Nytherael let out two dry laughs. The memory left a bitter taste in his mouth.

That emotion was back again, the feeling of home he was close to obsessed with. Nytherael’s eyes froze momentarily.

His mind couldn’t wrap around it. How did he go from he couldn’t see himself going home to anyone else yo invoking a divorce trial?

He grinded his teeth. Thinking back to the past, he couldn’t understand himself at all. His face went from twisted to blank and then twisted again.

In his memories, he, too, had clearly been in love with his husbands. He enjoyed every moment spent with them being down to earth and enjoying the little joys of life.

Why? Why did he change when Ilyrien returned? How did he go from I promise never to leave you two to I want to break out bond? The question buzzed in his ear.

His face contorted. His brain was fighting a massive ache in his head that triggered when he tried to remember the past clearly.

The divorce hurt Sseraphis and Aeltharion deeply. He knew that going in, but it didn’t stop him from pressing on. That too only days after the day of hearts when he’d serenaded his husbands to the point of tears of joy and made a public declaration of how they were forever.

’Were my feelings for Ilyrien really so deep?’

His eyes grew full of exhaustion and helplessness. Then, it sharpened with a weariness of a seasoned fate envoy and illusion adjudicator.

His job specialised in illusion based crimes, emotional manipulation cases, and fate distortion cases, all of whom were quite common in the beast world.

The authority he had was that he could rewrite perceived realities in trials and determine whether a bond was genuine, manipulated, or self-illusioned.

Somehow, despite the nature of his profession, he never stopped to assess himself before making such a grand decision. Something felt amiss.

His eyes turned gloomy at once. Taking on the overwhelming aura of a top tier nine-tailed fox.

Had it not been for Princess Sheana, who dragged him to the hunt and him relieved thar memory, he wouldn’t have suspected that something was wrong.

He viewed his past from a detached point of view, and the points that didn’t add up had his fox ears twitching uncomfortably.

Ilyrien kind face, his sweet smile, and their conversation of the past during their reunion had moved him back so much. He felt as though he had fallen in love with him all over again.

But it felt too good to be true. Love wasn’t a switch in a beasts head that one can turn on and off as they pleased. It was emotion, a bond, affections, and those take time to bloom and even more time to move on from. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

His mind went back and forth, examining every interaction with Ilyrien during that weak. He remembered being completely floored by Ilyrien’s return. He’d go and meet him every waking chance he’d get and make excuses to Sseraphis and Aeltharion.

His lies were so convincing that Sseraphis and Aeltharion picked up nothing out of the ordinary in his actions.

What stood out was how irritated he felt towards his marital bond and his mates. The sight of Sseraphis and Aeltharion made his blood boil in annoyance. And a nagging voice echoed at the back of his head ’the bond you share with them is the reason you remain incomplete without your one true love’ and he’d get so angry he’d distance himself from his husbands.

Nytherael’s eyes moistened. The fog in his brain gets thicker. The headache transformed into a migrain.

He clasped his hands at his head and grabbed on hard. Gritting his teeth as he held back a scream, his eyes became bloodshot from tears he held back, and instantly, his armour cracked, and his essence flooded out in massive energy waves.

The arena chilled. Lightning struck from the sky and hit the screen, shattering the view of the hunt and the entire exited mood shattered.

The waves scattered all the beasts around Nytherael far away. Princess Aenyra grabbed Sheana’s hand, unleashed her wings, and flew to the sky, her flight mode choosing safety first.

Samahita transformed, taking her phoenix form. Her body alone shattered the rood above them and reduced their side of the arena to pieces. She unleashed a shield and protected Theren, Nerezza and Rhysandor, and the other beasts who were behind her.

Rhysandor used his strength to steer the blocks of the shattered building from harming innocent beasts. Theren and Nerezza joined in.

"Arghh!" Beasts screamed, most who had exceeded the fourth level of cultivation managed to flee from the scene.

Lower ranking beasts felt the strike from Nytherael’s energy and were immobilised on the ground, bleeding out internally, their bones being crashed under the force of the continuous flow of energy

"What is wrong with him?" Samahita screamed, the force of her inner strength carried her question through the chaos to her teammates.

"No idea!"

They shouted back, their attention drawn things with the tasks at hand to focus on Nytherael and his outburst.

At his seat, unaware of the chaos outside, Nytherael got lost deeper and deeper in his mind. The closer he got to the fog, trying to peel it off to see the truth hidden behind it, the more his head hurt and the stronger the energy he released.

Soon, the authorities arrived on the scene. A league of dragons soldiers in their beast form, all five-horned and of different elements.

"You three, get the beasts to safety," the commander in charge instructed.

Three lightning dragons navigated through the lightning, striking down aimlessly from the sky and held through gritted teeth and flew through the waves of suffocating energy, and began the rescue of the civilians.

"You four, stabilise the building."

Four earth dragons stormed through the mess and to all the four corners of the arena. They held the structure together, grinding their teeth and enduring the force of Nytherael’s force that cut through to their bones.

"The rest of you with me. Let’s calm the beast down and find out who dares to make trouble in my territory!"