Chapter 262: Her

Leaning my back against the cold wall, I watched the apartment door slowly swing open, a burning, corrosive rage twisting inside me. It was happening all over again. Every single detail, repeating like a cruel loop, and I was entirely powerless to stop it.

Powerless to save her.

As I met her blank, glassy eyes, I stepped forward. But Amelie walked right past me, her steps swaying and unsteady, gliding into the shadows and slipping soundlessly down the stairs.

She couldn’t be stopped. I’d tried. Nothing ever worked. She would keep going, fighting back with a fierce, reckless fury, and when that failed, she would scream until her throat bled, trapped in the nightmare until she finally woke.

It was a torment worse than anything I could have ever imagined—a slow, agonizing burn tearing me apart from the inside out. To watch her suffer, pinned to the mercy of a living death, while I was reduced to a ghost. A helpless, invisible spectator to her descent.

My soul raged against the cruelty of it all, a dark, primal hatred boiling up for the monsters who had engineered our existence.

We were nothing more than disposable pawns, commodities bred for sale. No matter what kind of monster I had become, I could never comprehend how human lives could be bartered like cattle in a market. We were a mistake. We shouldn’t have existed at all. Neither of us.

Artificial anomalies like us were merely the byproduct of someone else’s twisted desire to cheat the laws of nature. They never cared what it did to us; to them, we were just genetic waste scraped from a test tube, though they arrogantly called themselves creators.

Yet, somehow, the fates had carved out a twisted fortune for us. For her and for me.

I still remember when I was six years old, how casually they told me I had a true mate. Back then, I barely understood what the word even meant, but carrying that hollow, aching pull in my chest—a relentless, clawing pressure—was pure hell for a child whose mind was already teetering on the edge.

And then, they carried another bed into my cell. And Her.

She was so tiny. Yet the moment she appeared, that agonizing ache beneath my ribs and the maddening, mind-numbing call vanished entirely. Swallowed by a profound, strange stillness that felt almost like peace.

Amelie. My little mate.

I could hardly believe my eyes back then, especially since I was never allowed near the other children. To society, I was just a dangerous, feral cub, but within their cursed experiments, I was the only one who had a mate. An unprecedented breakthrough in their labs, born from relentless, sickening labor.

Even then, my little curse smelled like flowers from the crown of her head down to her tiny heels. Breeders aren’t supposed to have a scent until they fully awaken, but she smelled like spring. And that fragile, sweet illusion was the only thing that kept me sane through two more years of hell. Looking at her, I dreamed of a life of freedom, side by side.

A child’s dreams of freedom and escape—so achingly naive. The belief that if you just tried hard enough, everything would work out. But the world outside was full of cruel scavengers, monsters willing to trade not just an innocent soul, but their own flesh and blood for a profit.

And those traded souls were us.

That old bastard who generously funded the laboratory and reeled in other investors finally died. Deprived of funds, the children began to slowly and quietly disappear. Day by day, the glade where we always sat apart grew emptier, until only I and my little mate were left.

When our turn came, I still desperately hoped we could escape. But the mansion where we were kept was so heavily guarded that it was physically impossible. And the bastard who drunkenly roared that we now had to call his bride "mother" was an out-of-his-mind sadist.

Still, at least we were fed, and we could finally sleep in the warmth. Simply falling asleep side by side, instead of huddling together in a desperate bid not to shake from the cold, like two leaves torn from a branch.

And then he completely lost his mind, dragged us onto his yacht, and... took my mate away.

The worst part wasn’t that I was brutally beaten when I tried to stop them; it was the way she cried.

And I couldn’t help her. Just like now.

I followed her step for step through the night streets. The only thing I could do to help her in this state... was slip soft slippers onto her feet and drape a warm cardigan over her shoulders so she wouldn’t catch a cold. To make sure she didn’t wander onto the road and that none of the passersby touched her.

And she could walk like that all night. Wandering aimlessly, draining the very last remnants of her strength, through the winding cobwebs of the sleeping city in a blind search for something that had long ago been irrevocably lost. Something she didn’t even remember or know.

Wandering until dawn, I noticed she was utterly exhausted and barely able to stand. Stepping closer, I scooped her up into my arms without fear and finally felt her tense body relax as she drifted off to sleep. I hoped that tomorrow, at least, she would rest and sleep properly for a good portion of the night.

Sometimes she sleeps almost until dawn, then abruptly gets up and wanders for about an hour. But tonight, it lasted the entire night.

A long night spent right by her side, followed by an endless day of watching her through a camera hidden inside a plush chew toy on the shelf. The sickening feeling that I was a deranged voyeur never left me, but I simply couldn’t do otherwise. The tether connecting me to her was so much fainter than the dormant gland of hers that I kept locked away.