Page 170 of A Soul to Keep

Katerina yanked it, ripping it from his horn so she could stare down at it in her palm.

“She put bells on you like a cat.”

Orpheus’ sight glowed to red, and he stepped back sharply from her as a light growl emitted from his chest.She broke my gift!Reia had told him she would be upset if he lost or broke them!

This was something the old Katerina would have done, something so careless and self-centred. Orpheus liked his bells, he wanted to wear them. Yet, if she didn’t like something, she would make sure he knew of it.

But in her touching them, making them ring, she reminded Orpheus that Reia had made them. Katerina had never given him anything but her body, and she told him when she went with the Demon King that she’d hated it and every moment with him.

Her face had been filled with a glare, the same glare she’d worn while being with him often.

Orpheus didn’t trust her anymore.

Katerina had hurt him irreparably, whether that was by unwillingness or not. He trusted Reia, refused to believe she would be with the Demon King after everything they’d shared.

She hadn’t needed to give her body to Orpheus, but insteadshehad wanted to. She had wanted to cuddle with him, read to him, give him gifts, and sweet little kisses against his skull.

“Where is she?” Orpheus growled.

“I’m telling you that I want to go with you,” Katerina said, her brows creasing so deeply that her forehead began to crinkle. “I told you where she is. She is with the Demon King. Why do you keep asking about her when you have me?”

“Because I don’t want you.” He turned away from her to go after the woman who smelled like the sweetest garden. “I want to find Reia.”

“You will regret that, Orpheus,” she said with a dark tone.

He didn’t care. He didn’t even bother to turn back and look at her, not when his brave little human was currently somewhere in this castle, possibly in danger.

Reia suddenly appeared out of thin air.

His heart warmed just at seeing her. She was running to him.

Actually, she was sprinting, and she lookedangry.

She looked so angry, in fact, her eyes filled with hate and spite in his direction, that the warmth he felt suddenly left him. Had he been mistaken? Had Katerina been telling him the truth, and he’d mistakenly chosen the wrong path?

But he didn’t want Katerina anymore.

Even if it meant he was alone, he didn’t want the woman who had made him feel hollow all these eons. The person that, when he looked back in his memories after hearing the words of her forsaking him for another, had never looked at him pleasantly.

He wanted this woman, the one sprinting towards him like she was about to fearlessly fight him with spite in her eyes.

Orpheus retreated a step and slunk lower in worry.

Showing her he was surrendering,submitting, his eyes going white, he watched her approach.Perhaps she is just angry with me because she was taken.He was hoping she would just scold him and wasn’t here to say she hated him too.

She ran past him.

He turned just in time to see Reia tackle Katerina who had been holding a dagger above his head while he was looking away. It clanked against the stone ground, ringing in the echoey room.

He shuffled back in surprise.She was going to attack me?

And it looked as though she’d been aiming straight for his skull – a blow that would have killed him had she managed to pierce his skull and crack it.

Katerina screeched in surprise before she hit the ground with Reia on top of her, who then reached her arm back and proceeded to punch her in the face as she straddled her waist.

“What the hell, Jabez!?” Katerina yelled, trying to fight Reia by reaching to grab her arms. “You were supposed to hold onto her!”

Orpheus turned his head to the smell of the Demon King scent that suddenly pierced the air of the room. He was holding his groin, his teeth bared as if he was hissing in a breath.