Chapter 2
641words
All the pieces were in place.
I knew Talia would come tonight. Fate's invisible hand would push her to Etheris's side when he was most vulnerable and compromised.
But I couldn't accept it.
Why should this happen?
Heavy rain pounded against the castle's stained-glass windows, thunder rolling like the sky was being torn apart.
I found Etheris curled up in the darkest corner of the lounge.
His tall frame trembled uncontrollably with pain. Uncontrolled Alpha pheromones surged like a tsunami, threatening to drown the entire room.
Someone had dosed him with the most potent catalyst on the market.
"Silodai…"
He lifted his head. Those golden eyes, usually full of sunshine, now burned crimson red. The drug had incinerated his rationality, leaving nothing but ashes.
I locked the door behind me.
With a click, the entire world was shut out.
I walked toward him, my heels silent against the thick carpet.
With a gentle press on my wristband, I activated the miniature sensory blocker. It would distort his sense of smell and tactile perception, making him mistake me for someone else in his drug-addled state.
Someone his DNA had marked him for. Someone his instincts desperately craved.
I leaned down.
What he smelled was Talia's sickeningly sweet Omega pheromones. I'd added stabilizer to make it more convincing—like cheap syrup from a third-rate dessert shop.
His mind clouded by desire and drugs, driven by pure animal instinct.
Yet in the final moment before losing control, he painfully called out my name.
"Silodai!"
A hoarse, desperate cry.
"Silodai… baby… it hurts so much… Silodai…"
He was inside my body, yet stubbornly, with his last shred of consciousness, he called my name over and over.
I was in pain too.
Our pitiful 25% compatibility rate manifested as primitive physiological rejection, each thrust a form of torture.
Bone fighting bone. Blood rejecting blood.
Outside, lightning illuminated the wolf-shaped stone sculpture, a silent witness to this grand deception and slow torture I had orchestrated.
The next morning, I tidied myself, changed into a clean dress, and "happened" to push open the lounge door.
Etheris lay disheveled on the messy carpet. In the air, my carefully prepared "Talia pheromone" mingled with the scent of his pleasure.
The evidence was damning.
When he saw me, his golden pupils contracted to pinpoints, filled with absolute terror.
"No… it's not what it looks like, Silodai! Please, let me explain! It's not what you think!"
My heart shattered. I swallowed the bitterness in my throat and asked softly, "What am I seeing?"
My voice was as steady as if I were reading a lab report.
"Let's break up, Etheris. This is the end for us."
"No!"
He let out an inhuman moan, crawling desperately toward me, clutching the hem of my skirt like a drowning man grasping at driftwood.
The next second, as if remembering something, he rushed into the bathroom.
The shower blasted at maximum, scalding water mixing with desperate whimpers. I heard skin being scrubbed raw, again and again, with self-destructive fury.
Soon, the metallic scent of blood seeped through the door crack.
He knelt before me, drenched in water and blood, utterly broken. "I've washed myself clean… Silodai… I'm clean…"
"Don't leave me… please…"
"You're all I have…"
Where my heart should have been was only emptiness, with nothing but howling cold wind.
Etheris, I'm sorry.
I opened my eyes and spoke the final word in my calmest, cruelest tone.
"Leave."
I turned away, shutting the door on his breakdown of sobs and desperate pleas.
The floor-to-ceiling window at the corridor's end reflected my appearance.
Expressionless, with elegant posture—an exquisite, soulless doll in a display case.
Only a single tear slid uncontrollably from the corner of my eye.
On the cold glass, it left a fleeting, burning trace.
