After finishing his story, Adrian glanced at Mikhail, who was still staring intently at the half-erased mark on his skin.
Mikhail’s expression resembled that of someone who had been given a gift, only to have it snatched away. And the thief was none other than Adrian himself. Feeling the guilt creep up, Adrian was the first to speak.
“At least half of it’s still there. I guess it wasn’t a complete failure.”
The ritual to become a dragon’s mate was notoriously complex, a fact reinforced by the scarcity of reliable information. If he were being optimistic, Adrian wasn’t wrong.
Mikhail looked up at him and asked,
“…You were really going to let me marry someone else?”
His crimson eyes held a steady, unwavering gaze.
Adrian absorbed that gaze with every fiber of his being and fell silent. He thought it had only been a brief pause, but in truth, the silence stretched long enough to fill the space between them.
Mikhail wasn’t about to let it go without an answer. He asked again,
“Did you run away and leave me behind?”
His voice was low and rough. His large frame trembled with each sharp breath he drew, his body swelling with restrained emotion. He looked ready to lunge at any moment.
Adrian, still seated across from Mikhail on the bed, finally responded.
“…It’s not like I forced you to get married, so why are you blaming me?”
He let out a hollow, breathless laugh of disbelief. That whole scenario had only happened in Mikhail’s dream.
“Besides, the one you married was…” He trailed off.
Adrian had intended to argue back, but instead, his face twisted in irritation, teeth gritting. Only now did he realize how pointless it was to fight over something that hadn’t even happened in reality.
“Go back.”
“What?”
Mikhail shoved Adrian’s shoulder, toppling him backward onto the bed.
What the hell? Adrian fell without resistance, his entire face wearing a question mark.
Mikhail growled and pounced on top of him. With that, his field of vision was completely filled by Mikhail’s face.
“Go back and cancel my wedding. Now.”
Adrian’s eyes widened.
“Are you serious? …Mikhail, it wasn’t even a real wedding. Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”
“It’s because you keep brushing it off like it’s nothing that the mate mark disappeared.”
“What?”
…What kind of nonsense logic is that?
With a grim look, Mikhail even pulled the blanket over Adrian.
He seriously expects me to sleep again like this?
Adrian didn’t say it aloud, but his eyes rolled in visible protest. Resigned, he reluctantly shut them.
From beside him, Mikhail was clearly still watching—Adrian felt him patting the blanket a few times.
Cracking his eyes open slightly, Adrian glanced up.
Mikhail’s slightly sheepish voice followed,
“…What?”
His hand had frozen mid-pat. Adrian muttered in response,
“You keep tapping. It’s distracting.”
“…”
At that cold retort, Mikhail went silent for a second before replying,
“…Endure it. If you stop paying attention to it, you’ll fall asleep right away.”
Adrian shot him a look, completely dumbfounded. How the hell is anyone supposed to fall asleep like this?
He had to be asleep to dream again, and at this rate, even the faintest drowsiness would be chased off by Mikhail’s tapping.
Besides, sleep wasn’t even a biological necessity for Adrian’s body. Compared to humans, he needed far more focus and intentional effort to actually drift off.
Mikhail, apparently oblivious, gave the blanket another light tap. Like he was urging him to concentrate. With no other choice, Adrian finally let his eyes fall shut.
As darkness swept over his vision, something surfaced in his mind.
“Ah.”
He abruptly sat up from his comfortable position.
Mikhail frowned in displeasure.
“What now?”
“What do you think of the ‘me’ in your dream?”
It was something the brown-haired man from the castle in the dream had said to him.
Now that he thought about it, there had been talk of a talking lion before. What was up with that lion, again? Does he just not show up in Mikhail’s dreams?
Curious, Adrian turned to look at Mikhail. Seeing his silence, Mikhail only scratched the back of his head with an awkward expression.
Adrian pressed further.
“Why aren’t you answering? Did I treat you badly or something?”
Now that he’d said it aloud, it sounded all too plausible.
Adrian narrowed his eyes, watching Mikhail hesitate with a serious expression. Not knowing what took place in someone else’s subconscious was a tricky situation.
