Chapter 6
When I saw Virelle, her eyes were swollen and bloodshot.
I showed no emotion. “I’m sorry.”
Virelle sobbed twice, wanting to say it wasn’t sincere enough, at least I should kneel and kowtow a few times.
But Erevan just waved me off easily.
“That’s enough.”
Watching my back disappear around the corner, Virelle grabbed Erevan’s sleeve.
“Erevan, are you softening toward her? She’s just a Beta, and you’ve already fired her. From now on, you have me by your side, and you’re not allowed to have your eye on any other Omega.”
Erevan had tried to calm her with gentle words at first.
When she kept nagging, he grew completely annoyed, didn’t touch her that night, and spent the whole evening smoking on the
balcony.
There was a strange heaviness in his chest.
At dawn, his phone buzzed twice.
A Beta sent files to his email. They were records of my life.
I grew up in a small human town, was an excellent student, got into middle school on scholarship, won many skill competition
awards.
But at fourteen, I dropped out because my parents gambled away all the family wealth and owed huge debts.
Eventually, they sold their only daughter to the red–light district.
I escaped after less than two months inside and ended up homeless.
There was a six–year gap in the records.
Until I was twenty, when I somehow got accepted to a university in the Blackvale territory and appeared before Erevan.
I clung to him shamelessly, begging for shelter. And then I had been with him for eight years.
Erevan barely noticed as his cigarette burned down to his fingertips.
So, with my parents missing and no other relatives or friends around,
who could that gravestone belong to?
At the bottom of the email were two video attachments–from the banquet hall and the parking lot that night.
The footage clearly showed Erevan leaving, and the next moment, me vomiting blood.
Erevan clenched his fists, helplessly watching me run to the parking lot, only to find empty parking spaces.
He hadn’t hesitated then and just left me there.
The empty parking lot was silent and vast.
Chapter 6
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My fragile figure looked like a sheet of paper, about to collapse.
Finally, unable to bear the pain any longer, I bent down, seemingly muttering something.
What was she saying?
Erevan zoomed in on the video, turned up the volume, barely able to read my lips.
Who is Elian?
Could it be the man on the gravestone?
Erevan’s breath quickened without realizing it.
Following the Beta’s address, he came to the shabby motel where I lived.
He hadn’t expected my living conditions to be so poor.
Only now did he realize that in these eight years, besides giving me a meal, he had never really given me anything else.
“What are you doing here?”
I looked at him with calm, puzzled.
“The Mate Bonding Ceremony is over. I apologized like you said. The resignation files are on your desk. I’m not going back to Blackvale with you.”
Erevan’s eyes darkened.
“Liora, I don’t approve.”
“I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet. You have to stay and work a while longer.”
I sighed helplessly.
“You’re the one who told me to leave, and now you want me to stay. Erevan, your life’s all smooth sailing. What do you still need me for?”
Erevan frowned, sighed.
“Enough, Liora, don’t be stubborn. At the banquet, I didn’t know you were unwell, so I let you drink so much.”
“I know you love me like you can’t live without me. Now I’m the only one you can rely on. The Mate Bonding Ceremony was a big blow to you, which made you do something stupid like jumping in the lake to get my attention. I don’t blame you.”
Our eyes met.
In his, I saw guilt, pity, maybe even a hint of something like tenderness or gratitude.
I didn’t care to analyze further.
“Erevan, I have no reason to stay by your side anymore.”
“Reason? Isn’t loving me reason enough?”
Erevan scoffed.
The proud Alpha was always arrogant.
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“Liora, you’ve played the obedient, gracious role for so long, obeying my every order. Wasn’t that just to climb the ladder an become Luna? What else did you want all these years?”
I stared straight at him.
My eyes full of unrelieved sorrow and longing.
Erevan furrowed his brows, feeling like I was looking through him at someone else.
He hated that feeling.
I said, “Because I promised someone.”
He saved my life, gave me eyes to see the light, pulled me out of the abyss.
