Chapter 157: Something bad
As I had already come to notice, neither of these two ate breakfast—they only had coffee. One with a scowl, the other with the casual composure of a predator who truly couldn’t care less about what anyone thought of him.
"Enclosul," Matthias repeated with an important nod to himself before looking up again. "We went to see Caramel. She didn’t want to come to me at first, but then she let me pet her. She just snorted a lot. Oh, and she bit Uncle Sayan’s pant leg."
"She didn’t bite it—she attempted an assault on my honor," Sayan grumbled, staring into his mug as if that black liquid was the only thing keeping him from committing murder.
Magnus merely chuckled, pulling out a chair beside me.
"And I am endlessly grateful to you for showing Caramel to Matthias. I take it she behaved herself?" he asked smoothly, pulling out his phone to check something on the screen.
I sat down opposite my son, striving to look as composed as possible, even though I was still smoldering inside with a chaotic mix of embarrassment, contentment, and a new, almost hypersensitive awareness of Magnus’s presence. Even now, simply sitting at the same table, I felt his heat with raw clarity. His scent. The subtle, almost imperceptible way his knee occasionally brushed against mine.
"I’m no expert, of course," Sayan huffed, sounding thoroughly aggrieved, "but Caramel was on her absolute best behavior. I’m honestly surprised she’s even capable of such goodwill, considering she nearly bit my leg off last time."
"That’s because you shouldn’t have been teasing her," Magnus offered lazily, his eyes never leaving his phone.
"I wasn’t teasing her!"
"You existed too close to her. To Caramel, that’s already a provocation."
I couldn’t help a faint smile. Their bickering was strange—almost domestic. For a fleeting second, it made it easy to believe in an entirely different life: one where Magnus was just an ordinary man enjoying morning coffee beside his woman, and Sayan was nothing more than a grumpy family friend.
"Mom, can we go see Caramel again?" Matthias turned to me with such desperate hope in his eyes that my heart squeezed tightly.
"If she doesn’t mind," I said, reaching over to smooth down a stray lock of his hair. "And only if you finish your breakfast."
"I’m almost done," my son lied with absolute sincerity, glancing down at a plate that still held at least half of his omelet.
"Almost done isn’t finished," Magnus remarked, flicking a brief, sharp glance over at him.
Matthias let out a heavy, dramatic sigh, looking as if the entire injustice of the world had just settled onto his small shoulders. "Everyone is so sti-ct today."
"That’s only because you are so deeply loved," I murmured softly. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up his fork again.
In that instant, my eyes drifted back to Magnus—purely by accident—and I immediately caught the shift in him. His entire demeanor had changed. He was taut, locked down, a coil of sudden internal tension. He flipped his phone face-down onto the table a second too quickly, but not before I caught a fleeting glimpse of a message on the screen.
A silent, internal dialogue flashed between him and Sayan—a language completely hidden from Matthias and me. A single, sharp look. An almost imperceptible nod. But it was more than enough to send a cold, unpleasant prickle skittering down my spine.
Something was wrong.
I felt it instantly: in the sudden rigidity of his shoulders, and in the way his knuckles turned white where his fingers gripped his coffee mug. Sayan’s sullen, theatrical scowl vanished entirely, replaced by a deadly seriousness.
"I actually came here on business," Sayan said, his voice stripped of all its previous laziness as he set his cup down. "Magnus, give me a minute."
Magnus stood up immediately. He leaned down just long enough to press a soft, lingering kiss to the crown of my head before striding out of the kitchen with Sayan close behind.
I watched them leave, a thin wire of anxiety tightening painfully in my chest. I knew that sensation far too well—that instinctual warning when nothing explicit has happened yet, but your body already knows. Something bad is coming.
Not even a minute passed before a dull, heavy thud echoed from the hallway.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
Leaving Matthias to finish his breakfast, I bolted upright and rushed out of the kitchen. The hallway met me with a pressure so thick and suffocating it felt almost tangible, like the acrid smoke following a fire.
I saw Magnus first. His fist was embedded in the wall with such terrifying force that a fine web of cracks radiated across the pale plaster. Every line of his body radiated absolute, murderous rage. The aura rolling off him was so lethal that my chest seized, cutting off my air. It wasn’t just fear—it was something deeper, heavier, as if the very atmosphere had turned razor-sharp and was tearing at my lungs from the inside out.
He whipped his head toward me, his gaze blazing with wild, consuming fury, and that single look made me instinctively flinch back a step. But the second our eyes locked, the expression on his face shifted. Not entirely—no, the rage didn’t vanish. It still boiled within him, clawing to be unleashed, hardening his features into something dangerous and lethal. But for me, that fury ceased to be a threat. It slammed in reverse, turning its blade away and shielding me from its edge.
Sayan, seemingly blind to my reaction and the lightning-fast shift in Magnus’s aura, spoke in a voice that shattered the hallway’s silence like thunder:
"They granted him entry clearance. According to our intel, he’ll be flying in here within a few days—a couple of weeks at the absolute most."
I froze, every muscle in my body locking tight.
"Who?" I breathed, but my voice was completely swallowed by the sudden, terrifying surge of Magnus’s wolfish aura filling the space.