"Shall I prove it to you?"
Seeing the nervous and tired Guardians clustered at the bottom of the ramp, Vestera maneuvered himself to lie on his belly in the grass, closing his eyes for only a moment before a circular, black portal opened, only large enough for one Guardian to fit through at a time.
The Guardians did not wait for Dalton to tell them to go through the portal. They were eager to get home, the adrenaline from the day leaving them wracked with exhaustion.
Dalton did not notice the Guardians leaving the realm. He was focused on Juki and Rutu.
“Let me go,” Rutu groaned, jerking his arm from Juki’s grasp. “I wasn’t picking a fight, I was protecting Vestera.”
“Vestera is more than capable of protecting himself,” Juki corrected. “You were meddling because you’re itching for a fight.”
“And what would be so wrong about teaching some arrogant baby dragons a lesson?” Rutu asked.
“That you don’t know where the line is between discipline and torture,” Juki retorted.
“And clearly you don’t know where the line is between being responsible and being boring,” Rutu quipped. “At least I still remember that it can be fun to pick fights for the hell of it.”
“For the love of the gods, Rutu, you’re not a vagrant anymore. You’re a lord. Act like one.”
“When did you turn into my father?” Rutu laughed. “You used to be worse than I when it came to picking fights.”
“I grew up!”
The three Kage children laughed at the bickering.
“Are they always like this?” Dalton asked them.
“All the time,” the three younger demons said in unison.
“You didn’t grow up, you just got old and boring,” Rutu said.
“I’m sorry, are you that much younger than me?” Juki laughed brokenly.
“Some days it feels like it.”
“I agree, some days you do act quite immature for your age and extremely immature for someone who was raised a prince,” Juki retorted.
“Is this…do we stop them, or is Rutu going to go all murdery again if we try?” Hanyi asked the children.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t a serious fight,” Shina said with a short shake of her head.
“If memory serves, you prefer it when I don’t act like a prince,” Rutu teased, slipping into the common Kage language as he crossed his arms and tilted his head in defiance.
“That may be true, but that does not mean you get to act like a lawless vagrant whenever you want,” Juki said in the same language.
“So only when you want?” Rutu said with a scoff.
Dalton’s attention was temporarily diverted from the bickering demon lords when the three Kage children at his side retreated a few steps. He turned to them, worried they were sensing that the fight was about to turn serious, but they were all smiling as they backpedaled up the ramp several paces, much to the confusion of the humans on Team Dalton. Keito, spotting the retreat, rapidly did the same.
Before Dalton could ask what was wrong, the quarreling demon lords recaptured his attention.
“Perhaps I should remind you of exactly who you mated,” Rutu challenged.
“Or perhaps I should remind you,” Juki retorted.
“You mean that I mated someone who decided to be the stuffy, straight-laced Old Blood Lord of the Kage Clan?” Rutu said with a slight roll of his eyes. “Do tell.”
“Keep this up and I might have to lock you in the dungeons until you learn your place,” Juki warned, one corner of his mouth quirking upward.
“My place?” Rutu scoffed. “And what makes you think that you have any sort of power over me?”
Juki took a quick step forward, his face mere inches from Rutu’s, his head bent down to loom over him. In the same instant, his entire demeanor changed, the normal pattern of his aura swelling with heat. It was not painful but overpowering and heavy. The other demons near them, along with Team Dalton and the few groups of Guardians at the back of the crowd exiting the Dragon Realm felt their hair rise and their hearts pick up a flustered beat.
Rutu flinched, but not in fear. His being softened in the instant following Juki’s step. He looked up into his mate’s heady expression. His shoulders dropped and his breath shuddered out of him. His gaze fell to the ground as his body trembled in reaction to the change in his mate’s aura, his eyes half-shutting as his lips parted in shallower breaths.
“Shall I prove it to you?” Juki murmured, his smirk showing that he was very pleased with Rutu’s reaction.
Juki’s aura did not let up, intensifying as he continued to loom over Rutu. The Guardians close enough to feel the power even around the various power limiters Juki wore felt their own blood turn to molten lava in their veins. Faces all around the Kage Lords were flushing. Dalton, despite feeling embarrassed witnessing something so intimate and powerful, also could not turn away, the magic radiating from Juki keeping him still and enraptured, no matter how much his mind screamed at him to stop staring and bellowed at his body to stop reacting so strongly to the magic.
Rutu’s eyes closed entirely and a smile began to pull at his own mouth. His head dropped a little further. He looked entirely different than he had mere seconds before when he still embodied the powerful creature that reversed the apocalypse. He looked subdued, smaller, even sheepish as he submitted under the power of his mate’s aura.
“Hey, hey!” Acurala snapped, clapping his hands multiple times as he retreated a few steps. “Remember where you are, you two! Rein it in!”
Juki remained where he stood for a few more heavy seconds, his gaze never leaving Rutu. Rutu hesitantly turned to face Juki, sharing a silent conversation that those around them could not understand.
With a quiet exhale that barely resembled a scoff, Juki straightened and backed away, his aura calming immediately. The sudden rush of magic retreating acted as a bucket of cold water on everyone around them, leaving the humans to share embarrassed glances as they tried to look anywhere but at the Kage Lords.
“What…the hell was that?” Mitoki grumbled, turning to the Kage children as they returned to the Guardians’ side.
“Foreplay,” Kaneuta said easily, passing the Guardians and walking to his parents’ side as Shina and Kree chuckled and followed their younger brother.
Mortified, the four other members of Team Dalton turned to Keito with wide eyes. The demon Guardian shrugged a shoulder.
“Yeah, they do that sometimes,” he said.
“We’re going to be here for days with them going through one at a time like that Vestera,” Juki said, looking over the slowly-diminishing group of Guardians stepping through the portal.
“I don’t want to overwhelm the portal or the Guardians,” Vestera explained. “A lot of elements of the Balance still need to settle back into place. It will take months before everything is back in proper order. Best to not create more wounds with a bigger portal.”
“Does that mean that we’re still going to feel that cosmic imbalance?” Dalton asked, worriedly approaching with the others of his team and trying not to feel embarrassed when Juki or Rutu looked at him, both of them seeming unbothered with what everyone around them had witnessed.
“Unfortunately,” Vestera said. “But I’ll see what I can do to facilitate faster healing.”
