Lucien and Pride are very similar, and strangely, it doesn't make them repel each other like identical poles on a magnet but attract each other more and more.
So she knows he's purposely 'ignoring' her to get her to go after him. But because they're both so proud, that obviously isn't going to happen so easily.
Yet, she can't help but be frustrated and furious, despite now having her usual cold, arrogant expression. Only Eve and Wrath know how she is burning with anger, something that leaves them both very confused.
Meanwhile, Lucien goes to embrace his other wives, starting with Ca.s.sidy and moving on to Astrid, Angela, Aria, Olivia, Ghalenna, and any other girl who wants more warm hugs and pa.s.sionate kisses.
He also hugs and kisses Scarlett before telling her to lead the s.h.i.+p to the Mermaid camp ahead.
Then he notices little Ko, looking out to sea with a concerned expression. He approaches her and hugs her tightly, lifting her into his arms.
"Are you missing your mother?" He asks, even though he knows that's exactly the problem.
Little Ko also hugs his neck tightly. She is thrilled to be reunited with her 'papa,' but the fact that her mother is not around makes her quite worried. "W-where mama??"
Wasting no time, Lucien opens the purple world portal behind her. "Don't worry, my dear, your mama is sleeping in our house; you can find her in the big bedroom."
Only after hearing that Oya is fine and around does little Ko manage to smile cutely and then kiss Lucien's cheeks several times. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Master!!"
"We'll find your mama with you, Ko." Mia gently smiles as she approaches the little tigress with Aria and other young girls.
They know that Lucien has a lot to talk about with his Sisters and the Sins to plan the group's next steps. Also, they miss their home so much, so they enter the portal.
While Claire apologizes to Nea for hiding that she is Greed's host and reports to her about the situation at the border, l.u.s.t explains to the Sins everything she and Lucien have discovered.
Then he notices Daisy looking at him with a thoughtful expression. Clearly, she wants to hug and kiss him like the other girls, but she doesn't want to disturb his reunion with his wives.
Lucien also wants to hug and kiss Daisy, treating her as his wife. But he doesn't think that would be easy as their relations.h.i.+p with Rose is more complicated than it looks.
He's already had to deal with a similar situation when Marie didn't want to accept his love relations.h.i.+p with Angela. But she ended up accepting it because the alternative was to leave her mother behind alone or force her to go with them and see Lucien please all his wives and not give her any affection.
But in Rose's case, in addition to her possessive and spoiled personality, there's the blood contract that makes her not want to share him with another vampire.
Also, Daisy is a strong, intelligent woman over five hundred years old. Lucien knows she would walk away from them before hurting her daughter, and because of that, he fears making any wrong moves and ending up hurting two women he already loves dearly.
In just a second, Lucien's brilliant mind quickly a.n.a.lyzes every point of the situation, but there is still no apparent solution.
But worse than causing problems with his current relations.h.i.+ps is ignoring the feelings of people he loves and let them suffer because of his choice.
A relations.h.i.+p is never formed by a person alone and so Lucien chooses to share his thoughts with Daisy and together decide what to do next.
Then he walks towards her. His steps are soft but determined, and added to the confident smile and teasing on his face, he makes it clear what he's about to do.
Daisy panics because she doesn't know how to get away from that and obviously doesn't want to miss that either. She quickly looks around and doesn't see Rose anywhere as she is in the purple world along with the other young girls.
When she looks straight ahead again, Lucien is already two feet away from her. She startles and takes a step back, stumbling on the deck steps. "Ahh!?!?"
Everything happens very quickly and before Daisy thinks about using her energies to levitate, she feels Lucien's arm wraps around her thin waist, preventing her from falling.
[He'll never let me down...] Daisy can't help but think that; undoubtedly, to convince herself that being in his arms is an irrefutable offer.
"Are you okay?" Lucien asks as he brings their faces closer together. Her perfume is especially unlike anything he has ever felt, something like a mature version of Rose's sweet perfume, something he likes a lot.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Daisy returns his question with another one. His scent is even more tempting to her, who has a very keen smell sense for being a vampire. And, of course, that feels so good that she has a hard time keeping her fangs from coming out due to her excitement.
The way Daisy keeps her expression serene and proud even when she's very turned on only makes Lucien admire her even more.
And he also wants to tease her more, so he continues to hug her waist and bring their faces closer to the point where there is only an inch between their noses.
"I'm not sure..." He speaks in a distinctly fake tone. "You seem to be afraid of me."
"Afraid??!?" Daisy looks away while making that sound like big nonsense. But at the same time, she feels that it is precisely one of the feelings that most fills her heart right now.
She is not afraid that Lucien will harm her but rather that he will initiate a kiss that she will never want to end. She fears that if she accepts his love, she won't be able to deal with the jealousy that Rose and all his other wives face every day.
"I don't really think so…" Lucien speaks in a seductive tone and then gently holds her delicate chin before slowly turning her face toward his, making her look into his eyes again. "A woman as magnificent as you are not afraid of anything, right?"
[Is that what you think of me?] Daisy wonders while she can't stop her lips from curling into a lovely smile, which also reveals her excited fangs.
She stops worrying about what other people think of her and focuses on her current feelings. Though she doesn't feel like a magnificent woman or even a little courageous one right now, she really wants to become the woman Lucien thinks she is.
She smiles as she speaks in an affectionate tone. "Lucien... I missed y-"
Daisy can barely finish speaking as he seals her juicy lips with a pa.s.sionate kiss. Containing no desire, he invades her perfect mouth with his dominant tongue and initiates a delicious dance with hers.
