After all the confusion in the courtyard and seeing Landon foaming with rage over the nickname, Ethan found a moment of peace.
He was alone in the cafeteria, sitting at one of the farthest tables after grabbing something to eat from the fridge. With a fork in his hand, he idly poked at his food, but his mind was far away.
Thinking about everything that had happened that day—the parasite invasion, the talent show chaos, the lightning, the fight with Landon—his brain, inevitably and stubbornly, rushed right back to that exact moment in the grass with Hope on top of him.
Even knowing it had been the parasite's doing, the feeling had been incredible. He had never felt anything like it in his entire life, not even in the darkest, loneliest corners of Malivore. Having the girl he wanted—no matter how much he tried to hide it—in his arms, feeling her warmth and urgency, had been an absolute delight.
I hope something like that happens again.
An involuntary, half-silly, smug smile spread across his face as he relived the scene in his memory.
Knock, knock.
Someone knocked lightly on the door, though from a distance.
Ethan blinked, clearing the thoughts from his head, and turned around. Hope was standing there with her arms lightly crossed, her expression caught undecidedly between shyness and seriousness.
— Can I talk to you for a moment? — she asked, her voice coming out a little lower than usual.
Ethan dropped his smile, adjusted himself in his chair, and pointed to the empty space beside him, tapping the wood twice lightly.
— Sure. Sit down.
Helsi hesitated for a second, but walked around the table and sat next to him. However, she remained in absolute silence, staring down at her own hands resting in her lap, as if looking for the right words in a dictionary that didn't exist.
Ethan watched her sideways for a few moments, amused by her rare hesitation.
— If you want to talk, that's what mouths are for, you know? — he teased with a light, playful tone.
Hope turned her face toward him, narrowing her eyes, but without her previous aggressiveness.
— Shut up. I just...
— Relax — Ethan interrupted, softening his voice and leaning back in his chair. — I know you were under that thing's control. It wasn't really you. That's what you mean to say, isn't it?
Hope's blue eyes widened slightly. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words vanished.
She stayed quiet, staring at him with an intensity that felt like it wanted to tear his chest open from the inside.
Ethan didn't look away. He held that pair of blue eyes with an almost unshakable calm—the kind of icy serenity only someone who survived the unspeakable could possess. Not a single wrinkle of nervousness on his face, not a single falter.
— Want me to finish the sentence for you? — he asked in a low, dragging voice, almost a whisper that seemed to cut through the air of the room. — You want to know if what happened out there was because of that creature... or if it was real.
Hope's pupils dilated. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. He had hit right on the hidden thought deep inside her mind.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms casually, his green eyes locked onto her, shining with an enigmatic gleam.
— The truth, Hope... — he continued with a slow, dangerous smirk —, is that you spend way too much time trying to find rational explanations for things your own intuition already understands. The parasite just took off your emergency brake. It didn't invent anything you felt.
Hope felt her stomach drop. She tried to lift her chin, reclaiming the defensive posture of the Original Hybrid's daughter, trying to raise the walls that used to protect her.
— You talk like you know everything about me — she retorted in a thin voice, trying to hide how much his words had hit her. — But you're nothing more than a walking question mark that showed up out of nowhere at my school.
Ethan's smile vanished, replaced by a neutral, deep expression—one that seemed to see right through the walls and defenses around her. He leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between them.
— Some answers come with time, Hope. Others... you only discover when you stop fighting them. — He paused briefly, holding her gaze before continuing with a defiant spark in his eyes. — But if you really want to know... everything has a price.
— A price?... — Hope replied, furrowing her brow, trying to keep her guard up against that velvety voice that sent chills down her spine.
— Exactly — Ethan said without hesitation.
— What's the price? — she asked, crossing her arms and trying to sound firm, though her racing heart betrayed that she was anything, but calm.
— Well... since I helped your friends today, saved the whole school, and you still made me jealous earlier by kissing that hobbit right in front of me... — Ethan made a dramatic pause, his voice growing denser and dangerously intimate. — A kiss. That's the price I want.
— !!! — Hope's eyes widened instantly, shock stamped on her face. — I can't do that, Ethan! I'm with Landon!
Ethan let out a short, dry, mocking laugh, unfazed even for a second by the boy's name.
— Who cares about Landon, Hope? — he said, closing in on her space, his voice dropping to a firm whisper. — You know you feel something for me that you'll never feel for anyone else.
Hope froze. Her throat went dry, and the answer she wanted to give simply vanished. She stood in absolute silence.
The uncomfortable truth of those words weighed like a boulder in her chest: he wasn't lying. And that was exactly what made her so intrigued and terrified. Ethan seemed to know her soul, her life, and her desires as if he had been accompanying her for years, while she knew absolutely nothing about him.
— How can you be so sure of that? — she asked, her voice coming out in a fragile thread loaded with an almost painful curiosity.
Ethan stayed quiet. He just held her gaze, locking any response behind those enigmatic green eyes, refusing to hand over what she wanted for free.
Hope looked deep into his face, trying to read every trace of that impassive expression. He just stared back in silence, waiting.
