Chapter 19: Mine Alone
Soldiers guarding the entrance to the tent recognized Carlos and bowed their heads.
After slightly nodding at their greetings, Carlos carefully rolled up the cloth and carried Ariel inside.
“Your Majesty.”
Leandro sat next to the torches that were blazing in the middle of the tent with his large shoulders hanging down.
As soon as he saw Ariel entering the tent, the face of Leandro brightened as though greeting an old friend. He felt as if he had been away from Ariel for a long time, even though he hadn’t seen her for a day. The moment he saw her face, the joy, longing, and desire that came surging through him made Leandro’s heart skip a few beats.
He reached out his hand in a hurry.
He wanted to hug Ariel quickly. As soon as he held her hand, Leandro pulled Ariel into his arms and hugged her tightly.
Yes. He needed this. The scent and touch singular to Ariel alone. Leandro closed his eyes and stuffed his nose into her neck inhaling her whole.
“Ah.”
But when Leandro tightened his body and embraced her shoulders, the wound she had barely stopped from bleeding, burst again.
Leandro was suspicious of Ariel, who exclaimed in pain even though he only hugged her. Leandro quickly took her out of his embrace.
“What is it?”
“Your Majesty.”
Before Leandro hugged Ariel, Carlos tried to report on her physical condition, but he was a step late. Carlos hurried up to Leandro’s side.
“Blood…?”
The red spot that had sprung up through the cloth was gradually spreading. Leandro jumped out of his seat and began to strip Ariel of her clothes.
“Your Majesty…!”
The shrill sound of the tearing cloth was so ominous. Ariel’s body was reeling under his rough, urgent hands.
“Your Majesty, I confirm that there is a cut on both her cheek and shoulder.”
Before Carlos could finish talking, Leandro ungracefully stripped Ariel of all her clothes from her upper body down.
Dark red blood was flowing from her shoulders, sharply contrasting with her snow-white skin.
Blood.
The moment he saw blood. Leandro felt the wildness inherent in his heart awaken. A very savage instinct of a predator thirsting for a prey wrought his senses.
“What is this?”
Anger slipped out of control. He was maddeningly angry that someone had delivered a graze to his prey.
“Who did this?!”
A huge shout went out the tent and thundered through the forest. Like the roar of a beast, or even something even worse than that. Ariel forgot to breathe.
She had never seen such mad, raw rage.
He had just seen the wound in less than half a second. Neither Ariel nor Carlos had expected that he would shout this loud with bloodshot eyes.
Leandro’s fingertips were quivering with anger.
Ariel had to be his own property, completely and thoroughly. She should have been a woman who belonged entirely to Leandro, whom no one dared look at.
Faced with Leandro’s terrifying fury, Ariel was suddenly terrified even though it was not her fault that she was injured. She knew that Leandro’s obsession with Ariel was profound, but when she went through with it, she got goosebumps all over her body from head to toe.
‘This guy is out of his mind.’
It was a different madness than the time he held her. She felt as if she were going to lose her mind just by looking into his bottomless eyes, seeing a reason for fear in them.
“You are mine. My own thing that no one should dare touch or put in their eyes.”
“Your Majesty, please calm d…”
She thought that she would really get into trouble at this rate. Ariel tried to calm him down by patting his chest.
“Wanting to hurt you, and wanting to make you suffer, and…” Leandro snatched Ariel’s hand touching his chest. “Killing you, too. All of that is something only I can do.”
She could read it in his glaring eyes. Leandro’s words were not simply a flying warning. All of Ariel’s things, much less her life, were under his mercy. She felt terrible because she knew he meant it.
Knowing the future ahead, she thought it would be easy to coax Leandro into playing between her skirts. However, upon seeing the horrible possessive desire in those eyes, Ariel’s resolve was getting shallower and fainter as she was faced with the fear of the consequences tailing behind his ownership of her.