She completely surrenders to those sensations, and Lucien continues kissing her as he moves one of his hands down her back and above her a.s.s and uses the other hand to caress the back of her head, making the kiss more and more intense.
He is literally devoting her mouth, and she loves that to the point of using all her will to not cut his lips with her fangs, making a precipitate blood contract.
But her body needs to unleash so much pa.s.sion, so she hugs him tight and ends up spiking her nails in his back and scratching his skin as Rose did. That is also a common characteristic of vampires and manticores.
Lucien also has a hard time containing the urge to eat Daisy right there. But that situation draws a lot of attention from his sisters and the other women, so he flaps his wings, flying forward until he touches Dasiy's back against one of the s.h.i.+p's walls, to continue kissing and hugging her pa.s.sionately.
"Luci!?!?!" They end up getting next to a small table where Naomi and Maya are talking, so his sister looks at them with a shocked expression. She thought he would have changed a lot due to l.u.s.t's influence, but that person seems too crazy to be her cold and depressed brother.
Daisy breaks the kiss while getting very embarra.s.sed. But Lucien starts laughing as he gives peaks on her lips, making her laugh too. "You're making me look like a little girl messing around..."
"Hahaha... but having fun shouldn't be wrong..." Lucien looks at Naomi. "Right, sister? You of all of us should support me here."
Naomi can't help but laugh too. "You got me... alright, you guys can continue, and... maybe I'll join you later, okay?"
"Huh???" Maya didn't want to get involved in the siblings' strange relations.h.i.+p; yet, she can't help but be confused by those words.
She knows about his incestuous relations.h.i.+p with Sophia and Amelia, and that doesn't seem strange for someone who has lived so many years. But she doesn't understand why Naomi would 'join them' that simple.
[He's so handsome, attractive, has such a direct, pa.s.sionate personality...] She wonders while gazing at him. [Oh, I got it.]
Lucien was so focused on the reunion with his sisters and wives that he is only now stopping to a.n.a.lyze how special Maya looks. He noticed there was a woman and mermaid among the group in addition to messenger one, but he didn't look at them closely.
For him, Maya is incredibly peculiar, as while he feels a mature aura coming from her, she looks so young and even a silly and naive girl. [What the h.e.l.l???]
He tries not to make his thoughts apparent as he extends a hand to her. "Hi... I don't think we've been introduced yet; I'm Lu-"
"Lucien, the Handsome Devil?" Maya smiles. "I spent a few weeks with your family and heard a lot about the man who saved my granddaughter."
"Granddaughter?" He can only think of Kayla, the girl he saved when the group arrived in the Blue Star. But he doesn't think they have any resemblance.
l.u.s.t notes that situation and takes a break from the conversation with the other Sins to report to Lucien everything they've told her. 'This woman is the Phoenix; she is the adoptive mother of Laya, that woman in Tyrion's special dungeon, and Layla is Kayla's mother, making her the granddaughter of this woman.'
'Is she Phoenix???' Lucien is baffled as he expected to find an ancient firebird and not a little girl with a granny aura and a silly face.
Yet, by looking at her beautiful body, he is forced to accept that the 'hot' feature is predominant on her.
"Kayla." Maya comments and then cannot help but make a concerned expression. "She is the daughter of Layla, my dear little girl..."
"She is fine," Lucien speaks, and Maya believes he is talking about Kayla, but then he continues. "I mean, Layla. I met her in the Naga Kingdom, but I couldn't bring her..."
"Really???" Maya is happily surprised. "Have you really seen her? How is she? Why didn't you save her???"
Lucien is well aware of how strong family ties can be even with people who don't have the blood, so he's sorry for Maya being in that situation.
"She is in a special prison of the Naga King ." He explains. "I couldn't get her out of there without making trouble with him before I had the strength to defeat him."
"I see..." Maya bows her head as she can't blame Lucien for not having the strength to save her daughter.
Lucien crouches down to look into Maya's face. "But I'm sure nothing bad will happen to her yet. Tyrion has absorbed her power...you know; but he wants to find the source of that power, so he'll keep her as a valuable resource."
Maya looks into his eyes. "You know about me, right?"
He nods, and then she continues. "If you know who I am, you understand that I can't go further hundreds of miles into this ocean without losing my powers... Nea has promised to help me, but I fear putting more people in danger."
"It's alright; I promised Layla I would get her out of there soon, and I keep my promises." He smiles confidently.
Maya doesn't quite understand why, but she feels she can trust Lucien even more than Pride. It is as if she can feel she would do anything to save Layla, but she doesn't quite understand why he would have such determination.
"You've already saved my granddaughter, and for that, I owe you a debt of life." She speaks in a determined tone. "But if you save my daughter too, I'll owe you a double life debt, and even everything I have couldn't pay that."
Lucien is surprised that such an ancient creature loves two humans that much. And obviously, having Maya have a double life debt to him seems very convenient to his plans to get her magic core.
But at the same time, he can't help but remember that when he saved Kayla, he wanted to do that, just as he wanted to promise Layla to save her.
So far, Lucien has only done things he wants to and followed his heart's desires, something he's very proud of. But imagining the situation where he asks for Maya's life because he saved her daughters' lives makes him feel very dirty, in a bad way, of course.
When that horrible feeling fills his heart, he feels Pride's gaze over him, judging him. He looks at her, and their eyes meet again.
Even without the soul contract, at that moment, the minds and thoughts of Lucien line up with Pride. And they're both sure that if they keep in that way, they'll be giving up their self-pride and that it's like cutting off members more valuable than their legs and arms forever.