Transmigration: The Tyrant General Can Hear My Thoughts

Chapter 286: Chapter Two Hundred And Eighty Five

Camilla stood still in the middle of the pouring rain. She was quiet. She didn’t know if she was angry at him or herself.

She did not yell back at him. She did not raise her hand to slap his face. She did not offer a sharp, sarcastic insult like she usually did. She did absolutely nothing.

The cold rainwater ran down her forehead, washed over her cheeks, and dripped heavily from her chin. Her bare toes were numb in the muddy puddles.

But the coldness on the outside of her body was nothing compared to the overwhelming emotional battle happening inside her chest.

Damon stood towering over her. He looked down at her small, trembling frame. He waited patiently for her to speak. He waited for her to explain why she was standing in the pouring rain, trying to freeze herself to death.

The heavy silence stretched on for ten long, agonizing seconds.

Damon’s intense, angry glare slowly began to falter. He looked at her wet face. He saw how hard her small shoulders were shaking. He saw how pale her lips were turning in the freezing air. The protective frustration inside him slowly started to melt away, replaced by a growing sense of worry.

He looked down at his own hands. He dropped his coat onto the wet stones. He did not care about the fabric getting ruined in the mud anymore.

"Tell me, Camilla," Damon spoke again.

His deep voice was no longer a loud, demanding, angry roar. It was soft. It was quiet. It was a gentle, desperate, begging whisper that barely carried over the sound of the crashing rain.

"What is it?" Damon asked softly, looking deep into her eyes. "Why are you angry?"

Hearing his soft, gentle, caring voice was the final blow to her impenetrable wall of ice.

Camilla could not hold her emotions back anymore. Her strict, unfeeling, brutal rules shattered into a million tiny pieces inside her mind. The cold assassin persona she had built to survive was destroyed by the gentle tone of his voice.

Camilla started crying.

It did not start with a loud sob. It started with a sudden painful hitch in her breathing. Her chest jerked slightly.

Hot, burning tears immediately welled up in her eyes. The tears spilled over her bottom eyelashes. They rolled rapidly down her freezing, pale cheeks. The hot tears mixed with the cold, wet rainwater falling from the sky.

As the first tear fell, she felt a crushing wave of shame.

"Am I crying?" Camilla thought to herself, her internal voice filled with horror. "I...I am actually crying."

She was taught to endure severe physical torture, broken bones, and deep cuts without shedding a single, solitary tear. She was taught that emotions were a deadly weakness. But right now, standing in the mud in front of a man who had just asked her a simple, gentle question, she was falling apart.

She quickly lowered her head. She looked down at her bare, freezing toes standing in the courtyard.

She wanted to hide her face from him. She did not want Damon to see her cry. She did not want him to see her looking so weak, so vulnerable, and so broken.

She turned her face slightly away from his gaze. She let her wet curls fall forward. The wet hair covered her eyes and her cheeks, acting like a small, sad curtain to hide her shameful tears.

Damon stared at her bowed head.

He heard her thoughts. He saw the hot tears mixing with the freezing rain on her skin before she turned away. He saw her shoulders trembling violently. He heard the small, broken, gasping sounds she was trying desperately to hide in the back of her throat.

His heart broke into a thousand pieces.

The sight of her crying, bowing her head just to hide her sad face from him, caused a deep aching pain in his own chest. He felt like he had failed her. He felt like he was the cause of her deep sorrow.

Damon immediately closed the distance between them.

He took a long step forward. His boots splashed loudly in the muddy water. He was now standing less than an inch away from her shivering, wet body.

He slowly stretched out his arms.

He wanted to hug her. He desperately wanted to wrap his body around her small, shaking frame. He wanted to shield her from the violent, freezing wind. He wanted to pull her against his chest and comfort her deeply until the tears stopped.

But suddenly, his hands stopped in mid-air.

Damon hesitated.

His fingers hovered awkwardly just a few inches away from her wet shoulders. He was terrified to close the final gap.

