71\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2026 what are you doing here?\u201d I had stammered, keeping my voice soft but wary because something about seeing her there felt wrong. \u2018Shouldn\u2019t\u00a0<\/p>\n
you be in the hospital? Tristan had gone to check up on you\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seraphine had just stared at me for a long moment with eyes that looked too bright, too focused, before saying in a clipped tone that sounded almost\u00a0<\/p>\n
annoyed, \u2018I needed to talk to Tristan. It\u2019s important, I thought he\u2019d still be home..\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Something about her voice had been wrong from the start, brittle and sharp around the edges, but she had looked so desperate standing there that I\u00a0<\/p>\n
stepped aside anyway and let her into my home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you want to talk about? Maybe I might tell him if he gets back.\u201d I asked after she came inside and I closed the door behind her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t answer right away and instead sighed like I was being difficult, then sat down on my couch like she belonged there and had every right to make herself comfortable in my space.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you get me something first? Water or anything really. I\u2019m so thirsty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I hesitated because something felt off about the whole situation, but she looked genuinely exhausted and if she\u2019d just gotten out of the hospital after a\u00a0<\/p>\n
suicide attempt, the least I could do was get her a glass of water.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I finally nodded and turned to head for the kitchen, already mentally preparing myself for whatever conversation was about to happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was halfway to the sink, reaching for a clean glass from the cabinet, when her voice floated after me, low and venomous and nothing like the desperate tone she\u2019d used at the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou stole him away from me. I froze with the glass still in my hand, my blood running cold at the hatred in her voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d I turned back toward the living room, expecting to see the same exhausted woman who\u2019d asked for help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But she wasn\u2019t sitting on the couch anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was standing right behind me, close enough that I could see the fury twisting her face into something ugly and unfamiliar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides and her eyes burned with a rage that made my wolf recoil inside me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou stole him from me,\u2018 she repeated, her voice rising with each word. \u2018He was supposed to be mine. We had something real before you came back and ruined everything. Now you have to pay for what you did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I barely had time to process what she was saying, let alone move away from her, before I felt the sharp sting in my neck, fast and precise like a needle sliding into my skin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My free hand flew to the spot as everything around me began to tilt sideways like the world was sliding off its axis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018W\u2013what did you do?\u201d I tried to ask, but my tongue felt too heavy and the words came out slurred and wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The glass slipped from my other hand and shattered on the kitchen floor, the sound seeming to come from very far away even though it happened right\u00a0<\/p>\n
next to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I tried holding on to the sink or anything as I could feel myself floating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
1\/21\u00a0<\/p>\n
15:22 Sat, Jan 10 G\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chapter 162\u00a0<\/p>\n
The room swam before my eyes as Seraphine\u2019s face came closer, and I could see that the desperate, exhausted mask had fallen away completaly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What was left underneath was calm and cold and satisfied.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I falling, I held on the stool but we both landed on the floor together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should never have come back, she whispered, and those were the last words I heard before darkness swallowed me whole and dragged me down\u00a0<\/p>\n
into nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Memories Drifted Into Soft Silence by Kyx Frost 162 71\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2026 what are you doing here?\u201d I had stammered, keeping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-second-gear-of-love-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kezpres.xyz\/novelreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}