Chapter 52: ⁵² Nyx

Kael’s POV

What had happened to me? It was as if I had completely lost my mind. Never, not even once in my life, had I imagined I would behave like that with any woman.

I glanced beside me at the person responsible for throwing my mind into complete chaos.

Athena.

She was lying peacefully on my bed, sleeping so soundly that she looked like the most innocent person in the world.

Her breathing was slow and steady, completely unaware of the storm she had left raging inside my head.

"This girl..."

I muttered under my breath, unable to look away from her peaceful face. How could someone who looked so harmless create such havoc wherever she went?

"She looks so innocent, doesn’t she?" my wolf, Nyx, teased, amusement evident in his voice.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. This was becoming too much.

"You should keep quiet, Nyx," I shot back to my wolf mentally. "After what you almost pulled earlier, you’re the last one who should be commenting."

The irritation I had managed to suppress for so long returned all at once, this time stronger than before.

"Oh?" Nyx chuckled. "And why exactly are you irritated?" he shot back, mirroring my attitude back to me, his tone was no longer that bubbly one he had used when talking about Athena. "It wasn’t me who stood in front of the entire pack and publicly announced that we’d take a mateless she-wolf just to bear our pup."

And his words hit their mark. I frowned.

"Don’t bring that up, Nyx."

My gaze unconsciously drifted back to Athena. "When I made that announcement in the hall, this..." I gestured vaguely toward the sleeping girl beside me, "...wasn’t what I had in mind."

"Not even remotely."

A tired sigh escaped my lips as I continued my eyes unknowingly still locked on Athena. "The whole point was to stop everyone from forcing potential mates on me. I deliberately made the conditions ridiculous. I thought no woman in her right mind would ever agree to them."

I let out a humourless laugh. "But then..."

I broke my gaze from her and started looking at the ceiling. "This girl came along and shattered that assumption."

Nyx laughed loudly inside my head. "Oh I love hearing this from you, tell me more about your thoughts on her."

I ignored him and continued. "After she accepted, I convinced myself someone must have sent her. I thought she wanted something from me. Information, money or anything else. It would’ve made sense."

"But apparently..." I rubbed my forehead.

"...that wasn’t true either." I glanced toward Athena once more. "This complete nutcase actually claims she’s head over heels in love with someone like me."

Another one of my assumptions had been proven wrong.

"And now..." I frowned thoughtfully. "...I don’t even know what to believe anymore."

Nyx hummed in amusement. "Maybe...just maybe...she’s telling the truth."

I immediately dismissed the idea. "Impossible." No sane person could genuinely fall for someone as cold and distant as I had always been.

And yet... For some reason...Every time I looked at the sleeping girl beside me... I found myself questioning even that certainty.

I heard a snicker from my own wolf. My own wolf was laughing at me as if he hadn’t been equally responsible for all of this.

"Stop laughing, Nyx!" I shot at him getting irritated again at how annoying he was being.

"Okay, okay, continue please, I really want to know your thoughts," he said back to me his amusement still apparent in his voice.

Ignoring his annoying part, I decided to explain myself further.

" After that, I thought she would never actually dare to become intimate with me. Despite how confident she acted, always claiming she was ready to seduce me. I could tell she wasn’t. That’s why I controlled myself in the hallway and let her leave. But she shattered that assumption too."

I glanced at the sleeping girl beside me. "She came to my house on her own."

Nyx chuckled, "Yeah, that was so bold and cute right?" He said yet again in that annoying bubbly voice that was like sharp needles for me.

His adoration for her was getting out of hand now. I let out a frustrated sigh and just continued with the main topic in question.

"Then I thought that if this girl was really that determined, I would simply give her what she had agreed to. She would be nothing more than the woman meant to carry my child, my breeding vessel, someone I could keep at a distance, and use for my desires anytime I want with neither of us expecting anything more."

I paused, rubbing a hand over my face. "But somewhere along the way...through everything that happened between us... even though I kept reminding myself that none of it meant anything and that I should treat her exactly as we had agreed..."

"I lost myself." My gaze remained fixed on Athena’s peaceful face. "It was as if I had gone completely mad." I shook my head.

"So much so that I even forgot I was supposed to keep your ass restrained whenever I was around this girl."

I frowned mentally at my wolf. "Because even if she affects me, I can still force myself to stay in control."

"But not you. I always feel like if I let you loose around her, you’d never stop chasing after her."

My wolf scoffed, as he heard me saying the last part, clearly offended. "Oh, please. If you were really so great at controlling yourself, then who was the one losing his mind just from being close to her?"

He snorted. "Don’t blame everything on me. We both know that’s not the truth."

I fell silent. He was right. What had happened between Athena and me hadn’t been just the heat of the moment.

I had enjoyed being close to her. Far more than I wanted to admit. So much that it almost felt addicting. And that realisation was... unsettling.

"You know, Nyx," I said quietly, my thoughts drifting back over everything that had happened only a few hours ago.

"Athena is the only woman I’ve ever been intimate with." I let out a slow breath. "Hell, she was... also the first woman I ever kissed."

For a brief moment, the memories replayed in my mind. Then my expression darkened. "After everything that happened, the moment I had spent myself inside her, I completely lost my rational thinking. I almost did something I would’ve regretted."

"My instincts were screaming at me to claim her without thinking."

For the first time in our conversation, I felt Nyx getting serious as I continued.

"But then... I heard her voice. She asked me what I was doing." I closed my eyes briefly.

"And thank goodness she did. That single moment snapped me out of it. And I stopped myself."

"If she hadn’t..." I shook my head.

"I might have done something incredibly foolish." That thought alone left a bitter feeling in my chest.

"But why do we have to treat it as something foolish, Kael?" Nyx asked, genuine curiosity filling his voice.

"Athena likes us. And we both find her so irresistible that we lose control whenever she’s around. So why keep holding onto this agreement?"

His tone became almost pleading. "Just let me mark her. Let me make her ours."

"No, Nyx." I tore my gaze away from Athena and stood up from the bed, deliberately putting some distance between us.

The farther I was from her, the easier it was to think clearly. "There is no way Athena’s claim that she likes me is true and even if it is true for now it can’t be after she finds her mate."

I walked over to the window and rested a hand against its frame. "So marking her is out of context. A mate bond between her and me is not possible. There are too many things surrounding my life that make me certain something like that could never happen. You know that better than anyone."

Nyx fell silent. He knew exactly what I was referring to.

My curse would never let me find my mate but that was not the case with anyone else, even if the least possibility was true and Athena did like me, still this like would be thrown out the window once she finds her own mate.

"So you need to remember this as well."

I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon.

"What Athena and I have is nothing more than an agreement. It was a ridiculous agreement...one that she herself proposed. to be between us."

Outside, dawn was beginning to break.

The first rays of sunlight painted the eastern sky crimson, as though someone had brushed red across an endless canvas.

For a few quiet moments, neither of us spoke. Then Nyx’s voice echoed through my mind once again.

"But, Kael..." His tone was unusually serious. What if she’s not here because of some hidden plan? What if she’s simply an innocent, clueless girl... who genuinely likes you?"

The question made my heart skip for the briefest moment.

Nyx continued quietly, "If that turns out to be true...will you still go through with the agreement?"

His words lingered in the silence. "When she gives us our pup will you still kill her, just like the agreement says?"