Chapter 101: A Misunderstanding?

The instant Serena’s question left her mouth, the smile vanished from Elias’s face.

One moment he had been looking into the rearview mirror with that sly, innocent expression that always suggested trouble. The next, his features had gone blank, and he turned his head toward the window with such practiced ease that the movement might have passed for natural if the change had not been so abrupt.

It was too quick.

Too clean.

Anyone looking at him would think the same thing: he had something to hide.

Serena studied him for a beat, then followed the direction of his earlier glance. Her eyes shifted slightly, catching the object he had been looking at through the edge of her vision.

The rearview mirror.

By itself, there was nothing funny about a mirror.

But a mirror reflected things.

And what it had been reflecting just now was another matter entirely.

"Liora," Serena said.

Silence.

"Liora Voss."

Only then did Liora’s eyes reappear in the mirror. Even at that angle, Serena could still make out the trace of a smile at her mouth.

"Do I look like I’m in the mood to answer you?"

The provocation in her voice was familiar enough that Serena did not even bother pretending to take offense. She only smiled, turned away from the mirror, and looked back at Elias.

Then she reached for his waist.

Her fingers had only brushed the edge of his shirt when Elias recoiled hard in the opposite direction, flattening himself against the far side of the back seat as if that tiny strip of space could somehow save him. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Serena’s gaze darkened, but she did not rush.

There was no dining table between them now, no furniture to block her, no room for him to slip away. The back seat was narrow enough as it was. He could sprout wings and still have nowhere to go.

So she moved slowly.

Deliberately.

As if she were doing it on purpose just to watch him squirm.

Elias kept retreating until retreat was no longer possible, and then Serena closed the last bit of distance and pulled him straight into her arms.

He reacted at once, shoving both hands against her chest in instinctive resistance. The pressure of his palms landed squarely, each hand claiming a share of soft, expensive trouble.

Elias looked at her and said, with genuine feeling, "Wow."

[...]

System Theta’s silence felt almost weary.

Somehow the scene had stopped feeling tense and started feeling ridiculous, which was not helping Elias at all.

When brute force failed to get Serena off him, he tried putting more of his body into it, planning to push himself free for real this time. Serena sensed the shift before he could commit. In one smooth motion she caught both his wrists, wrenched them behind his back, and held them there. With the last barrier gone, she pressed even closer.

The result was not just physical.

The weight of her body made breathing harder, but the worse part was the pressure behind it, the certainty in the way she handled him, the quiet message that she could do this whenever she wanted.

Elias dragged his face out from the suffocating softness pinning him down and gritted out, "Let go of me..."

Serena acted as though she had not heard a word.

She lowered her head until her lips hovered beside his ear, and when she spoke her voice was soft enough to brush across his skin. It had picked up that faint natural huskiness that always made her sound more dangerous, not less.

"Tell me what you were laughing at." Her breath slid hot against his ear. "Mm?"

The warmth of it was so intense that Elias had the absurd impression his earlobe might actually burn.

He had barely opened his mouth when pain shot through it.

Serena had bitten him.

Not hard enough to tear skin, but hard enough to make him jolt.

He twisted sharply in her hold. "What are you, a dog? Ah..."

The second sound broke out of him before he could stop it. Serena had driven him hard against the car door, and with both wrists pinned behind him his own arms were jammed against his lower back, forcing his body into an awkward arch that hurt in three different places at once.

He had no choice except to bow under it.

His back curved. His head tipped up. His throat stretched open in a vulnerable white line that looked less like resistance and more like an invitation, though the strain in his body told a very different story.

Serena saw it.

She saw the familiar weakness laid bare in front of her and felt her teeth ache with the urge to test it.

His throat had always done something ugly to her patience.

That slim, exposed line. The rise and fall when he swallowed. The vulnerable shape of his Adam’s apple. Every time it showed itself, it seemed to invite her toward it.

So she followed the impulse.

Like a wolf lingering over prey that was already caught, Serena lowered her head. Her lips parted slightly, her teeth grazing the spot she wanted. The cartilage beneath her mouth felt firm and fragile at the same time, strong enough to push back and delicate enough to imagine breaking.

Elias felt wet heat first, the drag of her tongue over his throat, and then the harder touch of teeth. They were not sharp, but when they scraped across that place they still sent a chill through him so intense it felt like his neck might actually snap in her mouth.

