Chapter 146: Caught Between Worlds!
Daniel leaned in, his lips brushing against a soft neck, inhaling a scent that was... different.
It wasn’t Olenna’s usual subtle jasmine perfume. This was the faint, clean scent of premium soap mixed with an undercurrent of something wild and vaguely like ozone, the lingering signature of a berserker’s aura.
His hands, which had been confidently caressing a soft waist, suddenly encountered something unexpected.
Dense, rock-hard muscle. The kind of muscle forged in brutal, relentless training, not the slender, wiry strength he was used to from Olenna.
The skin felt different too, not just soft, but with an underlying toughness.
"Wait a minute," a confused, alarmed thought rang through his mind. "Olenna’s been training her core, but this is... extreme."
Then, his fingers brushed against a set of faint, newly-healed scars on a strong shoulder blade, scars he recognized with growing, gut-deep dread.
They were the same pattern as the wounds Lia had healed on Ayra after her fight with the Umbral Lynx.
His brain, which had been happily operating on primal instinct, suddenly performed an emergency shutdown, reboot, and spiraled into a full-blown panic, all at once.
The person in his arms, the person he had been actively getting intimate with, was not Olenna.
It was Ayra.