I didn’t know where this mysterious man was taking . I just stayed silent in his warm embrace. However, the farther he took , the more I felt the moon getting closer. That round white thing seed to greet .
Then, we stopped at a different place. It was a flower adow in the middle of a shady forest. The place was much brighter than I had ever seen. It seed like the moonlight illuminated the place with so yellow-green light from the nurous fireflies surrounding it.
The man put down, and I felt guilty as my feet stepped on the pretty flowers beneath . He invited to see the nearby lake. The reflection of the moonlight increasingly illuminated the flower adow.
"Where are we?" I asked because I had never been to this place before.
"We’re still in Birwick."
"Still in Birwick? But, how co I’ve never seen this place before?"
The man laughed. I didn’t know what was funny about my question earlier.
"This is a special place. The Sun God gave it to , so no other being can enter this place without my permission."
The Sun God? Wasn’t that one of the main gods worshiped alongside the Moon Goddess? Who was this man to get such a special treatnt from a god?
I sat down by the lake to see the reflection of my face on the surface of the water. The man followed by sitting beside while smiling broadly.
"Are you entering the rebellious phase?" the man asked.
I frowned slightly. There were many things that I found strange. It wasn’t the first ti that the man spoke as if he could read my thoughts.
"No. I just want to get away from my parents."
The man laughed heartily. "Sounds the sa to my ears."
"That’s different."
"Ah... different, huh? Well, I like won who like to lie."
I blushed. Red hues trickled down my cheeks. The man was very strange. How could such an impolite remark like that make blush? I had many male friends. Most of the castle guards had beco my friends, but no one could make feel strange like the man did to .
"Cecil," he called softly.
I turned around and found the man staring at intently. I was still wondering how he could know my na. I knew maybe as a royal princess, especially in a small kingdom like the Birwick Kingdom, a princess must be easily recognized. However, from the first ti we t, he never behaved like most of the people I had t as a princess at all.
He called as if he had known for a long ti.
The corners of the man’s lips curled up again, as if it was true that he could read my thoughts. And my suspicions only increased because when I accused him inside my head, the man chuckled lightly.
"You can read my mind, can’t you?"
"Yeah," he answered in a low voice.
I wasn’t really surprised nor embarrassed because I didn’t think of anything that was embarrassing to hide in the first place.
"How could you do it?"
"Because we are mates."
Mate again... I didn’t understand why the man said that we both were mates. As far as I knew, a mate was only given by the Moon Goddess to creatures other than humans to help them find their partners, while humans didn’t have fated mates because they had the capability to choose their own partners.
Or could it be... this man in front of wasn’t human?
I knew that in this world there were many shape-shifting creatures. One of them was the dragon clan that my father once t. They could turn into humans if they wanted, and so did with the werewolves. My father said they also could transform into humans.
Humans were the basic form of those who had the power to change shape. In ancient tis, the gods liked to share their power among the creatures of their choice. They could turn animals into humans and humans into animals. God’s intervention was what made the world now not only inhabited by humans and animals, but there were species between the two of them. They often had higher intelligence than humans and strength far above that of animals.
Thus, sotis creatures like them were a little difficult to communicate with because they often considered themselves much higher beings than humans or animals. That was what my father had to face when he had to ask the dragon clan for help, and in the end, they flatly refused.
Now, my father was having a hard ti finding where the werewolf clan lived. He wanted to ask for help from one of them who he said was a direct incarnation of the Sun God.
"We are not mates, Sir. Humans do not have a mate bond."
"Are you sure? Want to prove it to you?"
The man got closer. His face was only a breath away from mine. Strangely, I just closed my eyes when he tilted his face. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I was shocked when sothing warm and wet touched my neck.
I panicked a little when I felt a sharp object start to touch the skin in the crook of my neck. But... behind my panicked heart beat was an urge that made want sothing I didn’t even know. I was afraid that the man started doing sothing strange, but the part that the man touched earlier was throbbing like it wanted sothing sharp to stick there.
"Eunnhhh..."
I blinked my eyes a few tis because I realized I was making a strange sound. My hands felt weak, so it wasn’t strong enough to push the mysterious man away as he bit my neck.
"I haven’t marked you yet. You don’t need to panic."
I was out of breath, and my heart was beating very fast. There was a sense of loss when he walked away. The mysterious man rubbed his lips and lay down on a pile of flowers.
"I want to tell you sothing, but I don’t want you to run away because you’re too scared." he said while looking at the moon.
The man reached into the back of his body then took out a bamboo flute that was very similar to mine, but I had lost it in the forest.
"This is yours. You left it when you ran into the forest, leaving behind."
"Thank you."
The man just smiled. I held my flute tightly. He didn’t ask to play my flute like most people when they saw carrying the flute.
Usually, in the castle, when I run into maids or guards, they would ask to play the flute and I would gladly do so.
"If you want to play it, then do it. I don’t want to force you."
Again, he read my thoughts.
"Could you stop doing it?"
"Do what?"
"Reading my mind."
The man laughed and sat back down. He brought his face so close that our noses touched.
"I can’t. Even if you and I wanted to, we couldn’t because we are mates, Cecilia."
I got goosebumps when the man said my na in a deep voice. His voice seed to shake my heart, tickling my ears and making blush shyly.
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