Riley… Do You Not Like Me Anymore?

Riley's POV

That moment, my heart seized completely, every drop of blood in my body turning to ice in an instant.

Panic crashed over me in a wave so violent it locked my limbs. Without thinking — barely capable of thought — I lurched toward the bed and yanked the white bathrobe hanging from the footboard, shoving my arms through the sleeves with clumsy, desperate hands, cinching the belt tight around my waist until every inch of bare skin, every mark, every trace was buried beneath the fabric. Nothing could show. Nothing.

The bedroom door swung open, and Theo walked in.

He was carrying a first-aid kit, his voice gentle as he spoke. "Riley, your back looked badly torn up last night. I brought some medicine — let me take care of it for you."

I looked at those soft, pale blue eyes of his, and felt my fingertips tremble.

He wasn't wrong. Last night's mission had left me in pieces — a rogue vampire's claws had raked deep gouges across my back, and the bloodline backlash on top of that had pushed my body to its absolute limit. My condition was a wreck, and he knew it.

But the last thing I could bear right now was his touch.

I was terrified of his warm fingertips brushing my skin. Terrified he would sense something off about me — that the shameful secret I had worked so hard to bury would surface again, laid bare under his hands.

I turned slightly away and forced my voice into something flat. "I'm fine. I'll handle it myself. And next time, could you knock before coming into my room?"

It was the first time in all these years that I had refused him anything.

Theo went still. For just a fraction of a second, I thought I saw something like hurt move across his face — but before I could be sure, it was gone.

He frowned, barely. "Riley... do you not like me anymore?"

The words hit me like a fist to the sternum, and the ache that spread outward was dense and thorough, filling every corner of my chest.

I genuinely did not understand him.

How could he say something so devastating in a voice that soft? He was the one who had quietly, cleanly ended the most humiliating and burning love I had ever carried — the secret I had nursed through my adolescence. He was the one whose heart had always belonged to Isolde, the one who had given every last drop of his warmth and tenderness to her without ever leaving a single crumb of possibility for me.

How could I dare to still love him? What right did I have?

The bitterness surging up from somewhere deep inside me threatened to break the surface. I swallowed it down, every ounce of grievance and longing, and made myself answer. "Of course I like you."

A beat of silence. I corrected myself immediately. "The way a junior respects and relies on a senior. I won't overstep like I used to. You don't have to worry about that."

Theo looked disappointed. I couldn't tell what, exactly, he was disappointed by — whether my refusal had lacked conviction, whether he had wanted something cleaner. His expression became unreadable, but in the end he said nothing more. He set the first-aid kit quietly on the corner of the desk, and when he spoke again his voice had returned to its usual composure. "There's one more thing I need to tell you. Remember — eight o'clock tomorrow morning, you're expected to check in at Saint Vera Academy as an incoming student and officially take up your post."

Saint Vera Academy was the cornerstone institution that maintained the fragile equilibrium between the three races: humans, the blood clan, and the wolf clan. The campus was divided into three distinct, self-contained territories that operated under a strict policy of mutual non-interference.

The Human Domain served as the exclusive residential quarter for human nobility, the primary ground for ordinary human students and hunter recruits in training — and the faction I was nominally enrolled in. The Wolf Domain was the wolves' sovereign territory, harboring rogue werewolves who had lost all control and devolved into feral, destructive aberrants. The Blood Domain belonged to the vampires, and was suspected to shelter those who had degraded to Level E — the fallen, the irredeemable.

My core function was to operate under the cover of a student while fulfilling my duties as a hunter: preserving the balance of the three territories, eliminating rogue werewolves who had surrendered to their frenzy, purging vampires who had abandoned the peace accords and turned predatory, and neutralizing any threat capable of destabilizing the equilibrium that kept all three domains intact.

I listened quietly and gave a small nod. "Understood. I'll do my job."

Theo held my gaze a moment longer. "Isolde will also be entering Saint Vera Academy. She'll be taking on some auxiliary hunter responsibilities." A pause. "Riley, I need you to keep her safe."

"She still doesn't know the truth about what she is. She believes she's an ordinary human girl, and I want her to keep believing that. Help me protect her secret — that she's a pureblood vampire. Can you do that for me?"

Those words went through me like a blade.

The pain detonated somewhere behind my ribs — sharp and total, a flood of bitterness and resentment that nearly dragged me under. He had thought of everything for Isolde. Planned around her, cushioned every edge, made sure she would never have to touch the darkness or the blood that defined the world she was being walked into.

And me?

I had always been the spare. I saw that clearly now.

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, forced the burning at the backs of my eyes to recede, and uncurled my whitened fingers one by one. Then I nodded, quiet and even. "I understand. I'll protect her."

With everything apparently settled, Theo still didn't move to leave. He stood where he was, his gaze resting on me with a weight I couldn't name, his voice dropping to something low and unhurried — almost tender. "Riley... these past two years you were away. Did you miss me?"

The question detonated in the silence like a thunderclap.

My whole body shuddered. A tingling ache spread through me from my core to my fingertips.

Of course I missed him.

How could I not have?

Through countless sleepless nights over those two years of solitary training, I dreamed of him again and again — shameless, desperate dreams I couldn't stop myself from having. In them, Theo would fuck me with that thick cock of his, working my hole with a tenderness that made me scream, and the pleasure was so overwhelming, so complete, that I would wake up reaching for it — only to find nothing but darkness and the fading echo of my own voice.

But there was no future between us. There never had been.

I lowered my eyes, letting my lashes hide whatever was living in them, and pushed everything back down beneath the surface. Then I shook my head, quiet and deliberate. "No."

Something shifted in Theo's expression — I couldn't decode it exactly, but the warmth in his eyes dimmed.

It was only then that I noticed it: a faint sweetness saturating the air of the room, delicate and unmistakable. My pheromones. They only surfaced when I felt something — when my heart moved toward someone. And my heart only moved for four people in this world, and he was one of them. The realization made the shame curl hot and tight in my stomach. An involuntary scent that broadcast my feelings like a signal flare — it was mortifying. I would need to buy a suppressant as soon as possible.

Fortunately, Theo didn't appear to notice.

After a long silence, he softened his tone. "Riley. You've really grown up. It's been a long time since you've called me by my name."

A hollow, self-mocking feeling settled in my chest, and the heat behind my eyes grew dangerous.

A long time?

In the dark of those dreams, I called out to him over and over, shameless and desperate — "Theo — Theo — harder, faster, please — I love it, I love your cock inside me —"

The tightness in my throat was almost unbearable. But even so, I couldn't hold out against the pull of this moment, against the quiet warmth he was offering. I gave in, just barely, and let his name leave my lips in little more than a whisper. "Theo."

His expression eased. "Good," he said softly. "You will always be my favorite — my beloved son."

He turned and walked out, pulling the door gently shut behind him.

The click of the latch was the last sound before everything inside me came apart.

The grief and the fury and the humiliation and the longing — everything I had been holding in place through sheer force of will — collapsed inward all at once, and the heat that ignited in my chest was violent and consuming. I pressed my fists against my thighs until my knuckles went white, and the tears I had been refusing for the past half hour finally broke free, running hot down my face while something in me screamed without sound.

I don't want to be your son.

I have never wanted to be only your son.

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