Lilac

Chapter Twenty-Four

This chapter will include characters that appeared on the previous ones, and I know I've been on hiatus for a long time so I understand if you have forgotten them already. If it's not too much to ask and if you have the time, kindly reread the previous chapters. You might get confused if you don't. I'm really sorry! :( At the very least, I hope you find the magic that you once found when you first started reading this story. <3

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Chapter Twenty Four

Ethan was a man of very few fears. However, those few fears were all great ones. And right now, those fears kept dancing around his thoughts.

Ethan was scared of losing a girl with pale eyes and pale skin, whose touch could wash away despair and emptiness, whose lips and stares could make him forget about his fears. She was his sin and his salvation, his beginning and end, his weakness and strength.

Lilac was his gift when fate finally decided to be beautiful to him. And inevitably, Ethan's greatest fears centered and revolved around her.

Lilac was making him feel a lot of things, but happiness was the most dangerous of them all. Because Ethan was scared of happiness. He learned at such a young age, too young, that things that made him happy were at risk of being taken away from him way too soon.

He stared at the mirror in front of them. One of his arms was curved around her waist, the other diagonally across her chest to her shoulder, one of her hands hanging from it as she rested the back of her head against his chest. His chin was on top of her head.

The sun was slightly peeking through the windows. His thumb traced the red marks on her neck, and their eyes met through the mirror.

"How am I supposed to hide them?" Lilac mused quietly, sighing.

One side of Ethan's lips tipped upwards. "Do you have to hide them?" he asked. "My scent is all over you right now. Hiding them won't really make that much difference."

Lilac went on as if she didn't hear his comment and said, "It would be weird to wear a scarf during summer. I should've bought a turtle neck shirt."

Ethan chuckled against her hair because people didn't wear turtle neck shirts during summer, definitely not wolves, but Lilac didn't know this because civilian clothes were still new to her- and Ethan found this adorable and endearing. Fúck him.

"I told you you don't have to hide them," he murmured.

"There are so many..." she trailed off in despair, tipping her neck to the side and looking at the mirror, examining the exposed red blotches contrasting heavily against her skin, like blood against snow.

"They look beautiful to me," Ethan murmured, bumping his nose along the length of her neck. He couldn't help the smile that spread across his lips.

"Let's see how you'll feel when you're the one who have eight red marks on your neck," Lilac huffed under her breath and Ethan chuckled because there she was again, his little tigress.

"Is that a threat?" Ethan asked. "It sounded like an invitation."

He watched her cheeks redden through the mirror, watched her cover her face with her hands.

"Why are you so straightforward?" she asked, sounding like she just wanted to evaporate into the air.

"I like seeing you get flustered," Ethan said directly to her ear, his breath hot on her skin, making the hair on her nape stand. "It's really attractive."