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He could still remember the shocked looks on the faces of his mother and Joanne when they first showed up and he wasn\'t sure if that was due to surprise or fear.

He didn\'t think he wanted to find out that badly either...

"Honey... I think we\'ve been in here long enough."

Malachi opened his violet eyes and found Sei standing under the water with him.

Her skin had already started to turn red from such prolonged exposure to the hot water, and her fingers had long since started to prune up.

Malachi smiled apologetically as he pushed her wet hair out of her face.

"I\'m sorry... I shouldn\'t have held you hostage in here with me like this."

"Don\'t be silly. I stayed in here with you because I knew that you needed me, but we cannot hide from them forever."

"...We could tr-"

"No, we could not."

Sei finally cut off the water that had been running for forty-five minutes nonstop and her skin let out a sigh of relief.

She grabbed Malachi by the hand as if she was completely unafraid of the new and lethal black claws running from his fingertips and pulled them out of the shower.

There were towels already waiting for them on the sink, and they both took special care to dry each other off thoroughly.

"I understand why you\'d be worried, but you should know Nyx by now. There is very little that you could ever do or say that would make her stop loving you."

"Yea..."

"Or... are you more worried about Joanne?"

"..." Malachi\'s silence was all that Sei could have possibly needed as an answer.

"Honey... I know that you two have been working on developing your feelings for one another, so you should think of this as your first real test of compatibility.

If she can\'t see that you\'re the same person even with snakes coming out of your back then she doesn\'t deserve you, and she is not the kind of person we thought she was."

Mal let Sei\'s words sink in, even though he already knew them to be true on some level.

However... he really didn\'t want to see the worst case scenario come to fruition.

Not when he felt that he was just on the cusp of getting her to truly accept him and put down her barriers.

He loved her... but he worried that his changes might have been just a bit too much for her to have a chance at feeling the same.

"...Sei, that part is dry now, you don\'t have to keep rubbing it."

"S-Sorry! I was just..! ...It is no wonder that the girls were walking strangely this morning..."

"Are you feeling curious..?"

"Y-Yes, but... we shouldn\'t let ourselves get distracted right now."

Just as quickly as Mal\'s good mood started to build, it deflated.

Honestly, he didn\'t know if he was going to get another opportunity for a better distraction than that.

"Sssss..."

Almost on cue, all four of Malachi\'s serpent tails presented themselves to Sei- indicating they would also like to be dried off.

"My... how cute." She aid with a chuckle. "I did not think they would be sentient."

"Only barely. I wouldn\'t count on them speaking or anything like that unless I take control of their minds and speak through them."

"So you\'re choosing to let them have their own minds? How come?"

"No real reason I guess. I figured they would keep me company." Mal admitted.

Sei nodded thoughtfully she dried off the reflective black scales of the amusing young serpents.

"Have you named them?"

Malachi thought about it for only a moment before he came up with perfect names for all four of the snakes.

"Manda, Gwiya, Onini, Vritra."

"Oh, those are..." Suddenly, Sei paused and gave Mal a suspicious look. "How many of those names did you get from anime and light novels?"

"..."

At this point, the snakes also turned to stare at Mal like they were waiting for an answer.

"....Well, I think I\'m pretty dry now."

Sei watched Mal escape from the bathroom with palpable haste in his steps and she cold do nothing but shake her head pitifully as she watched him.

\'Well, at least he doesn\'t seem so nervous anymore.\'

-

Contrary to what Sei thought would happen, Mal\'s nervousness returned after he finally stepped back into the living room.

There, he could see Joanne and his mother sitting on the sofa across from the rest of his fiancés and only daughter.

It seemed like they had been chatting before, but as soon as he came out they all drew silent as they stared at him.

"Ah... Am I interrupting something?"

"No, of course not." Luna answered with a smile.

At her side were Bianca, Nadine, and Anna, all of whom were showered and looking at him with expressions that he could not fully read.

To the closest possible degree, he could only identify it as palpable lust and mysticism along with hints of fear.

He sat beside Luna and she nuzzled warmly in an effort to calm him down.

And against all expectations, it actually seemed to be working.

"Well… I guess the girls told you everything while I was in the shower?" He asked.

"They did." His mother said somewhat blankly.

Mal felt his heart speed up as he heard the distant and unfamiliar way that his mother was speaking to him, and he immediately feared for the worst again.

*In Chthonic dialect* "You\'re hurting me, Malachi. Can you not even look me in the eye?"

Mal hadn\'t realized that he had been keeping his gaze firmly locked on his mother\'s knees this entire time and summarily lifted them up to stare into her galactic eyes.

However, he found unrivaled heartbreak waiting for him.

"Why… are you acting as if you cannot face me? As if you have reason to be wary of me?Have I not loved you enough?

What has made you think… that you could have ever changed enough to be my son anymore?"

"No, it is not anything you have done, I promise… But perhaps that goes hand in hand with being shown so much love and care.

You start to worry that you might lose that happiness. Even if it is for the smallest of reasons."

Malachi eyed his deep black skin that was definitely no longer human and that currently had two large snakes coiling around it.

\'Although I wouldn\'t exactly call something like this \'small\'…\'

"That\'s silly."

Nyx suddenly crossed the distance between herself and her son and she pulled his face into her hands.

"I would never be so cruel to you. My children are all that I live for, and that will never change just because your eyes now glow."

\'Is that all you noticed..?\' He thought with a laugh.

Malachi smiled as he enjoyed the feeling of his mother\'s warmth that always seemed to come just when he needed it.

"Somehow, I knew that you would say something like that.."

"Then that only makes your prior act of running away into the shower for forty-five minutes all the more silly."

"…fair."

Nyx finally released Mal and gave him a small kiss on the forehead that just barely grazed his skin.

"I-I need to use the restroom..!"

Joanne suddenly stood up from her seat before she ran down the hallway and into the spare bathroom.

Briefly, Mal felt his own heart clench up and he started to feel like he already knew how things were going to end.

\'Ah well… Can\'t win them a-\'

"I… am going to kill her."

Anna got up from her seat awkwardly and on ginger legs before running towards the bathroom her mom had hidden away in.

"Anna, don\'t-"

"Mal… let her do this." Luna said. "It\'s been a while and I think… those two have a lot they need to talk about."

Mal didn\'t really believe there would be any talking between Anna and Joanne, but he lost the chance to chase after them when he heard a familiar child-like voice in his mind.

\'It is time for instruction to begin. Please, join me with the child.\'