Chapter 4

She stared around as if contemplating her next words.

"Mephisto." She said in a single breath.

The room fell silent. An awkward eeriness swept through the bar like moss that was being led by the desert wind. She had come here to make an alliance, but she did not know if this was the right thing to do. It was true about all the things that she had said.

She could hear the low growls in their throats, but he was especially prevalent as she was standing next to him. She had thought that they would be having a private conversation, but she guessed that was out the window. It did not matter what she was going to say, and this was a wolf den. They would hear her with those ears of theirs.

Her visions and dreams had started only a couple of months ago. She would wake up in cold sweat, not sure if she was still dreaming. She would often need to pinch herself, and sometimes it felt like she was still in hell. Oftentimes, she would blank out during the day and slip into a trance.

That was where she usually heard the plans they had made to invade the earth. She never got close to his seat. It was far too hot for her to come close that casually.

Even his minions had to risk their faces and their entirety being scorched off every time they came closer to give a report. As a matter of fact, almost every time, they got boiled to death. If that was even a thing, she wondered inwardly.

"So, how do we handle this thing?" He asked, breaking the silence that had enveloped the room for the last minute.

"I don't know." She admitted to him, turning away from his piercing gaze for a second. It was hard enough talking about this when he was staring at her with his blue eyes. He didn't seem to know that he had a kind of effect on people from what she noticed.

He let a smile crease his lips as he casually ran his hands through his dark hair.

"You say you want an alliance, don't you, sweetheart?" he asked with a cocky but relaxed smile creasing his brow.

He turned his soft yet piercing gaze on her as he evidently ran his eyes all over her body. She felt his stare on her brown skin as she tried her hardest not to flinch from the attention.

No, that would give him some satisfaction. She did not want to show that he got to her in any way at all. It was the last thing that she needed right now. She came here to get an alliance out of him, and that was exactly what she was going to do. She had no intention of him belittling her with his gorgeous eyes and his chiseled jawline. No.

She would hold her ground firmly if that was the last thing she did.

Jackson smiled a soft smile as he etched closer to her in a slow but deliberate motion.

She held her breath, unable to move as he came closer to her with his nose first.

"You have a distinct scent." He said against her neck.

If he was not so close, she might have collapsed from near asphyxiation. But he was.

She gulped down the saliva that she'd had in her throat as she was unable to do anything.

"I can smell flowers," He said as he slowly returned to his former state. "— but I can't quite put my finger on the other things that I smell." He said, rather disappointed in himself.

"Don't feel bad." She said, unsure where that came from. "It's herbs and natural ointments. Those have been in my family for generations." She told him.

"Ah, well, that explains it then." He said with finality.

Men were such visual and simple creatures, she told herself. Or was it just him that was this simple and easygoing? He'd seemed to accept the fact that this was something beyond his control very easily, and that was it. No questions asked but not her. She knew she would obsess over things that she knew she could not control.

"About what I asked. This is not just for my own benefit. It is more serious than anyone thinks." She told him.

"I know. And I am taking it quite seriously." He said as he came closer to her again.

"What're you doing?" She said, this time unable to hold her composure.

"Registering your scent." He said in a hushed tone that sounded dismissive yet attentive to the detail he was intent on registering.

"Oh." She said in a tone that felt like she had judged him wrongly. "What were you doing the other time?" She added, unsure where she was going with this.

"Other time?"

"When you came close to me." She said.

"Oh, I just wanted to watch you get flustered. It was cute."

Selene widened her eyes in shock. He was an asshole, apparently, and maybe she had judged him wrongly.

It would be weird not to be one when he looked like that.

She let the frown she was feeling show when suddenly the air went in a different direction.

She sensed a massive shift in the aura of the bar. It was not a hard one to miss. She could instantly smell the sulfur and the burning stone that accompanied it.

At first, she thought that she had slipped into one of her trance-like states, but that was not what this was.

He felt it too. He and half the bar felt the shift that she was referring to.

He instantly snarled along with the rest of them.

She could hear a scratching sound beside her. She looked to see how claws dug into the bar table and the stool behind him.

His teeth were out, and growls were filling the air. The aura was getting closer, and it made her skin crawl.

She had felt this feeling before. Anytime she went to hell and not by her own accord. There was this crawling in her skin, but this felt a thousand times worse.

It was an innate feeling of dread and fear and this eerie feeling of being awfully close to the tortured souls of the damned.

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