

"What?"

The word came out as a croak, barely recognizable as language.

"I said," Erza repeated, her voice steady, her eyes unblinking, "will you marry my Yuuta?"

Fiona’s mind went blank again.

The question had stunned her so completely that she forgot where she was, forgot who she was speaking to, forgot that the woman in front of her could kill her with a thought.

Marriage.

Yuuta.

Marriage to Yuuta.

The man she had loved, the man she had lost, the man she had tried to kill the woman who now stood before her for.

She was lost.

Drowning.

Sinking into a sea of confusion and disbelief and something that felt dangerously like hope.

Erza knelt.

The motion was smooth, unexpected, utterly unlike the proud, cold queen who never lowered herself before anyone.

She knelt on the concrete sidewalk, her silver hair pooling around her shoulders, her violet eyes fixed on Fiona’s stomach. Her hand reached out, slow, deliberate, and pressed gently against the human woman’s abdomen.

She was checking. Examining. Evaluating the capability of the womb that would one day carry Yuuta’s children.

Fiona was still spaced out, her mind trapped in the labyrinth of Erza’s impossible question. She did not register the touch at first. She did not feel the cool pressure of Erza’s palm against her belly. She was somewhere else, somewhere far away, walking down an aisle toward a man with red eyes and a kind smile.

Erza pinched.

The pain was sharp, sudden, enough to snap Fiona back to the present. She yelped, stumbling backward, her hands flying to her stomach, her face burning crimson.

"Ouch... What are you doing?" she demanded, her voice high and trembling.

Erza remained kneeling, her hand still extended as if she had not noticed that her target had moved. "I was checking your womb."

"My... What?" Fiona’s face grew hotter. The word womb from Erza’s lips was somehow more embarrassing than the pinch itself. "Why?"

Erza’s expression did not change. "It is my duty to ensure that my mortal’s concubine is healthy. The woman who will bear his children should be strong enough to survive the process."

Fiona’s embarrassment curdled into anger.

"What is wrong with you? What is going on in your head?"

Her voice was shaking, her face still red, her hands still pressed protectively over her stomach. She could not process the situation. Could not understand why the woman who had threatened to kill her, who had lifted her by the throat and called her a nasty human, was now kneeling on the sidewalk discussing her womb.

Erza sighed.

The sound was long and deep, pulled from somewhere far beneath her cold exterior. Her voice, when she spoke, was dark. Trembling. The voice of someone who was speaking against every instinct, every desire, every screaming fiber of her being.

"You do not need to understand the situation. Just say it." She paused, her violet eyes finding Fiona’s. "Just say... will you marry him?"

Fiona paused.

The anger drained from her face, replaced by something else. Something quieter. She saw the tension in Erza’s jaw, the way her hands trembled slightly, the way her voice had lost its usual cold certainty. This was not the monster mocking her. This was not the greater demon playing games. This was something real. Something painful.

"What does that mean?" Fiona asked softly.

Erza’s voice grew distant, as if her soul was fighting against her, as if every word was being torn from somewhere deep and bleeding.

"Will you marry my mortal?" Erza said, her voice trembling a little. "Will you take care of him? Will you walk beside him for the rest of his life and make him happy?"

Fiona saw it then, the genuine regret behind those words.

The sacrifice.

The agony of someone who loved so much that she was willing to give everything away.

She should say yes.

The thought bloomed in her chest like a flower opening to the sun.

She had wanted this for so long, wanted Yuuta, wanted a life with him, wanted to be the one who woke beside him every morning and fell asleep beside him every night. She had hated Erza for taking that future away. She had resented the silver-haired monster who had appeared from nowhere and stolen the man she loved.

And now Erza was offering to give him back.

She wanted to say yes.

She wanted to say I will walk with him, I will love him, I will make him happy for the rest of his days. The words gathered on her tongue, eager to be spoken, ready to change her life forever.

Then she paused.

Her face darkened. Her eyes, which had been bright with hope, grew heavy with memory. She remembered why she could not be with Yuuta. She remembered the promises she had made, the duties she could not abandon, the past that still held her in chains. She could not simply dream of a happy life. She had to earn it. She had to settle things first. And until then.

She raised her head. Her expression hardened into the face of a warrior, not a lover.

"No."

The word was simple. Final. A single syllable that struck Erza like a blade to the chest.

Rejection.

The queen had requested, no, the queen had offered, and a human had dared to refuse. In any other context, at any other time, the response would have been death. Brutal, immediate, unforgettable death.

Erza had killed for less.

She had killed for disrespect, for insolence, for the crime of looking at her the wrong way.

The punishment for refusing a queen’s request was not simply death, it was spectacle. Spine removal, slow and agonizing. Organs ripped out one by one, fed to the victim’s own family while they still breathed.

Erza’s aura raged.

The air around her grew cold. The light seemed to dim. Shadows stretched and twisted, reaching toward Fiona like hungry hands. The temperature dropped so sharply that Fiona’s breath fogged in front of her face.

But Erza did not move. Did not strike. Did not kill.