He remembered exactly what had happened just a few minutes ago. He remembered how he had tried to wrap his coat around her, and she had shoved his chest away with sudden violence. He remembered the wild panic in her eyes. He remembered her screaming loudly over the thunder, ’Don’t touch me!’

Damon swallowed hard. The rain dripped from his dark hair.

"If I touch her now," Damon thought to himself, his internal voice filled with fear. "Will she push me away again? Will she scream at me? If I try to hug her, will it only make her cry harder? Will she hate me even more for crossing her boundaries?"

He was paralyzed by the fear of making her pain worse. His hands hovered uselessly in the cold air, unsure of what to do. He felt helpless.

But then, the dark storm made the decision for him.

A sudden freezing gust of wind blew harshly through the open courtyard.

The cold wind hit Camilla’s wet, thinly clothed body.

Camilla shivered so hard that her entire body jerked violently. Her small shoulders shook uncontrollably. Her teeth chattered loudly. She could not stop it. A small, pathetic, freezing whimper escaped her trembling lips.

Damon heard that quiet, freezing whimper.

The sound destroyed his hesitation. He could not stand it anymore. He did not care about the rules. He did not care if she slapped him across the face. He did not care if she pushed him into the mud. He did not care if she screamed at him until her voice went hoarse.

He firmly refused to stand back and let his wife be stubborn and freeze to death in the dirt.

Damon threw his fear and his hesitation away.

He moved his arms forward quickly. He closed the tiny gap between them.

He pulled her into his arms.

Damon wrapped his arms around her small, shaking body. He pulled her forcefully, but gently, against his chest, wrapping her up completely.

He buried her wet face right into the soaked fabric of his white linen shirt. He held her tightly, wrapping his arms securely around her back and her waist, making sure there was zero space left between their bodies. He used his own towering frame to shield her from the biting wind.

He raised his right hand and placed his palm flat against the center of her shivering back.

He began to rub her back slowly, smoothly, and gently. He moved his hand up and down her spine in a comforting, steady rhythm. He wanted to share all of his natural body heat with her. He wanted to soothe her trembling, freezing muscles. He wanted her to feel that she was safe with him.

Camilla was trapped in his warm embrace.

But she did not hug him back.

Her hands remained limp. They hung uselessly and awkwardly at her sides. She did not raise her arms to wrap them around his waist. She did not clutch his shirt. She kept her entire body stiff, rigid, and frozen against his chest.

Inside her head, a chaotic mental war was raging wildly.

Her deep survival instincts screamed at her brain.

"Push him away, Camilla!" her mind screamed frantically. Her internal voice was loud and panicked. "Push his chest away right now! Step back!"

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut against his wet white shirt. She could hear his heart beating a steady rhythm right against her ear. She could feel the comforting heat radiating from his skin.

"Don’t drown in this warmth," she reprimanded herself strictly in her thoughts, fighting a losing battle against her own feelings. "Don’t let him do this to you. Do not surrender to him."

Her mind brought up the painful memories of her past life betrayal.

"If you accept his warmth today," Camilla warned herself silently, "you will need it forever. If you let yourself trust him completely, he will have the absolute power to destroy you. You know how this ends. Love is a trap. Love is a weakness. You cannot afford to love a man in this world. You must survive alone!"

She tried to command her body to obey her. She tried to tell her hands to rise up. She tried to tell her fingers to form tight fists. She tried to tell her arms to shove his chest away and stay far away from him.

Damon held her tightly in the pouring storm.

He heard her screaming at herself to push him away. He heard her panic. He heard her terror of drowning in his comforting warmth.

But most importantly, he heard her deep, tragic, heartbreaking belief that trusting him would only lead to her ultimate destruction. He heard the weight of the past betrayal she carried in her soul.

Damon finally understood.

"She is not pushing me away because she hates me," Damon realized in his mind, his own heart aching with sadness for her pain. "She is pushing me away because she is terrified. She is terrified of being vulnerable. She is terrified of being hurt again. She is fighting her own heart."

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