The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 176: Trouble

The way he said it... casual, matter-of-fact, like he was discussing the weather rather than my replacement made my skin prickle with something I recognized immediately because I’d felt it before.

Jealousy.

Sharp and vicious and absolutely unwelcome.

The same feeling that had plagued me for years watching Caelen with Ophelia. Watching him smile at her with genuine warmth while looking at me with barely concealed contempt. Watching him choose her over and over and over again until I’d learned to expect the rejection, to armor myself against it, to pretend it didn’t tear pieces off my soul every single time.

And now I was feeling it again. For a different man. In a different empire. Because apparently I was constitutionally incapable of learning from past mistakes.

Soren was dangerous precisely because of this, because he made me feel things I’d sworn never to feel again. Because he cracked open defenses I’d spent years constructing. Because falling for him would only end in the same heartbreak, the same pain, the same inevitable destruction.

And I couldn’t afford it. Not with the time I had left. Not when I’d already accumulated too many regrets to carry into whatever came after death. All I wanted to do engage now was for my own personal amusement. Nothing more or less. Nothing complicated that would bloom into something ugly.

I forced my expression into something neutral, pushed down the jealousy that wanted to claw its way out of my chest, and made myself say the words that would protect us both from the disaster we were hurtling toward.

"I’m glad you understand."

His expression said otherwise.

Everything about him..the tension in his jaw, the way his glowing eyes had narrowed slightly, the set of his shoulders... screamed that he understood nothing, accepted nothing, and was barely restraining himself from saying or doing something we’d both regret.

I needed to leave. Now. Before this conversation deteriorated further, before I said something else that would make this worse, before the jealousy burning in my chest convinced me to take back every word I’d just spoken.

"I think I should go back," I said, already starting to rise from the soft moss. "It’s late, and we both need—"

His hand closed around my wrist.

Not painfully. Not roughly. But with enough force that I stopped moving immediately, caught mid-rise, suddenly very aware of how much stronger he was despite my magic.

"Let go," I said, trying to inject authority into my voice and failing miserably.

"I wasn’t done, Your Majesty."

"Soren!"

Instead of releasing me, he pulled.

I went down hard, landing back on the moss with enough force that my breath left in a rush. And then he was moving, closing the distance between us before I could even think about using magic to push him away.

"But like I said before..." he said. "for now," he continued, his voice still carrying that dark, possessive quality that made something low in my belly clench with equal parts fear and something far more dangerous, "the only woman I want is you Eris."

His face was close to mine now, close enough that I could see the way his eyes still glowed with barely controlled power, close enough to feel his breath against my lips.

"And you’re going to have to accept that."

My heart was racing, stuttering in my chest like it couldn’t decide whether to speed up or stop entirely. I tried to pull away, tried to create distance between us before this situation spiraled completely out of control.

Like it always did.

"Soren, let go—"

My command fell into deaf ears.

He pulled me closer instead.

Suddenly I was practically in his lap, his arms creating a cage around me that felt simultaneously like safety and the most dangerous place I’d ever been.

"No matter how much you try to push me away," he continued, his voice dropping even lower, becoming almost a growl, "you can’t deny your own feelings. I see them. Every time you look at me. Every time you try to pretend you don’t care. Every time you suggest I’d be better off without you."

His words hit me like physical blows, knocking away the careful walls I’d constructed, exposing the truth I’d been desperately trying to hide.

I’d thought I was concealing it. Thought I was maintaining appropriate distance. Thought I was protecting us both by keeping my growing attachment locked away where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

But he’d seen through all of it. Seen past every defense to the vulnerability underneath. Every lie I’d repeated to myself.

And now he was calling me out on it.

"Don’t get so cocky—" I started, defaulting to anger because it was safer than admitting he was right. "Just because I tolerate you doesn’t mean I feel something."

He chuckled, and there was nothing warm about the sound. Nothing playful. It was dark, knowing, the laugh of someone who’d won an argument before it even began.

"I know," he said simply. "And stop treating me like a child who can’t handle complicated emotions or difficult truths."

"I’m not—"

Before I could finish that sentence, before I could mount any kind of defense, he moved.

One moment I was sitting upright, trying to maintain some dignity. The next, the world tilted sideways and I was on my back, soft glowing moss cushioning my fall, with Soren above me.

Caging me in.

His hands planted on either side of my head, his body positioned between my legs in a way that made it absolutely impossible to miss his intent. The floating lights drifted around us like witnesses to whatever was about to happen, their glow painting his face in shades of blue and green that made him look otherworldly.

His eyes still glowed with that unnatural light, ice magic responding to emotion he was no longer bothering to control.

And I was suddenly, viscerally aware that I was in significantly more trouble than I’d anticipated.