Chapter 85: Chapter 85: Hallucinogenic Soup?

Lila’s POV

I didn’t touch the soup. I just looked at Caleb. “Caleb, please make a call to Jasper for me.”

His movements froze, and he looked up at me.

“Please tell him,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and avoid a pleading tone, “that I wasn’t directly abducted by Derek. I’m safe for now. Ask him… not to do anything rash.”

Caleb was silent for a few seconds, his gaze falling on the ring on my ring finger.

“I can’t make that call,” he said, his voice flat.

“Why not?”

“The signal would expose my physical location,” he said, looking straight at me. “Jasper and his people are very good at tracking.”

I stared at him, searching his eyes for any sign of yielding. “If I demanded you make the call right now, would you?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “I’d be executed on the spot. And you would immediately lose your last line of protection.”

I lowered my eyes, staring at the film of grease congealing on the soup’s surface. “…I understand.”

He waited a few seconds. When I didn’t say anything more, he turned and walked to the door.

I picked up the spoon and stirred the cream of mushroom soup, which had gone completely cold.

The greasy film on the surface shattered, revealing my blurry reflection.

I put down the spoon, lifted the bowl, and took a sip.

It was bland and slightly salty.

I finished the entire bowl.

Then I lay back on the bed, folded my hands over my stomach, and closed my eyes.

The iron bed was hard.

The mattress was as thin as a sheet of paper, and the springs underneath dug into my spine. Every small breath pulled at the wound on the back of my neck where the needle had pierced my skin, sending a sharp, persistent, dull ache through me.

I lay there, motionless.

I just kept my eyes open, staring at the ghastly white incandescent light above. The bulb buzzed like a dying insect. Within its dim, yellowed halo, dust motes floated, spun, and settled in slow silence.

A suffocating feeling, heavier and more viscous than the cold, damp air of the basement, spread from the depths of my lungs. It was like a layer of cold, soaked cotton, wrapping tightly around my heart and making every breath a difficult, sluggish effort.

I subconsciously raised a hand to my chest.

My fingertips could clearly feel the outline of the Wolf Head Pendant—I always wore it against my skin and had never taken it off. But right now, its cold metallic touch brought no comfort at all. Instead, it felt like a red-hot brand, making my fingers tremble.

I suddenly thought of Moon Hidden Villa.

I thought of my room.

That south-facing bedroom with its thick, wool carpet. Outside the huge French windows was the churning, azure sea below Eagle’s Beak Cliff. In the morning, sunlight would stream through the blinds right on schedule, casting warm, golden bars of light across the floor. Jasper always liked to sit in the armchair by the window and read at that time of day. He would be wearing a soft, gray cashmere sweater, his profile exceptionally gentle in the morning light. And I would be curled up on his lap, a picture book in my hands, my hair, smelling of the clean scent of shampoo, splayed across his legs.

He would occasionally lower his head and gently nuzzle the corner of my forehead with his nose, or use his fingertips to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. His hands were large and warm, possessing a reassuring and unquestionable strength.

Breathing, back then, was sweet.

Like melted honey, like sun-warmed pine needles, like the faint scent of cedar on his lips when he kissed me.

But now…

I sucked in a sharp breath.

The cold, musty air filled my lungs, bringing only a deeper, tearing pain.

I closed my eyes, forcing myself not to think about that window, not to think about that light, not to think about the warmth of his fingertips.

But the images flooded my mind uncontrollably, like a bursting dam.

I could even remember the small, silver wolf-head cufflinks on his shirt. In the sunlight, they would refract tiny, dancing flecks of light.

’I suddenly understood.’

’This suffocating feeling isn’t from the basement.’

’It’s coming from within me.’

’From my… resistance to that “wedding of the century.”’

I once thought I was compromising for the sake of the Wolf Clan’s crisis, sacrificing myself for Jasper’s safety. But now, in this imprisoned shell of a body, this body numbed by drugs and protected by a ring, I could finally hear the truest voice from the depths of my soul:

’I don’t want this.’

’I don’t want my marriage to be a mere footnote in a power play from the very beginning.’

’I don’t want… my love to be packaged as an expensive trophy to be bartered away.’

’Perhaps, subconsciously, I’ve been craving an “interruption” all along? An “interruption” that could wake me completely from that grand, magnificent, and suffocating dream?’

I finished the third bowl of soup.

It wasn’t because I was hungry, nor was it out of compliance.

It was an experiment.

The first bowl—bland and slightly salty. Ten minutes after I drank it, the throbbing vein behind my ear suddenly went quiet. It was a strange sense of “detachment,” as if someone had gently tightened a silver valve inside my skull, separating me from the surging emotional tides of the outside world with a thin, tough film of ice. I could hear my own heartbeat, but I couldn’t hear who it was beating for.

The second bowl came the next day. Caleb came in to replace the empty bowl, placed a new one down in silence, and left without another word.

I stared at the few dried oregano leaves floating on the surface. I scooped up a spoonful and brought it to my lips. This time, I tasted a faint bitterness, like rust seeping from low-hanging clouds before a storm. Immediately, the halo of the incandescent light began to tremble. The bulb’s hum stretched and changed pitch, and I hallucinated a distant, familiar nursery rhyme—it was the “Eclipse Lullaby” my mother taught me, sung in the long-lost ancient wolf tongue, its syllables falling like grains of frost.

I put down the spoon, my fingers unconsciously stroking the Tear of the Moon God.

It seemed to have changed somehow. It felt like a piece of jade that had been submerged in a deep pool for many years, silently absorbing the moon’s essence in the darkness. Now, it was transmitting a slow, constant, pulse-like vibration through my skin.

I drank the third bowl at 5:27 in the morning.

The basement had no windows, but time had its own markers: the sound of dripping water, the resonance of distant pipes.

When I picked up the bowl, my hand, surprisingly, didn’t tremble.

The soup was completely cold, its surface covered by a translucent film of fat that shimmered with a mother-of-pearl iridescence. I blew on it, and the film rippled. At the center of the ripples, a line of fleeting silver runes appeared—they weren’t from the Wolf Clan’s script, nor any other existing language. They moved and re-formed like living things, finally resolving into a clear image: a closed eyelid, its lashes dotted with fine Star Dust. Beneath the lid was not an eyeball, but a new moon, ashen-gray, slowly rising.

I froze.

My fingertips hovered over the rim of the bowl, not daring to touch it.

Just then—my heart clenched without warning.

It wasn’t pain, not a palpitation, but the illusion of being precisely “pierced.” It was as if an extremely thin, ice-cold silver needle had stabbed diagonally upward from below my left breast, reaching the very valve of my heart, and given a gentle twist.

I gasped, but I didn’t choke or cough. My throat just tightened, and my eyes suddenly grew hot.

Because I could feel him—my love, hundreds of miles away, in the bedroom of Moon Hidden Villa.

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