A shiver ran through his body.

The sound that slipped from him this time was thin and involuntary, hardly more than a low, trembling moan.

At that exact moment, Serena’s eyes lifted to the rearview mirror.

The lazy hunger in her expression vanished.

In its place came something colder and cleaner, as if the wolf had narrowed into a hunting bird in the span of a breath. Her gaze cut toward the mirror, sharp enough to strip varnish off the world.

There was nothing there.

Only her own eyes staring back at her, dark with suspicion.

By then the car was already slowing.

A moment later it rolled to a stop.

Liora turned in the driver’s seat and looked at them openly this time. Her attention stayed on Serena, not Elias, and there was still that faint trace of amusement at the edge of her mouth.

"Do whatever you want this time," she said. "It isn’t my car."

Then she paused just long enough to make the next line land.

"But since we’re family, let me remind you that whatever you do right now is happening in public."

People were passing outside the windows.

Students, pedestrians, strangers moving through the afternoon without the slightest idea what had just happened in the back seat.

Liora sounded the same as always, lightly mocking, lightly entertained, as if she were making a casual observation instead of handing Serena a warning.

Serena finally let Elias go.

She drew back and smiled. "You’re right. Next time I’ll use your car."

Liora’s expression flattened at once.

Before either of them could say more, the rear door flew open. Elias took the chance the instant it appeared. He slipped out of the car, spun back before Serena had fully processed it, and drove a punch straight into her.

"Maybe keep your hormones under control!"

The hit was not enough to do real damage, but it was enough to make Serena’s face go dark.

She had just opened her mouth when the door slammed shut so hard the whole car jolted. The noise made her blink on reflex. By the time she looked again, Elias was already gone, swallowed by the flow of people outside.

"Really..." Serena wet her teeth with her tongue, and the lingering warmth of his throat still seemed to cling there. "He needs to be taught a lesson."

A soft laugh came from the front seat.

Serena’s brows pulled together immediately. After the last few minutes, she found laughter especially irritating.

"What are you laughing at now?"

Liora’s fingers rested on the steering wheel, loose and elegant. "Hasn’t he already had enough of your lessons?"

There was something under the words.

Serena could hear it clearly enough. Liora was not just teasing. She was questioning whether Serena had the ability to handle someone like Elias at all.

Serena’s mood cooled another degree. "You sound very confident. Is this something you’re especially good at?"

Liora turned her head and looked back at her slowly. "Sis, do you hear yourself?"

Only then did Serena fully register what she had implied.

Liora had been in more relationships than she had, had more experience with people in general, and certainly more practice with difficult personalities. Throwing that line at her had been careless at best.

Serena gave a cold laugh, though something more complicated moved through her eyes. "That only means you’ve never had to deal with someone like Elias. If you ever ended up with a person like him, you’d understand."

Liora’s smile faded.

"I don’t know whether he counts as a hard case," she said, "and no, I haven’t met many people quite like him. But if someone really had no sense of limits, I would tell them to get out."

She held Serena’s gaze for a moment before adding, very evenly, "There is never a shortage of men or women in this world. You know that as well as I do, don’t you... sis?"

The meaning was obvious.

If Serena truly found Elias that difficult, she could drop him. That would be the cleanest option. Fast, practical, efficient.

And yet.

"Can’t bring yourself to?" Liora asked, smiling again.

Serena lifted her eyes. "You seem awfully sure of what you’re saying too."

Then she added, with calm contempt, "That counterfeit does not deserve that kind of importance."

Liora said nothing.

Serena continued, her tone as cool as ever. "It isn’t that I would only ever choose him. It’s that, at the moment, he is the only one available to choose."

The implication was plain enough. If someone closer to Lucien Hart ever appeared, someone who fit that shadow better, Elias could be discarded without hesitation.

"Is that so?" Liora turned the key and started the car again. "Then I misunderstood."

"Yes," Serena replied with a faint nod. "Drop me at the office first. You can head home after."

I misunderstood too...

The thought rose in Serena’s mind and then stopped there, unfinished.

Had she really misunderstood?

The car moved forward, passing beneath an old tree whose branches cast shifting bands of sunlight across her face. Light and shadow broke over her features in uneven patches, and in that flickering half-light the look in her eyes turned dim and unreadable.