When the group could no longer hear the sound of Bekka's clawed feet frantically scraping the marble floors, Exedra turned his gaze to his mother who'd been staring at him like she'd seen a dead man.
"Lailah… would you mind giving me and my mother a moment alone?" Exedra asked politely.
"Oh? Sure-"
"No. My daughter stays." Yara suddenly said.
She had a firmness in her voice that alerted the both of them that they were not allowed to argue.
"I-I really don't mind-" Lailah tried to protest, but Exedra realized the error of his ways as well.
"No...mother is right, you should stay."
Afterall, Lailah was family and it was high time that he started treating her like it.
He was still learning to navigate these sudden new relationships, but he could not deny the need he felt to keep both of these women in his life.
Lailah blushed but she listened to her mother in law and husband and slowly sat back down.
'She's cute...'
Shaking his head to focus, Exedra turned back towards his mother and asked her a very unexpected question.
"My father was a demon?"
Immediately, the tension in the room increased tenfold.
"H-How do you...?"
"You're free to think of it as a hunch, mother." He said with a small smile.
Yara had a bewildered expression on her face for several minutes before she patted the space beside her on the bed as a gesture for him to come and sit down.
Exedra flinched momentarily.
While acting like a doting son was one thing, he still had issues with displaying physical affection.
His experiences with his own mother had thoroughly traumatized him, making it difficult to accept that a maternal figure would not hurt him.
"Come here, my son. There's much I have to tell you." Yara said with a sad sweetness in her voice.
A shudder ran down Exedra's spine.
Yara's tone was so warm and inviting that she melted all of his resistance away.
Before he knew what he was doing, he had stood up and come to sit on the bed alongside her.
Yara's violet eyes also fell on Lailah and she gestured for her to come up as well.
"You too, Lailah. I want the both of you to hear this story."
-
This world is known as Dola. There are eight continents each divided up among the leading eight races. Dragons, Demons, Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, Phoenixes, Witches, and most surprisingly, humans.
In this world beings can undergo a mystical process called evolution upon fulfilling a secret set of conditions set from birth.
Essentially you had to live in blind faith that you were filling out the conditions necessary for your evolution, and you would never learn what they were until you had finally completed them and the voice of the world spoke to you.
The voice of the world was an entity dubbed Asherah and there was almost no information about her.
Upon completing one evolution, you would immediately have a new set of evolution conditions carved into your soul.
To say evolving is a difficult task is a gross understatement. The highest number of recorded evolutions for a single individual is only six which is an incredible feat in itself.
All of the leaders of each race have evolved six times each and have been dubbed 'demigods' by the people and by Asherah herself.
Exedra's grandfather is the current Dragon King and has been reigning for over nine hundred years.
To the masses he is simply known as Helios, The Calamity and is The Dragon Demigod of Endless War.
Yara is the youngest of three siblings and the only princess of the dragon empire, Antares.
Even as a dragon famed for bloodshed and death, Helios loved his daughter with everything that he had.
She was spoiled endlessly, yet despite that, she maintained a kind and gentle aura befitting of a storybook princess.
However, her life was not picture perfect.
Despite being over two hundred years old, she had only ever evolved once and was considered the laughingstock of her siblings who were already on their second or third evolution.
For a race that values strength above all else such as dragons, there was no greater shame.
Thirty years ago, Yara had finally had enough.
One night, she approached her father in a drunken rage, blaming his constant coddling as the reason why she was never able to grow as an individual.
Helios was devastated to know she felt that way, but in front of his daughter he could offer no defense.
She simply reminded him too much of the woman who was once his sole reason for living.
That night, she left a letter on her dresser to her father apologizing for the harsh words that were said before she fled from the castle under the light of a full moon.
Desperate to experience combat and growth as a warrior, she fled to the one place where she could experience all of that in droves while living without the supervision of her father.
She chose to go to the demon continent of Samael, where demons and humans engage in near constant battle.
It was on one of these battlefields where she found the love of her life and the man she had pledged herself to for all eternity.