Chapter 232: You
At the gravelly tone right above my head, I nearly dropped my phone and bolted off the bench with a squeak, leaping forward. Spinning around with a hand pressed to my chest, I stared at him in terror. He hadn’t even moved from his spot, just standing there leaning over the bench with his hands resting on its back.
"I wasn’t..." Quickly biting my tongue, I realized I had no idea how long he had been standing there or how much he had seen, so lying was pointless. "Why did you call me here?"
The young alpha’s gaze swept over me from head to toe, completely devoid of warmth, as if I were nothing more than a dull, uninteresting object.
"Let’s not play games and get straight to business, since we’ve already met, little bird," walking around the bench, the man sat down lazily. Spreading his long legs wide, he rested his elbows on them and locked his eyes onto me in a way that sent a wave of panic shuddering through my entire body.
In an instant, it wasn’t a student sitting before me, but a monster. His eyes darkened, with only the slanting rays of sunlight casting a living gleam across this abyss. "You saw me and you know who I am."
"I won’t tell anyone, I promise!" tucking my phone into my pocket, I realized I had spoken in vain, because now I had nowhere to hide my hands. "I’m grateful to you, because if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to escape and Michael would have caught me."
"You’re right. I saved you, but you disobeyed and ran away." The alpha’s grin pierced my lungs like knives, making it even more terrifying that he might stand up and walk toward me.
"I was terrified and worried about my mom and dad. They aren’t allowed to get stressed; after all, I’m a late-in-life child, and they worry a lot about me." Swallowing my viscous saliva, which slid down my throat in a nervous lump, I involuntarily wiped my sweat-damp palms against the pockets of my jeans, and that didn’t escape his notice.
"Your parents are important to you, it seems?" The guy smirked, lifting his sharp gaze back to my face.
Not understanding why he was asking this question, I simply nodded. It was logical, wasn’t it? These were my parents, and I worried about them just as they worried about me. We were a family.
"Of course, they’re parents after all, and I love them."
"You’re from the eastern coast, right?" the guy asked indifferently, and I was no longer surprised by his omniscience. He probably knew down to the second how many steps I had taken since birth.
𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦
"Yes."
"Is that so... Lived there your whole life, and you must know how to do a lot?" This unexpected question knocked the last remaining shreds of understanding out of my brain.
"Since birth, we lived there our whole life with our parents... What do you mean by a lot? Well, helping around the house or picking berries."
"Is that so... Amazing," smirking, he leaned back against the back of the stone bench and, throwing an arm over it, propped up his head.
In the rays of the setting sun, he seemed remarkably handsome, and I certainly had never in my life seen anyone quite so attractive. In our village, they believed that demons with wings in human guise lived on the mountain, and their countenances were so breathtaking that it was impossible to look away.
Tengu. Men with enormous black wings. If I had encountered him at night in the forest, I surely would have mistaken him for one of them. It was impossible to possess such wicked beauty that even my heart, which had never known love or affection, shuddered.
His slightly curly, damp hair fell over his abyss-colored eyes and shadowed his features, making them look more predatory. From his gaze, I lost all sense of time and space, not knowing where this conversation was leading or why he was interested in me. What difference could it possibly make to him?
Shifting his gaze away from me, he reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out a smartphone. He typed something on it and smiled with such devilish satisfaction that I decided it was time for me to get out of there.
"Anyway, thanks for saving me. I really won’t tell anyone anything, but I have to go," stepping closer to him, I grabbed my bag, which had remained standing on the bench right beside him. Unexpectedly, he shifted his gaze from his phone back to me, and his palm clamped around my wrist, scorching me with a heat comparable to the inferno of hell.
I knew that alpha wolves were hot and their temperature vastly exceeded that of others, while unawakened ones like me felt this difference even more acutely. But now, the heat from his hand was crawling through my veins, as if I were slowly sliding my entire body into a furnace. My heart was beating wildly against my ribs, pumping adrenaline up to the heavens.
"Not so fast, Hart. You belong to me now and are obligated to pay for your life," smirking, he lowered his eyelids and dropped his gaze from my face down to my jacket. His fingers squeezed the small vein on my wrist like a vice, right where my pulse was racing.
"How? I don’t have money, but if you tell me how much, I’ll get a part-time job and transfer everything to you," because of the way he was crushing my hand, the sensation that his frantic pulse was already galloping across my nerves, creating a wild dance, refused to leave me.
"I’m not interested in those pathetic pennies you can offer me. To pay off your debt to me, you’ll have to slave away your whole life without days off, and you still won’t pay off the debt," his lips stretched into a wicked smirk, and he rose from the bench, looming over me like a massive shadow.
A threat. I found myself trapped. On one hand, it was terrifying; on the other, I desperately wanted with all my might to shove him away from me and run.
"— But... what is it that you want, then?" I whispered, staring into the abyss of his eyes and feeling it pull me in deeper with every second.
"You. I want you."
He spoke in a whisper, yet his words crashed over me with the force of a deafening, furious roar.