She had put so much effort into this decision. Struggled so hard to accept that she had to leave Yuuta. Fought against every instinct, every desire, every screaming fiber of her being, and offered him to Fiona. And Fiona had refused.

Fiona stood her ground.

Her face remained still, expressionless, the face of a soldier accepting the consequences of her choices. But tears formed in her eyes, tears she refused to shed, because refusing Yuuta was not what she wanted. It was what she had to do. And the difference between want and need had never felt so cruel.

Erza controlled herself.

It took everything she had, centuries of discipline, millennia of cold control, but she forced her aura back, forced the shadows to retreat, forced the temperature to rise. Her voice, when she spoke, was tight but steady.

"Is there any reason you reject my offer?" Erza asked.

The question hung in the air between them, fragile and dangerous, trembling like a blade balanced on the edge of a table. One wrong word could send it falling. One careless breath could change everything.

Fiona looked at her, and for the first time since this strange conversation began, her expression was not confusion or embarrassment or anger. It was determination. Hard and sharp and unyielding.

"I can’t marry Yuuta," she said. "For now."

Erza’s eyes narrowed. For now. The words were like a door left slightly ajar, not closed, not locked, but not open either. A possibility. A future that might never come. But the fact that Fiona had said for now instead of never meant something.

"May I know the reason?" Erza asked. Her voice was polite, genuinely polite, not the cold courtesy of a queen speaking to a servant. She was asking. Not demanding. Not commanding. Asking.

Fiona’s frustration boiled over. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes, which had been soft with unshed tears moments ago, hardened into something sharper.

"How can you expect me to marry Yuuta?" Her voice rose, cracking with the effort of holding back emotions that had been bottled for too long. "How can you expect me to live a happy life, to play house, to bear children, to pretend that everything is fine, when my father’s killer is still walking free in this world?"

Erza did not interrupt.

She stood perfectly still, her silver hair stirring in the afternoon breeze, her violet eyes fixed on Fiona’s face. She could feel it now, the rage radiating from the human woman like heat from a fire. Not the cold, controlled anger of a soldier. Something hotter. Something older. The rage of a daughter who had watched her father die and had never stopped wanting revenge.

Fiona’s voice dropped, becoming lower, more dangerous.

"I can’t marry Yuuta. I won’t." She paused, her breath shaking. "Not unless, not until, I kill the Demon King with my own fucking hands." Her teeth clenched. "I will not be happy. I will not rest. I will not let myself have a single moment of peace until that monster is dead and I am the one who killed him."

Her rage was raw, bleeding through every word, staining the air between them with the color of old wounds and older grief.

Erza understood.

She had almost forgotten, in her obsession with Yuuta, in her desperate struggle to save him from himself, that humans had their own stories. Their own wounds. Their own hungers that could not be satisfied by bread or love or the simple passage of time.

Fiona was not simply a rival for Yuuta’s affections. She was not merely an obstacle to be removed or a tool to be used. She was a woman who had lost something precious and could not move forward until she had avenged that loss.

Erza knew that hunger.

She had felt it herself, centuries ago, when she was young and weak and the world had tried to crush her.

The desire for revenge was not rational. It was not healthy. It was not something that could be talked away or healed with kind words. It was a fire that consumed everything else, love, hope, peace, until only the hunt remained.

She looked at Fiona, really looked at her, and for the first time, she did not see an enemy. She saw a reflection.

A woman driven by the same cold fury that had driven Erza for centuries.

A woman who had sacrificed everything for the chance to make those who had wronged her pay.

So Erza made her decision.

She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and looked directly into Fiona’s burning eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, was steady.

"Then let’s end the reign of the Demon King."

Fiona’s rage stalled. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"Pardon?"

__________________________

(Inside Yuuta Apartment)

"Got you," Isvarn said.

The words slithered through the kitchen, wrapping around Yuuta like invisible chains. He sat on the floor, back pressed against the doorframe, legs stretched out before him, useless and trembling. The old man towered above him, seven feet of ancient muscle and crystalline fury, his violet eyes boring into Yuuta’s red ones with the patience of something that had been hunting for centuries and had finally cornered its prey.

Is it really going to end like this? The thought surfaced from the chaos of his mind, clear and cold and terrible. Am I really going to die?

Isvarn’s aura pressed down on him like a physical weight, choking him, but not physically. His lungs still drew air, his chest still rose and fell.

But something deeper pressed against his soul, his mind, the very essence of who he was. Like being submerged in deep water, pressure building from all sides, squeezing until he could not tell where his body ended and the darkness began.

His eyes searched the apartment, the living room, the hallway, the bedroom door. Searching for silver hair. Searching for violet eyes. Searching for the one person who could stand between him and this monster.

Where is Erza?

The thought surprised him. He had not realized how much he had come to rely on her, to trust her. He did not understand Nova’s power systems, could not rank its beings. But he knew her. He had seen her freeze a port, shatter mountains. He had felt the warmth of her hand in his and the cold of her power wrapped around them both, protecting them from threats he could not even perceive.

