Chapter 233: Not here

"You... I’m sorry, what?" I stammered, falling into a state of utter shock. For a moment, I wondered if I was genuinely out of my mind.

I desperately wanted to rewind time just to hear his response again—to prove to myself that I had misheard him, that he had said something else entirely.

"I want you." He smirked, closing his eyes as the long shadow of his dark lashes rested against his lower lids. Sunlight flickered through his hair, but I was too transfixed by the chilling transformation of his face to appreciate it.

His expression shifted into something unnervingly intense, yet he spoke as if discussing something completely mundane—his voice laced with a dark, terrifying indulgence, almost borderline tender.

"I don’t quite understand what you mean by that," I said, looking at him in utter confusion. I shifted nervously from foot to foot, my cheeks burning with heat at the absurdity of it all. "You want me to... what? To do something? Um, maybe I don’t even know—"

"I want to have everything you are. Everything you have. Just you."

At those words, the surrounding noise of the street seemed to deaden completely. Reality slipped from beneath my feet. It was wildly surreal—and dangerous—for a towering, unfamiliar male to utter such shameless demands directly to my face without showing even a shred of remorse or restraint.

Is he completely out of his mind? I wondered, a prickle of dread washing over me. Is he not just a threat to bad people, but a danger to society itself?

The moment I took a tentative step backward, he closed the distance between us. His movement was fluid, lightning-fast, and predatory. I barely suppressed a gasp, fighting the primal urge to scream and sprint toward the bus stop. He exuded an overwhelming, effortless confidence—as if he fully expected me to drop to my knees in gratitude for his sudden claim over me.

"Are you out of your mind? I am not some easy girl you can just order around!" Stepping back another pace, I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and glared at him with indignant defiance. "You don’t even know me!"

"Well, we’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted—since you’re moving in with me," he chuckled darkly, taking another smooth, predatory step toward me.

I instantly mirrored his movement, retreating further. Every instinct inside me screamed against letting him invade my space or get anywhere near my personal boundary.

"Have you lost your mind?" I shot back. "I live with my parents! Damian, you helped me out back there, I won’t deny that, but I escaped on my own. I would have made it out without you anyway, so don’t think for a second that helping me gives you the right to treat me like this!"

"You live with them?" Damian ignored my words and smoothly swiveled his phone screen toward me. There, on the display, I saw my mother and father... sitting inside a car with completely unfamiliar people in black suits.

They looked so profoundly terrified that a violent wave of absolute panic tore through me. Forgetting the Alpha entirely, I yanked my phone from my pocket and frantically dialed my father.

"The subscriber is out of network coverage."

Refusing to believe my ears, I feverishly punched in my mother’s number, only to be met by the same soulless, mechanical grind on the other end of the line.

Panic slammed into me with such crushing force that a sudden surge of adrenaline completely numbed my physical body. My heart hammered at a manic pace, threatening to shatter my ribs and race home ahead of me just to prove this man was lying—to prove their phones had simply died.

Whirling around, I completely tuned him out and sprinted toward the bus stop. The wind whipped my hair across my face, blinding me. Clearing the strands away, I saw the exact bus I needed pulling up right before me, and I practically stumbled into the half-empty cabin.

Tapping my transit card against the reader, I fumbled twice, enraged by the violent tremor in my fingers. Every stop felt like an agonizing, prolonged form of torture, and I barely restrained the urge to march up to the driver and demand he drive faster.

I nervously bounced my foot in a frantic rhythm known only to my internal neurosis. That damn habit of shaking my leg when anxious had plagued me since childhood. I couldn’t stop myself, and though nearby passengers cast sideways glances at my twitching foot, I couldn’t care less about their judgment. I kept trying to get through to my parents.

Nothing. Dead, hollow silence answered me, and the heart in my chest hitched, aching with a heavy, ominous dread.

It felt as though someone had placed a dark curse upon me.

How? How had my life turned upside down in such a short span of time? A wild, desperate thought whispered through my mind that I should have stayed safely tucked away in my village and never stuck my nose out, spinning like a frantic wind-up mouse through the labyrinths of my consciousness.

When I reached my stop, I bolted through the doors, skipping steps and completely ignoring an old woman’s scolding that I must be mentally unstable to behave with such frantic disregard. Those words didn’t even touch me.

Rushing all the way to my house, I breathed raggedly, my lungs burning with fire. Pressing the magnetic key to the door, I bolted upstairs, skipping steps in my frantic haste. I pushed the door open, stepping into the dark hallway, tears instantly welling up in my eyes as a terrifying realization gripped me—a truth my soul refused to accept.

They weren’t here.

Dead, heavy silence swallowed the entire space around me, thick and deafening, echoing the nightmares of my childhood. Endless, shadow-draped corridors stretched before me, offering no exit and hiding the face of someone desperately calling out to me.

"M-mom? Dad?.. Are you here..?"

Silence.