Got my claws in you

Chapter 86- when the phone rings

(Y/N) POV:

The next time I see Hee-Chul the drugs have ebbed away, slowly drained themselves out my bloodstream, mind feeling heavy, pounding, a desperate thirst that makes my mouth feel glued shut. Throat and lungs burning, parched.

When Hee Chul next appears, the realisation of who'd been behind it all, sits heavy in the pit of my stomach; a churning nausea that twists and yanks my guts into tight knots.

"I told you I'd be back. Couldn't leave you alone in the dark could I?"

But there's so much I don't know, so much I still can't figure out, brain wracking itself for jigsaw pieces to put together the picture I had in front of me.

"How long—how long have you been..."

"Waiting for you?"

"Trafficking hybrids. Children." Voice sharp, ringing in my ears. He flinches at its loudness in the dark, at the emptiness that seems to swallow everything up in sight. That leaves the two of us trapped together.

"As long as it took to get to you... I had to work so hard to get placed in the centre. I had to prove myself so many times to get to be beside you every single day... do you know the things I've had to do for you (Y/N)? The things I'd do to keep you by my side? To have you here?"

Eyes bottomless, their depths near obsidian, glittering with unfathomable secrets. Something so inhumane and unnatural in his eyes, in their intensity as he moves closer to me, to crouch down in front of me, hand squeezing my knee. Tightening in warning when my leg jostles, a knee-jerk reaction to the weight of his palm. Watch the darkness of his eyes grow deeper, blacker. Fingers curled tight across my leg, forcing its movement to still.

"I know you're confused. I know you must feel so lost—but I thought you'd be willing to listen now. Now that your head is clearer."

From the drugs you put in me.

From the drugs that—the serpent—

"Jihyun. Kang Jihyun. He was working with—you're working with him. You must've blocked off the comms—"

The hand at my knee squeezes, something proud glints in his eyes.

Something inside my stomach turns.

"You've always been smart. Sharp for a prey hybrid." He says the praise like its something commendable, something worthy of his approval, something I should preen and thank him for.

My tongue unsticks.

"Not sharp enough. I couldn't recognise you... couldn't recognise your scent—but you're still—" nose chasing some sort of trail it seems to be blind to.

It's wrong, wrong, wrong—I can't smell him.

He's this close and I can't smell him.

An absence. A void.

Nothing.

I can't smell him.

No scent.

He can't be scentless.

He can't be.

It's impossible.

He leans in.

Closer than needed.

Too close.

But still—still I can't smell him.

And his eyes glow with a wild satisfaction.