Rivers of the Night

Chapter 821: Hesitating

A blizzard seemed to peel across the air and Theron woke up a bit. The palms controlling his face seemed to tighten, but he could finally breathe again as the person across from him loosened their latch on his lips.

For a second, he thought they wouldn’t be satisfied until they bit his lips off.

Theron blinked again. "Lyra?"

A lovable face looked back at him, one only made more so by the fact tears were streaking down her cheeks. She looked like she had been crying for days despite the fact she really could have only just started crying.

Her presence was so fleeting and hard to grasp that Theron could hardly sense her even now.

It seemed that she had grown quite powerful in his absence. He hadn’t even been gone for that long.

"You remember—." Lyra burst into another fit of tears and buried herself into his chest.

Theron was rendered speechless again. He had the memory of a King. And even if he didn’t, he had always had a photographic memory. One of the reasons he never felt the need to cultivate when he was younger despite knowing it might help him read faster was because he didn’t have a pressing need for it.

What the Imperial Academy at the time hadn’t even realized was that not only was Theron amongst their highest ever in scores, but he had taken their exam without any cultivation at all, something that had never been done in their entire history.

The advantage of having begun cultivating was too great...

Theron was just greater.

The idea that he would forget her—especially considering it hadn’t even been two years—was ridiculous.

Theron could only laugh. "Yes, of course I remember you."

Finally, Theron understood what happened. Lyra had actually been the one a random third party was talking about.

She had been on her feet while one of her companions was on the back of a beautiful white fox.

The third party in question was a bit speechless right now. He was a red-haired young man with hair that defied physics. But what was odd about him was that despite how much heat he was giving off, he definitely wasn’t a Fire Mancer. In fact, Theron was fairly sure he was a Soul Mancer.

As for the companion on the back of the white fox, he was honestly one of the most beautiful men Theron had ever seen. Well, aside from himself.

Theron didn’t think about his own looks very much, and no one had ever really commented on it, but that was because he had yet to mature. Even now, he was still three or four years from reaching his greatest potential.

He might not have been the tallest man, but he certainly was quite handsome and rarely received competition in that field.

This man was probably a tier or so beneath him. The difference was that he looked to be in his early twenties.

Though, considering he was radiating the aura of a King, he was certainly much older than that.

It took dozens of years to reach the King Realm even if you were a Primal Resonance talent.

In fact, the bar for an absolute genius of the King Realm was 100 years old.

This young man was already a Higher King. He was not only beyond 100 years old, he was probably closer to 500 years old than he was to his first century.

That’s why it was such a surprise that Lyra was actually a Quasi King now already. He was pretty sure he had left her at Gold Mancy.

She would have had to go through Cloud Mancy, then Dome of Heaven Mancy, before making it here.

’Probably an erupting of potential. But even so, that should put her at Quasi Dome of Heaven, not Quasi King.’

"Hey, hey." The red-haired man pouted. "You can’t have both, right? Where’s the fairness?"

Theron’s lip twitched. Could this guy shut up? He could already feel Ayame a few seconds from killing everything in sight.

In fact, the red-haired man had probably seen both of them, but he decided to try and go after Lyra because the latter had the more approachable personality. But seeing Theron somehow end up with "both," he was speechless.

His only recourse at this point was to try and stir up trouble for Theron. In fact, the bastard was grinning as he gave Theron a wink.

There was someone else looking toward Theron at the moment: the young man on the back of the snow fox. But in this situation, Theron just directly ignored him and finally looked over toward Ayame.

"You know Lyra, right, Ayame?" Theron said with a smile. "Lyra, I don’t think you’ve met Ayame, but she also—."

Lyra yanked Theron’s face back toward hers so hard he felt his lips pursing up a bit.

"No. You have to address what just happened. Now." Lyra said with a hint of embarrassment and hesitation in her eyes. But as much hesitation as there was, she was firm in her words.

"Uh..." Theron knew what she was talking about. The kiss, obviously. But he had originally brushed it off as a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Though it was his first kiss, he didn’t care about it enough to raise a huge fuss about it.

But Lyra had clearly forced herself to do something to force his hand.

"... How would you like me to address it?" Theron asked slowly, a bit at a loss for what to do.

"Acknowledge my feelings and marry me."

The firmness of her words didn’t match the shuddering nervousness on her face at all.

"Uh... I—."

"Why are you hesitating? Are you marrying her?" Lyra pointed to Ayame.

"No." Ayame replied calmly.

By this point, Alpha had his head nearly buried in the soil, trying to find a rock hard enough to bite that would stop him from laughing without shattering instantly.

"Then why are you hesitating? You slept with me for several nights, did you not?!"

The more she spoke, the redder her face became and the more embarrassed.

The red-haired young man nearly fell out of the tree, and Theron started coughing.

Was that technically true? Yes... but he never touched her!