Chapter 272: May I?

"Tell me about yourself."

Cupping the large paper cup in my hands, I cast a fleeting glance as Damian picked up his own order—though he had chosen an iced latte without sugar.

"What would you like to know? I didn’t go to kindergarten. Instead, in my free time away from school, I went to training."

Strolling leisurely through the park, he shared pieces of his childhood. How, besides Matthias, he had other brothers and sisters, and how large his family was. How he used to go to training with his brother, and how their father always drove them there.

We even talked a bit about how he intended to create his own pack, having already prepared all the documents, which had been successfully approved. Right now, his pack consisted of just one person—himself, and he was its Alpha. I didn’t quite understand why he was doing this, since he was already one of the primary heirs to a massive and highly influential pack in the city, if not on the entire continent.

"Why do you need your own pack if you’re already part of a family and the eldest son in the pack?"

Taking a cautious sip of my hot chocolate, I finally figured out what its peculiar taste was and why it had seemed a bit spicy the whole time. It turned out not to be just hot chocolate; it had pink peppercorns in it. When I ordered it, I hadn’t paid attention to the description, but now I noticed the tiny text printed right on the cup. It was so unexpected and unusual, but I loved it immensely. I would have even wanted another.

"Because I want to build everything from scratch myself. Test my own strength, find out what I’m truly worth, rather than taking something ready-made. It’s much more interesting to win trust and respect from zero than to inherit it as a given."

Actually, judging by Damian’s behavior, his stance made complete sense to me. His character and actions spoke volumes, if one paid close attention to him.

He truly didn’t strike me as a man willing to blindly accept anything handed to him by someone else. I didn’t know why, but when I thought about all the hardships he would have to overcome, I had zero doubt that he would handle it all. After all, he was devilishly strong and capable.

A damn good Alpha.

Shuddering at this sudden thought, I nearly stumbled. Tripping clumsily on flat asphalt, I instantly felt Damian’s hot, reliable hands snap tightly around my waist, saving me from a fall.

Engrossed in conversation, we had quietly walked back to the parking lot near his car. It was already getting late, and I needed to head home. But that blasted thought... it felt completely foreign to me.

As if someone else’s voice was persistently purring it inside my consciousness. A scratching chill rolled down my spine, and then a wave of heat enveloped my entire body—far more intense and dense than before.

The moment the alpha helped me stand straight, I slipped into the passenger seat, hiding my eyes. This was getting ridiculous. My condition defied any logical explanation, save for one single thing—the very thing the doctor had spoken of.

About my awakening. And that it would soon arrive.

I tried not to think about it, keeping my eyes nearly shut for almost the entire ride. Because I was deathly afraid that our eyes might accidentally meet, and I would see the sparks wandering in the depths of his.

He seemed to see right through my state and feel my terror. Whether it was directed at him or not, I shook to my core with a dread of the unknown looming frighteningly on the horizon, wrapping the suffocating tentacles of wild panic around my mind.

"How did you like this evening?"

Killing the car engine, Damian turned toward me, pinning me with a hypnotic, piercing gaze.

The moment we pulled up to my old house, I caught the familiar silhouette of my mother in my bedroom window. She was staring intently out at the street, searching for us.

"I liked it very much."

Shifting my gaze from the lit windows to the guy beside me, I registered just how wildly tense he was sitting, how tightly his jaw was clenched.

His gaze slowly raked over my body, feeling like a blade slipping beneath my skin. It was as if he were looking straight into my soul.

"Amelie... How about we meet tomorrow evening?"

"I don’t know my schedule for tomorrow, and I have a lot of homework. Until I check, I can’t give you a definitive answer."

Clutching the hem of my dress with trembling fingers, I couldn’t understand at all why my rebellious body was trembling so traitorously at the sound of his low voice.

"Do you mind if I text you?" he asked insinuatingly, looking deep into my eyes.

"No," I breathed out, completely surrendering beneath that unblinking gaze. Too intense and sharp. For the umpteenth time today, I caught myself thinking that friends don’t look at each other like that. Famished.

"Amelie... I have one more question for you."

"What is it?"

"You could say it’s more of a request, actually," Damian whispered, leaning closer to me.

"What kind of request?" I tensed slightly, pressing my shoulder blades hard against the leather seat.

’May I kiss you?’

"What?" Stunned, I jerked away from him, pressing my shoulder blades hard against the car seat. "Friends don’t kiss each other!"

"And where did you get that certainty?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. His voice was deceptively calm, making every nerve ending inside me snap taut. "You’ve never had guy friends, and I’ve never had girlfriends. So neither of us can really be sure."

"Damian, friends don’t kiss," I ground out, trying to quell the nervous shiver that had already slithered down my spine.

"On the cheek, they do."

Frowning, I stared at him. He looked dangerously confident in his words, and his dark gaze pierced right through me.

Kiss me. On the cheek.

"Only on the cheek," I relented at last.