The next day, Luke woke up on the Matriarch's couch in great pain. Luckily, Ayumi was no longer lying beside him because an embarrassing situation caught him by surprise.
Right after opening his eyes, he heard loud footsteps approaching the room's door, and a man entered the room, startling him.
"Luke?"
"Shiro?"
"Why are you naked?"
"Annnn... Heat."
The guard with the big chin and even bigger muscles clenched his eyes and stared at Luke for a few moments until he let out a laugh and pointed at Luke as he said:
"You're a rascal! You're naughty!"
"What? Why?
"Speak up, it's the maid you're fucking, isn't it?" Shiro questioned while giving the half-wolf a weak slap on the shoulder.
"What do you mean?"
The big man stopped smiling and spoke: "Well, the guards on the early shift commented that they heard loud moans coming from your room last week, and the maid sleeps in the next room."
Blushing, Luke took a little time to respond, and as the seconds passed, the expression of doubt on his old friend's face became more transparent and more apparent.
"Hmph! Annn... You're right, that's it." Luke replied after snorting.
He could hardly believe that he had made such a mistake in not remembering Martha, and there was no way he could tell Shiro that he was sleeping with his own employer. This moment made Luke realize that he was already up to his neck in mud in this deep pit.
Whatever happened to the Strogueher Family and Luke disappeared after a few, the suspicion on him would be too great.
"Ahhh! That's my boy! You've changed a lot, you know? I remember you and Meredith exchanging strokes in each other's ears and combing each other's syrup. With those simple caresses, you were already turning all red... That's one of the memories that made me want to meet you.
Luke didn't quite know what to answer. He just touched the man's shoulder and spoke:
"When all this is over, I promise I will take you to see Meredith and Matthew again."
"All this what?"
"Nothing." Luke said and blinked.
Then the half-wolf turned to grab his pants and put them on. Shiro was startled by the man's lack of nonchalance and left the room. Just after leaving Luke alone, the big man saw a girl with white hair and red eyes approaching.
"Excuse me, miss." He spoke, signaling for her to stop. The girl had a pouty expression on her face as she pouted. "Luke is busy right now."
The girl glared angrily at the guard and ignored him, walking into the room. Nathalia had been apprehensive about Luke, so she could hardly believe that he woke up in the wee hours of the morning and didn't even have the nerve to warn her about it.
"Listen here! I am your companion and friend! Then you should have run to see me when you woke up!" She shouted after entering the living room.
However, as soon as she opened her eyes, she saw the half-wolf with his left leg slightly raised to put on his pants and a long, black coat hanging down.
Contrary to any possible scenario, Nathalia, this time, was not embarrassed like in the other awkward situations the two of them have met. In fact, it was like the exact first time they meet, when she asked to touch the man's fluffy ears.
"Y-you have a tail!?" Nathalia shouted, and her eyes sparkled with elation.
"Yes?" Luke answered her, finishing putting on his pants. He wasn't shy either because Nathalia wasn't quite a woman to him most of the time.
Besides the beautiful silky-haired tail, the half-beast exposed well-defined muscles and scars all over its back, most of them that even Shiro had no idea existed, so at first he was surprised to see them, but decided not to ask him about them.
"I can touch?" The young Miss Strogueher inquired, approaching Luke quietly as if all her irritation was gone.
"Please don't."
The tail of a half-beast is its weakest point because it causes great pain if it is pulled. This information was very useful for The Inquisitors during the time of hunting half-beasts.
"By the way, come and have some coffee. The servant girl who was calling."
"All right, go ahead, I have to talk to Nathalia alone for a bit." The half-beast countered.
Shiro nodded and smiled. "I'm glad you're alive, Luke." After saying that, he closed the door to the room.
While putting on a white t-shirt, which he didn't even know whose it was, the half-wolf spoke:
"Apparently, the woman who saved me is still in town. Would you like to go to her with me? First, I have to thank her."
"Of course, I had little time to talk to her."
"Did she tell you anything about what happened?"
"No, she just told me she wanted to talk to you and handed me a piece of paper, which I then passed on to Martha."
"I see... well, anyway, we'll talk to her."
After all, Luke still had to ask about what had happened to the remains of his sword and about the Egg, which he had worked so hard to protect.
Soon after, they had breakfast, at which Ayumi was not present because she left early for a meeting in Oukiwa; Nathalia and Luke left towards the city center.
"If I remember correctly, this address is exactly in the center." Nathalia stated, looking at the paper with the address that Martha had handed to the half-sphere the night before. "Yeah, looking again now, I'm pretty sure it's downtown."
"Good... I don't want to go anywhere near the vicinity of the harbor again anytime soon. So many bad things have happened there."
"Yeah. First, it was the death of the man we saved, and you even had to do an autopsy on him. Next, that monster and then the Chaos Followers.... I guess I'm a magnet for misfortune."
"Don't talk that way about yourself, we just had a little bad luck." Luke comforted her, placing his hand under the girl's shoulder.
What Nathalia Strogueher didn't know yet, was that the half-wolf has always been a magnet for bizarre events, no wonder he has so many scars.
Even if during his whole life he never wanted to get attention or Luke, Luke always got the gang into some risky situation or vice versa, and it was exactly this 'supernatural' magnet that accompanied him, which made him extremely strong, especially in the future, where his future will be assimilated to great deeds.
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