Reborn As The Minor Villain In A Romance Fantasy Novel - Chapter 209

Chapter 209: A Threat [II]
Minerva turned toward him with wide blinking eyes.

Her expression was stuck somewhere between shock and disbelief. “Was that my father on the phone?”

“Yeah, most probably,” Lucius replied with a tired yawn.

His phone vibrated again in his hand, buzzing angrily like it wanted to leap out of his palm but he ignored it.

At this point, he had mentally committed to letting whoever was calling him simmer down before entertaining another round of screaming.

“Answer it…” Minerva whispered, and her voice trembled enough to make Lucius finally glance at her properly.

Her eyes were glossy, showing the restrained tears of someone who had been trying to stay hopeful for far too long.

“Please… I’ve dedicated a lot of my life trying to make my way into the human world to meet my father and mother again. Now I realize that even if I had managed to get there on my own, it would have been treated as a dungeon break, and I would have been killed before even getting to see their faces.”

The shakiness of her breath made Lucius’s expression soften, even if just a little.

For the first time since he’d met her, she sounded her age meaning she sounded like a terrified child who had wandered far too far from home.

“Can I… even if it’s for five minutes?” she asked.

Lucius sighed, caught somewhere between empathy and exhaustion, before picking up the call again and tossing the phone gently her way.

She caught it with both hands, holding it delicately as if it were a newborn cub.

Her claws didn’t come out this time; she treated the device like it was the only fragile bridge between her and her parents.

When she raised the phone to her face, she blinked, then straightened.

It was a video call.

Her breath caught audibly when her mother’s face appeared on-screen.

Minerva’s mother looked like a beautiful supermodel… an older-sister version of Minerva that was more breathtaking.

The moment Minerva’s face appeared on her screen, her mother’s expression cracked, tears gathering instantly around her eyes.

“Minerva… are you hurt? Are you fine? We were watching the livestream too, and he really beat you up badly.” Her mother sucked in a trembling breath as she clutched her chest. “Are you being maltreated right now? Tell us so we can sue him.”

Lucius’s face twitched.

‘Sue?! Lady, what kind of legal system are you running up there?’

He forced himself not to snatch the phone and scream It’s a dungeon, not a civilian park! Did dragons not understand how any of this worked? You couldn’t sue someone for attacking monsters in a dungeon.

“No, Mom… there’s no need to sue him,” Minerva said, shaking her head with her usual earnestness. “He’s a nice guy. He even let me use his lips to learn human language and customs… though he did take my first kiss.”

Her mother’s eyes enlarged to saucers. In the next instant, she was violently shoved out of frame by someone with much larger hands.

Her father appeared on-screen… he had blond hair, a regal posture, and the kind of expression one would expect from a king who had just heard a peasant insult his bloodline.

He looked like a man who ruled ten kingdoms and wanted to set eleventh on fire. Because he quite literally had done it before…

“He did what?! YOU did what?” he roared, glaring at his daughter with scorching intensity. “How dare you give your first kiss to that human… Don’t you understand the customs brought upon you as a dragon?”

Minerva rolled her eyes. “…Dad, it’s not a big deal.”

His forehead vein bulged. “Stop speaking like a human lady and speak like the dragon that you are! As the daughter of a great dragon such as myself, you cannot reduce yourself to being one of the whores that follows him aroun—”

The phone flew out of Minerva’s hands mid-rant, and she didn’t even gasp… instead, she looked secretly relieved.

Lucius caught the device and angled it so his whole face filled the screen.

“Bruh, I can tolerate a lot of things,” Lucius said flatly, “but if you dare call any of my women whores… I’ll do you even worse than those Awakeners that died to you did.”

The father’s face contorted with rage, but before he could unleash another explosion, Lucius hung up and blocked the account with a swift flick.

‘I swear I can’t with dragons,’ he thought. ‘Whole species full of drama.’

He turned back toward Minerva whose shoulders had slumped in quiet defeat.

She looked small now, shrinking into herself, her earlier bravado gone like smoke.

“Did you still want to talk to him?” Lucius asked, softer than before.

“No…” she whispered.

Her voice had lost its usual sharpness. “Father shouts at me all the time. I’m always doing something wrong… I thought he changed since we haven’t seen for years.”

There was something painfully familiar in her tone.

Lucius recognized that quiet hurt too well… he remembered nights living with his mother and sister, hearing the disappointment in their voices when he didn’t meet expectations he didn’t even understand.

That was before he made generational wealth though.

He tapped the side of his bed and shifted to make space.

“I’m currently trying to watch horror movies beforehand so I won’t be scared when my movie partner takes me to watch them together,” he said. “Do you want to join me?”

Minerva blinked, hesitated, then nodded before crawling onto the bed.

She curled up quietly, her earlier fiery attitude replaced by a gentle one.

…

Vanessa wiped her forehead with the back of her hand later that evening, she was exhausted but satisfied. “And… done.”

She had prepared a full feast, enough to feed the entire group and then some.

The sun was sinking lower, painting the blood ocean in unsettling crimson shades.

From where she stood, she couldn’t see the water through the high wooden barriers, but she was sure it had grown much colder.

‘I’ll try taking the blood from the water tomorrow,’ she thought, mentally calculating how much blood she could gather with her tattoo before hitting her limit.

Well, if she did then she would create more…

She portioned out Lucius’s share onto a tray and passed out servings to the others.

Everyone enjoyed her cooking… some almost embarrassingly so.

“This tastes delicious,” Luna said between shameless licks of her spoon, making Vanessa’s chest warm with shy pride.

Even Rita was participating now, vibrantly eating while striking conversation with Erika and Trisha.

Vanessa filled the tray for Lucius and straightened proudly, feeling the faint blush of anticipation.

She wanted to surprise him, maybe get a head pat or a kiss on the cheek later.

She wondered briefly where the dragon girl was but dismissed the thought then pushed open Lucius’s tent flap with a bright smile.

Then she froze.

Her smile dissolved like ice dropped in boiling oil.

Lucius was lying comfortably on his bed, fast asleep.

Minerva was sprawled across him… completely asleep with her two thick, beautiful legs resting squarely across his face like some kind of natural sleep mask.

Lucius looked peaceful.

Minerva looked like she’d found heaven.

Vanessa looked like someone had stabbed her soul.

She backed out of the tent in a stiff, mechanical motion.

The group stared at her, confused by her shaking expression.

Without a word, she flung the tray with enough force to launch it over the wooden barrier surrounding the camp. It crashed into the blood ocean on the other side with a violent splash.

‘Damned womanizer…’ she fumed silently as steam metaphorically rose from her head.