Even if Mikhail had never said it outright, Adrian wondered if perhaps in Mikhail’s unconscious mind, the innate dominance of a dragon had come out in full force.
But mulling it over alone wasn’t going to get him any answers, so Adrian simply waited for Mikhail to respond.
Mikhail shook his head from side to side.
“…No, not like that.”
“Then? Sounds like nothing too bad happened, huh?”
“Well… I guess so.”
Mikhail looked a little sour.
Sure, there had been a talking lion who argued with him, and a young boy who kept trying to push him out of the dream space entirely… but as he looked at Adrian lying back down with a relaxed expression, he figured it was better not to mention the minor details.
Adrian lay back on the bed, eyes gently closed, and murmured,
“In that case, I better go wreck your wedding real quick.”
A soft chuckle echoed beside his ear.
“Yeah, I’d really appreciate that.”
With Mikhail’s quiet voice as his final sound, Adrian sank swiftly into sleep.
***
Lying on the bed with his eyes closed, Adrian felt his body suddenly tilt, as if sucked toward a specific point.
Pop!
A sharp sound rang in his ears. Fireworks. The noise was immediately followed by the lively murmur of a crowd chattering all around him.
When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded by people. It looked like a place where commoners could watch the royal wedding from afar—one of those rare public-viewing areas outside the royal castle.
“What a beautiful wedding.”
“A royal wedding, huh… The scale is unreal. Man, for commoners like us, it’s so extravagant we can’t even imagine it.”
“I bet just one of those decorations alone could feed a whole family for generations.”
In the distance, the heart of the grand wedding ceremony came into view.
It wasn’t hard to spot the groom—Mikhail’s radiant silver hair shimmered under the sunlight. And naturally, standing confidently at his side was a counterfeit with dark brown hair.
Adrian quietly observed the scene, opening and closing his clenched fist once. Thankfully, his abilities were intact.
Hmph. His eyes narrowed to slits.
“So, how should I go about stopping that wedding?”
The crowd was noisy enough that Adrian could mutter freely without drawing attention.
But just as the words left his lips— All sound vanished. Instantly. As if the moment had been waiting for him.
Adrian’s eyes flashed with sharp awareness.
The voices, which had moments ago been filled with laughter and excitement, vanished like smoke. And not just the voices—every single person stood frozen, holding their breath as if time itself had stopped.
One by one, all the spectators slowly turned their faces toward him.
The joy and laughter from before were gone. Now, every face that had once looked toward the royal wedding bore a blank expression, their eyes now fixed squarely on Adrian.
If it had been an ordinary human, they might’ve screamed or fainted from the sheer horror. But Adrian was a dragon. Surrounded by a sea of expressionless human faces, he simply clicked his tongue. Tch.
He had planned to crash the wedding and return quickly, but… it seemed Mikhail’s unconscious had detected the intruder faster than expected.
From the crowd as still as death, Adrian stretched out one leg and took a single step forward—thud.
As if on cue, someone reached out and grabbed his arm.
“How dare you.”
Adrian scowled and shook the hand off with irritation. That single act seemed to trigger the rest. The frozen crowd suddenly came to life. Children and elders, men and women—hands of every shape and size reached for Adrian, trying to block his path. There were so many grasping hands that he couldn’t move forward at all.
He tore through them with force, but more hands clung to him than he could shake off. Surrounded by relentless, grasping hands, Adrian’s moment of deliberation was brief.
This is Mikhail’s dream, after all…
These people weren’t real humans, so Adrian quickly conjured up a few aggressive but highly effective spells in his mind.
The moment he parted his lips to begin the incantation—
“There appears to be an uninvited guest trying to ruin the wedding.”
A clear voice rang out from the direction of the royal castle, cutting off Adrian’s words mid-chant.
He lifted his head to look toward the wedding venue.
There, standing tall with a stern expression, was the fake Adrian with dark hair, arm outstretched, pointing directly at him with a long index finger.
Mikhail, who had been looking elsewhere, slowly turned his head to follow the line of the imposter’s gesture.
