>>5538649“What?” the Novice Fleshweaver laughs when you ask her, rattling with cruel mockery. “You are kidding, yes, Oh Meatheaded OneÉÈ
“You must have,” you assert. “I was not ignorant of your pheromone patterns, your increased physicality… And yet, within only a single weak, your heat-cycle was over. You negated or suppressed your cycle.”
“I fail to see why it is any concern of yours,” the Novice fires back, a little miffed. “We are not MATES, Dragonborn.”
“We are more than mates,” you correct her. “Mating is a temporary arrangement. What we have is love.”
The Novice laughs more loudly at this, and a touch bitterly.
“So you say. ‘Love.’ You speak on this subject not infrequently, oh Degenerateborn. It has become almost your watchword! But you KNOW it means nothing to me.”
You flinch a little, and she pauses in her abuse.
“You seemed to indicate otherwise,” you note, “at the Winter Gala, and ever since.”
The Novice stares at you, and fidgets slightly, at a loss for words.
“I do not think… It means to me what it means to you,” she finally answers.
“You would not be my mate?” you press.
“It is… Not a good time.”
You stare, awaiting clarification. She sighs, and provides it grudgingly.
“My father will not be positively inclined towards Bloodrise as a kingdom, let alone with YOU at its head,” she explains. “If you were to… If we… If I arrived fertilized form my VERY FIRST breeding, with a… BEING… Like yourself… What would he think, except that I had betrayed him and his plans for bloodline diplomacy with other Serpent Priests? What would he think of YOU, but that you had defied him and violated his clan with deliberate intent to subvert him? It would sabotage the whole alliance!”
“Then why not persist in the heat cycle and just… Not breed?”
The Novice Fleshweaver’s stern, stolid gaze falters, and she looks away, hugging her midsection and squirming slightly.
“Because… I wanted it,” she finally admits, her voice a quiet hiss of self-betrayal. “Badly.”
“It?” you ask.
“You,” she spits, glaring. “I wanted YOU. When my heat cycle came on, I wanted… To be impregnated, by YOU, you stupid, incorrigible Degenerate of a False King! Must I spell EVERYTHING out for you, you borderline illiterate ape?!”