— So you're not going to say anything until I kiss you? Is that it? — she asked, her breathing starting to falter.
He remained silent, just a provocative half-smile curving his lips.
Ethan had no intention of backing down or making the first move; he wanted exactly that—for her to come to him, to yield of her own free will, despite all her pride and the barriers she tried to put up.
Hope's face paled for a second before being overtaken by a violent flush, her cheeks burning crimson, exposing every single drop of her internal conflict. She hesitated, swallowing hard, her eyes wandering for an instant down to Ethan's lips—firm and slightly curved into a challenging smile—before traveling back up to meet the deep green of his eyes. It was a gaze so intense, so heavy, that it seemed to punch through all her defenses straight to the bottom of her soul.
That was the limit. Her resistance collapsed like a house of cards.
Decided, Hope leaned her upper body forward. The space between them vanished in a second. She closed the distance and pressed her lips against his in an initial touch carrying the electricity of all the accumulated tension from that chaotic day.
Ethan's response was instant and devastating. If he had been restrained before, now all his patience evaporated. Ethan's large hands flew to her back and waist, pulling her with a fierce possessiveness against his body, fusing every inch of their skin irrevocably. He kissed her with a voracious, hungry will, as if reclaiming something that had always been his by right.
The second their tongues met in a feverish, wet rhythm, an invisible yet absurdly real shock surged up Hope's spine.
Hope's entire body was electrified.
It wasn't the static shock of the grubs or the raw electricity he used to take down monsters; it was something much deeper—a dense, hallucinatory heat that made her blood boil in her veins and the air vanish from her lungs. In that exact second, the surrounding world ceased to exist. Landon, the school, the rules, the danger, the guilt... she didn't care about anything else. Logical reasoning was buried beneath an overwhelming wave of pure instinct and raw desire.
Without even thinking about what she was doing—or caring that they were right in the middle of the cafeteria where anyone could walk in at any moment—Hope lifted one leg and straddled him completely, seating herself shamelessly in Ethan's lap.
Her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, pulling him even closer, locking their faces together in a perfect fit. They kissed as if starving for each other, with an unbridled, savage urgency, mixing gasping breaths, muffled low moans deep in the throat, and an absolute surrender neither of them ever imagined they were capable of feeling.
They stayed there for a good, endless five minutes, lost in a feverish haze, kissing nonstop, devouring each other as if time had stopped. Neither showed the slightest desire to stop; every touch, every shared breath, and every press of lips felt too addictive to abandon. The cafeteria noise, the risk of someone showing up, Landon's very name—all of it evaporated, reduced to nothing before the intensity of that moment.
It was only when the air in Hope's lungs finally began to run out and the dizziness of oxygen deprivation hit her that she was forced to yield.
With a trembling, reluctant sigh, she unlatched her mouth from Ethan's, but she didn't pull away. Instead, she hid her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, letting her body's weight relax against the boy's chest.
She breathed deeply, her chest rising and falling out of sync. Her face was completely red, burning in a way she couldn't disguise, and her heart felt ready to burst through her ribs from beating so fast.
But what scared her most wasn't physical exhaustion; it was the strange, overwhelming sensation churning her insides. What the hell were those violent butterflies flipping in her stomach? It was a squall of heat, cold, anxiety, and dense pleasure she had never felt in her entire life.
Even having lived through centuries of history, losses, and a relationship with Landon, Hope had never experienced anything remotely like that. No magic, no binding spell, or teenage infatuation compared to that brute force disarming her completely.
While her fingers lightly clenched into the collar of his jacket, Hope's mind spun with a single mute, almost painful question:Why...? Why the hell did he affect her this much?
She simply didn't want to get up from that lap. The world outside could be falling apart, Alaric could be looking for them, Landon could be furious somewhere in the school... none of it mattered. In that second, the only place she wanted to be for the rest of her life was right there, trapped in that embrace.
Ethan had no intention of letting her go either. He kept his strong, firm arms locked around her waist, pulling her even tighter against his chest, wanting to press her body to his so closely that not even air could pass between them.
With his breath still ragged, Hope slowly pulled her face away from his shoulder and looked at him again.
Their eyes locked in an absolute, heavy silence. They didn't need to say anything; the way they looked at each other gave it all away. It was a raw desire, a mutual hunger, as if the only thing that truly mattered in the entire universe was each other's presence.
But as she continued straddling his lap, Hope felt something beneath her body stiffen and grow larger—an unmistakable physical evidence of Ethan's reaction to direct contact.
The shock was immediate.
Reality hit Hope like a physical blow. A violent jolt ran up her spine, her face burned an even brighter shade of red, and in a reflex of pure panic and shame, she jerked backward, jumped off his lap in a desperate spring, and bolted, running out of the cafeteria as fast as her legs could carry her.
Ethan remained seated in the same chair, watching the girl's figure vanish down the hallway.
He slowly leaned back against the wooden backrest, crossing his hands behind his head, letting a calm, satisfied, and absurdly victorious smile spread across his face. He let out a low, huffed laugh, shaking his head.
— She didn't even remember to ask the question... — Ethan muttered to himself, knowing that sooner or later, she would come back looking for the answer.