Chapter 287: Foreboding

Smiling to myself, I watched with relief as, some time later, a rather grumpy and visibly irritated alpha emerged from the cellar. He folded his arms across his chest and fixed his mother with a stern, disapproving stare, clearly trying to intimidate her into submission.

She, on the other hand, merely offered him an innocent little smile and casually explained that she must have put the oil in another cupboard and simply forgotten about it.

All in all, meeting Damian’s enormous family turned out to be a wonderful experience.

He had a younger sister who was still in high school. She was quite pretty, outgoing, and full of mischief. Over dinner, she entertained me with all sorts of hilarious stories about Damian’s teenage years.

I was so engrossed in her tales that I completely missed the moment Damian, Matthias, and the family patriarch, Magnus, a serious, imposing man, excused themselves from the dining room and disappeared.

That left me alone with Damian’s mother and sister.

As it turned out, they had two more biological sons besides Matthias. However, the boys had left that very morning to attend important sporting competitions. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t get the chance to meet them until the following month.

We spent a lovely evening chatting about all sorts of girly things. By the time I started feeling my eyes grow heavy with exhaustion, Rose kindly offered to show me to one of the guest rooms so I could wait there for my alpha.

However, when I woke up the following morning, I found myself completely alone.

I was just getting out of bed when I noticed a little white note resting on the bedside table. Damian had written that he and Matthias had to leave urgently to take care of some business.

After freshening up, I wandered downstairs and made my way to the kitchen. I had barely arrived when I ran into Jane. One look at her face told me something was wrong.

A strange, unpleasant feeling settled in my stomach. Something was terribly wrong, and an inexplicable sense of foreboding began to creep over me.

***

"Amelie..."

Jane set the damp towel down on the edge of the counter and took an uncertain step toward me. I tensed immediately. There was something unbearably sorrowful in her eyes, a look of such deep pity that all I wanted to do was hide. To curl into a tiny ball and disappear.

Closing the distance between us, she reached out and gently touched my burning forehead. Then she cupped my face in both hands, and my breath caught.

Her hands were freezing. Literally scorching cold, as though she’d just pulled them out of a snowbank.

Startled by the sudden contrast, I instinctively took a step back, desperate to escape the strange, frightening sensation. But Jane followed, refusing to let me put any distance between us.

"I’m fine," I managed, my voice betraying me with a pitiful rasp that scraped painfully against my throat.

I swallowed hard, trying to gather myself and regain some semblance of composure.

"Your hands are awfully cold," she murmured, almost under her breath. I felt an icy shiver travel down my spine.

My throat hurt terribly with every breath, as though it had suddenly become raw and painfully inflamed. Noticing my discomfort, Jane finally withdrew her hands, letting them fall to her sides.

Only when her fingers were no longer touching me did I feel a faint sense of relief. The horrible, icy sensation seemed to retreat, no longer spreading beneath my skin.

"I think you should go back to your room," she said softly, although there was an unmistakable firmness beneath her gentle tone.

Before I could protest, she placed a hand on my shoulder and firmly guided me back toward the hallway.

"What’s wrong?" I stopped abruptly, looking around in confusion. A sudden, dreadful realization struck me, and panic seized my chest. My heart hammered in my chest––wildly. "I saw the note on the nightstand. Where are Damian and Matthias?"

Jane fell silent. She turned her face away before releasing a long, heavy sigh, as though struggling to find the right words. Her evasiveness only made my anxiety worse, and I couldn’t make sense of what she was trying to tell me.

The walk back to our bedroom felt several times longer than it had the night before. Every last ounce of energy seemed to drain from my body with each step. It was strange. My limbs grew heavier and heavier, as though invisible concrete weights were slowly settling over my shoulders.

By the time we reached the end of the hallway, I was practically stumbling over my own feet. My legs felt utterly uncooperative, and I could barely control them. My entire body had gone strangely numb.

Once inside the bedroom, I collapsed onto the enormous bed and immediately pulled the heavy blankets up to my chin, desperately trying to warm myself.

As I struggled to regulate my breathing, I caught Jane’s deeply troubled expression. Something was terribly wrong. I could see it in her eyes. My body was growing weaker by the second, and I was becoming increasingly certain that something dreadful was happening.

The last thing I saw was Damian’s mother’s face swimming before my eyes, her features blurred and distorted. A moment later, everything went black.

It was as though someone had simply flicked a switch and shut me off.

The next time I regained consciousness, it was late in the evening. The enormous bedroom windows stood slightly ajar, revealing the thick darkness of the night outside. The only light in the room came from a dim bedside lamp, casting crooked shadows across the walls.

Wrapped in several thick blankets, I woke with a start, horrified to discover that I was drenched in sweat.

With enormous effort, I managed to overcome the strange numbness in my fingers and slowly dragged them across my damp shoulder. It felt as though I’d spent hours in a scorching sauna. I was soaked from head to toe, my skin sticky with sweat, and the blankets felt unbearably heavy, pinning me to the mattress. My entire body ached as if I were suffering from some terrible illness. Waves of heat washed over me. My temperature must have been dangerously high.