456: FOURTEEN YEARS OLD (7)

FOURTEEN YEARS OLD (7)

"Can I ask you about something?" Hope was very careful with whatever she wanted to say next. She fidgeted on her seat as her appetite disappeared in the blink of an eye.  1

Kace could sense her nervousness and sat down beside her. It was so rare to see Hope being this restless around him when she wanted to ask something. 

"What is it?" Kace leaned over, too close to Hope, which forced her to lean back in return. 

"I want to know the meaning of…" Hope didn't know why it became very hard to talk with Kace all of a sudden. She had never felt this way before.

"Of?" Kace prodded, frowning. He felt more curious about whatever Hope wanted to ask him, since she had never acted this way before. 

"Hmm…" Hope lowered her head.

"Hm?" Kace leaned over even more to see her expression clearly, which was hidden behind the curtain of her long black hair. "What? You are making me nervous." 

If Hope kept acting like this, Kace's imagination would run wild and he would start imagining the worst. 

"What is… 'a mate'?" Hope raised her head, only to see Kace's face which was now only a few centimeters away from her. This accelerated her heartbeat. 

On the other hand, Kace was caught off guard by Hope's question. Why was she asking this kind of thing all of a sudden? Or, more importantly; from whom did she hear about this?

Kace was sure that Lana would never mention something like this to her, let alone Serefina. The witch would always have better things to do other than talking about 'mates' and everything that entailed.

Kace's expression turned even more curious now. "From whom did you hear about this little one?" 

"I am not a little one." Hope mumbled under her breath. She disliked it when Kace always thought of her as a small child. 

"Alright," Kace didn't lose his serious expression. "From whom did you hear about this Hope?" 

"I…" Hope forgot to find an excuse for this. "I… Lana told me…" that was the best thing that she could think of in this moment.

But, of course it was unbelievable for Kace as he knew his little mate too well, after he had taken care of her poop and pee since she was only a baby. 

"Hope, you know that I can say when you are lying, right?" Kace was surprised that Hope started to lie to him, but after thinking about it again, she was a teenager now. 

Hope was starting to have her own secrets. 

"You did not answer my question." Hope tried to cover her nervousness by acting bold, yet Kace could see through her poor act.

"You didn't answer my question either." Kace retorted.

"But, I asked you first." Hope didn't want to back down. Since she had already asked about it, she had to find the answer immediately. 

Unexpectedly, Kace answered it. "'Mate' means the soul mate for the people of my kind. Someone who was destined to be with you for the rest of your eternity."

"Huh?" This time, it was Hope who was surprised by Kace's bluntness. "Like girlfriend and boyfriend? Husband and wife?" Those were the closest examples that Hope could relate to. 

The sound of guttural laugh echoed through the dining room, as Kace's chest rose and fell rapidly. He had never thought about the mate bond in that way. 

Whether it was a relationship of boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife, once you found your mate, you would be bound together for the rest of your lives. Thus, those tittles meant nothing to their kind. 

"Why are you laughing?" Hope huffed, irritated because Kace found her statement amusing. Did she say something wrong? Why was he laughing so heartily?

"Well, you can say that." Kace grinned. 

"But, that didn't answer my question, why are you laughing?" Hope still disliked the fact that she was being laughed at. "Is there something funny about my statement?"

"No." Kace shook his head. "Of course not. However…"

"However?" At this point, Hope was very curious about their world. This was the first time she was talking about this kind of topic, though before Kace and Lana had explained a few things about their world, but it had always been something on the surface. 

"Our kind values our mate rather highly." Kace leaned back against his seat. "Even those terms sound inappropriate."

"What do you mean?" Hope blinked her eyes, trying to discern the information. 

"When humans say they would die for their partner, most of them would say it figuratively, while in our case we will do it, literally." Kace looked at Hope with a spark in those beautiful blue eyes. "Living our life without a mate is a boring kind of life." Kace added.

Even after using the term 'boring', it was an understatement of what kind of life that Kace had been through before he found Hope. 

"Wow…" Hope drawled. "That sounds… romantic."

Kace laughed once again. "I don't know if you find dying is romantic."

"So…" Hope cleared her throat. This was the question that made her more nervous than before. "…did you find your mate?"

"I did." Kace nodded affirmatively. 

Hope scratched the back of her head and played with her hair absentmindedly. Even though Kace knew what Hope would ask next, he didn't say anything as he wanted her to say it. 

"Lana?" The moment that name left her lips, she knew for sure that it was only her, who was finding an excuse to attest her suspicion. 

Kace gave her a smile, the one that was very warm and not like his usual goofy smile, which he always showed her all this time. "Hope, if you want to talk about this, I will assume you already know who the person is."

Hope gulped hard as she averted her eyes away from his gaze. "I don't know," she mumbled. Why did the atmosphere turn very heavy all of a sudden? She had never felt this way when she talked with Kace before.

"It is you." Kace said it in a matter of fact tone. "You are my mate."

"Huh?" Despite the fact her guess being turned out right, Hope was still surprised when Kace admitted it so easily.

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