The golden light that slithers inside through the crack in the curtains blinds Micah's vision instantly when she tries to open her heavy eyelids.
The silk beneath her brushes her bare skin pleasantly as she squirms to adjust her vision. Just as her eyes focused on the golden and white carved ceiling above her, the realization hits her like lightning.
She is alive.
Or is this heaven?
The scent of rain and pine wood shatters her suspicion even before it fully grows.
She is indeed alive.
A gasp escapes her lips when a warm strong hand pulls her closer to a steady chest when she tries to leap forward. She feels like she is standing in the rain in a pine wood valley. Every cell in her body starts to dance again, and her breath quickens.
Why is she not dead?
She gulps down the lump of uncertainty swelling in her throat and tries to undo his hands around her bare waist. The mere brush of his skin against her passes electricity through her veins, leaving her gasping for air.
The heavenly remembrances of last night flash through her consciousness. His lips on hers, hands around her waist, breath mingled, skin on skin…and how he felt inside her…
Micah feels heat rushing to her cheeks as she squeezes her eyes shut. It doesn't matter how good it had felt to be with him, to have him touch her, he is not what she wanted in her life.
And She is not dead. That could only mean one thing. That she is the fated one for him. And from all the things he made her feel last night, there's no way he isn't the one.
God is continuously proving to her that she is a damned one. If she wasn't, why is she giving Micah all the bad things? Why is she never supposed to find happiness?
Micah has daydreamed a lot about finding a mate and leaving that hellhole of Ezline's home. But none of it was like this. In all of the pictures of her fantasies, her mate wasn't a monster. But what is now lying beside her indeed is a monster even though he had made her fall for his charm last night.
Micah clutches her jaw tightly as she tries to erase the burning in her eyes. His hands around her loosen a bit, but she can still feel his warm breath against her neck.
Micah removes his arms around her and covers her nudity with the red silk sheet that has been clinging down her waist. She sits in the corner of the huge bed, as far as she can get from him even though something in her is pulling her close toward him.
Micah's eyes linger on the beauty of his face, his soft red lips that she wants to trace with her own, his dark eyebrows that her fingers itch to smooth out, and his hair stands that she wanna blow away from his face.
He is insanely gorgeous. Even watching him like this is bringing her an unknown pleasure that she didn't know she was capable of feeling. If only she doesn't know what he hid beneath this beauty of his, she would have fallen in love with him in a heartbeat.
As much as Micah doesn't want this or want him, she couldn't resist. So she sits there and touches every inch of his body and traces every mark on his skin with her eyes.
After long moments of her watching him, his eyes flutter open, blue and golden orbs instantly finding her own pale blue ones from the other side of the bed.
Something akin to horror flashes in his eyes as he jumps awake. As if he can't believe what he sees, he rubs his eyes furiously. And then his eyes find Micah again.
"You are not dead." These are the words that leave his mouth, the first thing he thought about saying to her face.
Anger boils in her veins and she can feel the blaze of its fire in her gaze as the words escape her even before she realizes, "Disappointed much? Sure, you had only perceived the corpse lying beside you. A breathing human being here must have frightened you."
His eyes have an intense blaze in them as he stares at Micah, he looks at her as if she is the monster here, "Get out." He spits.
"How stupid of me to think this would be any other way than this." Bitterness seeps through her voice as she stands up with the silk still covering her body.
He stays silent, hands on his ear as if he doesn't want to hear her, she bites down the wrath and put on her dress he discarded by the door last night hastily. She tries not to dwell on the difference between this man right here acting as if she is lethal and how he was last night, how he worships her body with all the tenderness this world can offer.
Micah's eyes kept flickering up to him over and over again as she put on her clothes. His hands are still covering his ears. But unlike before, his fingers are shaking now. Confusion wriggles on her as she watches him murmur to God knows whom.
When she puts on the last piece of her cloth, she takes a step toward him, he's acting as if she is not here at all. If he was sleeping, she would have thought he was having a nightmare. But what in heaven is this?
A growl rumbles on his chest as he frantically grumbles to himself. With shaky hands, Micah reaches out for him, her fingers wrapping around his still-warm shoulder.
He jerks away from her instantly as if her touch burns him, his horrified eyes staring at her. Something about the way he looks at Micah breaks her inside.
She finally finds her voice and asks him, "What are you doing? What's wrong?"
"I said get out! Get out of here. Now!" His voice is more like a roar. Micah feels the whole chamber tremble just like her.
A chill spider-walk down her spine. Her legs won't move, and her brain won't function as she watches the monster inside him try to break free.
He stares at Micah with his glowing eyes. A growl escapes his lips as he launches toward her.
Maybe today is her last day...