She was strong enough to destroy planets, not because he understood what that meant, but because he had looked into her eyes and seen something that had no limits.

But she was not here. And without her, he was just a pathetic human who could not even withstand a stare.

Then he remembered.

Elena’s small voice, clear and firm, extracting a promise from the old man. Great Grandpa promised not to hurt Papa. The words echoed in his skull, fragile and precious, a shield he had forgotten he possessed.

His trembling eased. His breathing steadied. His voice, when he spoke, still shook, but there was something beneath the tremor. Hope.

"You can’t hurt me, mister." He swallowed, forcing the words past the fear clogging his throat. "Remember the promise... Elena made."

The aura disappeared in an instant.

Isvarn sighed, long and deep, pulled from somewhere ancient and weary. He had wanted to make this human squirm, to watch fear flicker in those red eyes, to see the hope drain away. But the hope had given Yuuta courage, and courage had given him voice, and the voice had spoken the one truth Isvarn could not refute.

"I know, cursed human." Isvarn’s voice was cold, ruthless, the voice of something that had crushed empires and would not be moved by a mortal’s pleading. "I am aware of the promise. You do not need to remind me."

He looked at Yuuta with undisguised disgust, the way one might look at a cockroach that had crawled across a clean counter, too insignificant to kill but too repulsive to ignore. Then he turned away, returning his attention to the chicken, tearing another strip of raw flesh from the bone, chewing with his mouth open.

Yuuta felt the shift, familiar, painfully, absurdly familiar. The cold shoulder. The deliberate ignorance. The silent message that he was not worth acknowledging. Exactly how Erza had treated him when she first arrived.

The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it gave him a strange, almost hysterical comfort.

He watched Isvarn chew.

The old man’s jaws worked with mechanical efficiency, grinding meat and bone into a paste he swallowed without pleasure. He did not like the food, that was obvious. But hunger had driven him to eat, and eat he would, regardless of taste.

Something stirred in Yuuta’s chest, something warm and foolish and completely inappropriate. The old man reminded him of Erza.

The same cold exterior. The same dismissive attitude. The way he ignored Yuuta’s presence, as if he were furniture rather than a living, breathing person.

Words formed on Yuuta’s tongue before his brain could stop them.

"If you want, mister, I could cook that for you."

He clapped his hand over his mouth as soon as the words escaped. What was he thinking? Offering to cook for a dragon who had almost killed him? Treating this ancient, dangerous being like a guest?

Isvarn did not reply. He did not even look up. He simply continued eating, ignoring Yuuta as thoroughly as if the human had ceased to exist.

Yuuta’s embarrassment faded into something quieter. He settled against the doorframe, legs stretched out, heart finally slowing to a normal rhythm. The old man would not hurt him. The promise held. Elena’s small voice had done what his own strength never could.

But a question gnawed at him, persistent, urgent, impossible to ignore.

Where was Erza?

He waited, gathering his courage, measuring his words. He did not want to provoke the old man again or feel that aura pressing against his chest. But he needed to know.

Then, slowly, carefully, he spoke again. His voice was soft, almost a whisper.

"Where is my Erza, mister?"

The words landed like stones dropped into still water.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then Isvarn spoke. His voice was almost dead. Flat. Empty. The voice of something that had been asked a question so offensive that words had failed to capture the depth of its outrage.

"How..."

The single syllable hung in the air, heavy with menace.

Yuuta felt it before he saw it, the shift in the old man’s posture, the tightening of his shoulders, the slow, deliberate turning of his head.

Every follicle, every nerve, every cell of his body screamed a warning he could not understand but could not ignore. Fear crawled inside him, cold and wet and terrible.

"How dare you," Isvarn said, each word a separate sentence, a separate condemnation. "How dare you call the Queen by her name."

The aura burst open.

Not the slow, choking pressure that had pressed against his soul. A detonation. A shockwave of pure, undiluted rage that exploded outward from Isvarn’s body, filling the kitchen, the living room, the entire apartment. The windows rattled. Dishes clattered in the cabinets. The air itself seemed to scream.

Yuuta could not breathe.

Not because the air was gone, it was still there, thick and heavy and wrong, but because his lungs had forgotten how to draw it.

His chest seized.

His throat closed.

His heart stuttered, stopped, started again with a jolt that sent white spots dancing across his vision.

In that single, terrible heartbeat, he knew.

He had fucked up.

To be continued...

(Author Note)

Okay guys, I am really sorry for making some emotional Chapters. But from this moment onward, things might become far more serious, interesting, addictive... and for some readers, maybe even emotionally devastating.

But this author has come up with a solution.

I have a second novel called "My Dragon Family", where Yuuta and Erza actually have a proper husband and wife relationship, and they are genuinely living a lovely, happy life there.

I think you guys will really enjoy it. It will help ease your mood... trust me, no more emotional breakdowns, just full happiness.

Because at the end of the day, you are all my Dragon Family.

So if you want a lighter and happier experience, go check out My Dragon Family and enjoy the story.