- Invitation Status
- Looking for partners
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- Multiple posts per week
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- One post per week
- Slow As Molasses
- Writing Levels
- Beginner
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- Preferred Character Gender
- Male
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- Genres
- Fantasy. Supernatural. Magical. Modern. Medieval. Romance. Scifi. Horror....somewhat in that order.
"Have humans truly become so obtuse or is it just a trait you alone unfortunately possess?"
It took a long, tense moment for Maverick to be able to even say a word. In his head, it felt like an eternity, parts of him hoping that if he stayed silent long enough, Adelia would turn and walk away from him of her own accord. Those parts wrestled with the others that wanted nothing more than to give in to the seething rage that breathed its toxic fumes beneath the surface, enraged to not only be addressed with such insolence, but to be accused of being hostile.
Intimidating? Oh, yes. But threatening? He would never. He wondered what kind of grotesque perversion she thought he was capable of and the mere idea of her having any such horrendous thoughts about him soured his stomach.
Then there was another, smaller part that was not only standing in utter shock, but wished for the strength to be able to reach out to her and ask, to implore, why she had this ability to speak to the beast within.
The anger won out in the end and once his jaw unhinged, the words did not falter. Where once there was a fire, there now was solid ice, a blazing gaze dying down to sharp glass. "I no longer care what it is you do, Adelia. Your threats are nothing more than wasted breath."
Maverick pushed his hands into his pockets with a scary sort of calm, one that, deep down, concerned him. His face grew dark, his lip lifting into a disgruntled snarl as he drew his spine up straight and tipped his chin as if realizing that the woman standing before him wasn't worth the strife that plagued him.
It was a lie, of course. He wasn't sure when, but somewhere along the line, Adelia had started to mean something to him and to have her address him in such a manner, to have her be so blinded, to have her choose to disregard what so clearly concerned him was a sickening disappointment the likes of which he hasn't felt in decades.
How strange it was to have a woman affect him so.
The king was unaware of the way he breathed. Each inhale was deep, as if filling lungs too big for his chest while every exhale rumbled with a subtle growl. She had done it again. Tapped into something not meant to be interacted with and yet, she continued to play this…game of denial.
He wasn't sure how long he stood regarding her with stoney indignation, but with a quiet scoff of dismissal, he finally turned from her and fixed his feverish eyes on the far end of the hall. That would be his destination and once he reached it, he would pick a new one, just as far, until his legs carried him deep down below the castle.
Maverick would ignore the way the beast looked back at her, the way it wished to stretch out toward her, the way it paced in aggravation at the man's blatant refusal to acknowledge what the beast found enrapturing. It didn't matter Adelia could control it. It didn't matter that Maverick has never witnessed such a thing.
What mattered was that the beast was awake now at a time it had only ever been asleep. What mattered was that, for the first time, Maverick didn't have quite the handle he always had on his curse and, that alone, was frightening.