[BL] Alpha, You've Got the Wrong Mate!

Chapter 393: 393 — Gentle Nature

When Raniel slowly opened his eyes, darkness greeted him.

There wasn’t the slightest trace of light.

His breathing immediately turned uneven as panic seized his chest. No matter how hard he tried to inhale, it felt as though his lungs refused to fill with enough air.

"Calm down," a man’s voice spoke softly somewhere nearby. "You’ll be able to breathe properly again soon."

Raniel immediately turned toward the sound, his brows knitting together.

Through the endless grey outlines before him, he couldn’t distinguish the stranger’s features, and the voice belonged to no one he recognized.

He instinctively reached toward his face.

Something was wrapped around his eyes. A cloth.

His eyes widened.

He tried to pull it away, but the chains around his wrists were so short, anchored firmly to the floor or perhaps the wall, that his fingers barely reached his own face. The moment he struggled, the heavy iron around both his wrists and ankles clanged loudly, the sound echoing through the dark room before fading back into silence and his skin burned as if set on fire. The iron cuffs were sharply grazing against his limbs.

His heartbeat quickened.

Why was he chained? Why was he here?

He parted his lips, desperate to ask what was happening.

No sound came out.

His eyes widened further as he gasped.

He tried again, screaming his lungs out.

But in vain. Not even a whisper escaped his throat.

Noticing the growing panic in the omega’s movements, the tall man slowly lowered himself until he was kneeling before him.

"Don’t worry," he said with a faint smile that Raniel couldn’t see. "You’ll be able to speak again soon."

Those words did nothing to reassure him. If anything, they made the fear gripping his heart grow even stronger.

Something was terribly wrong.

He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know why he had been brought here.

His head throbbed painfully as he desperately searched through his memories, trying to remember how all of this had happened.

The last thing I remember is...

He froze. His thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

His mind... was empty. Not merely the moments before waking up.

Everything.

He couldn’t understand the reason behind wearing a blindfold. He couldn’t remember why he had been chained. He couldn’t even remember his own name.

A sharp pain shot through his head as he desperately searched for even a single memory to hold onto, yet every thought dissolved into an endless void before he could grasp it.

There was nothing.

Nothing except the suffocating darkness surrounding him and the overwhelming certainty that he had forgotten something unimaginably important.

But what was it?

***

"And then? What happened?" Zayden asked, looking at the omega.

Ren finally looked up from the blanket. There was something flickering in Zayden’s gaze that he couldn’t quite grasp.

"I had lost my memory," Ren muttered under his breath.

The alpha frowned.

"How can that be?"

"The Temple can do anything. And by that, I mean anything. Even get rid of an unborn child, even kill one of their strongest Archmages," the omega’s breath hitched as if recalling all those memories.

"Wait, but if you forgot everything, then how do you remember this? And Eiran—without Ilyan?"

"There’s no Raniel without Ilyan, My Lord," Ren bit his lips.

The alpha’s eyes widened upon hearing his beloved call him Lord, just as he had when they were nothing but strangers. His chest ached painfully, but he couldn’t complain. Not after what he had put Ren through. The omega might state that he was used to it, however, did the pain reduce just because one was used to it?

Certainly not.

I’ll kill them all.

Zayden silently vowed to himself.

Ren noticed the alpha’s mind wander but didn’t do much to snap him back to reality.

When Zayden himself realized he had been planning ways to painfully punish those who hurt his mate, he blinked.

"Ah, then?" he said, tilting his head to the side. It didn’t make sense to him.

All of these must have been at least twenty years of Ren’s life. So when? When did he meet Ilyan again? How did he fall in love with the same alpha again? And the unborn child Ren spoke of—whose was it? Hwo did the temple get rid of it, and why?

It were all questions that clouded Zayden’s mind at once. He couldn’t figure out which one to ask.

And as if Ren had guessed what was happening in his mind, the omega inhaled sharply before answering each of his unspoken questions.

"I met Ilyan again... But that time, I couldn’t remember him. He was once again introduced to me as... my fated mate. And I, once again, believed them," Ren’s voice broke slightly as if he recalled something utterly agonizing. His eyes welled up with tears.

Zayden instinctively reached for them, wiping away the teardrops.

Ren sniffed, wiping off some snot from his nose with the handkerchief Zayden had handed him earlier while he spoke about his past. His dark, painful past.

"He kept asking me what had happened, why was I behaving as if he meant nothing to me. And I... Too scared of him, the unfamiliar familiarity I felt toward him and his relentless interrogation, I had begun to avoid him. However, do you know, Zayden, that love has a way of always finding you, no matter how much you avoid it?" Ren locked gazes with the alpha.

Zayden didn’t say a word, letting Ren finish what he had to say. But his gaze also held pain.

Although Ren noticed it, he turned his head again, lowering his gaze to the dark blanket covering his wounded body. If he kept looking into his scarlet gaze, the eomga feared he wouldn’t be able to continue. And there was so much left to say.

This time, he wanted to reveal everything. Everything that oculd cause another misunderstanding between him and Zayden. It was for their future, their current life and the love they shared for each other.

"And again, because of his kindness, his gentle nature, I’d fallen in love with that man—that kind alpha who took care of me. He’d buy me gifts, telling me about the outside world I’d never seen. And sometimes, he’d once again sneak into my so-called room. Then, he would somehow convince me, carrying me to the ocean, the mountains, the forest with his teleportation magic. Ah," Ren gasped as if he had just recalled something. "Did I tell you that Ilyan was a great mage? Oh, I did," he chuckled, laughing at himself for forgetting.

Zayden simply stared at Ren, who seemed to have been brought back to the time when Ilyan was still alive. His eyes, which had appeared so dead earlier, seemed to have begun to live once again, lightening up.

That hurt beyond words, beyond most pain Zayden had ever suffered in the war. Yet, he kept quiet, listening to Ren’s past.

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