Chapter 209: All Sweetness (1)
Kestrel gathered together the remaining water they had. She was really thirsty; it was extremely hot outside, hot enough to set a big area of land on fire in no time.
They didn’t have much water left, and they still had a far way to go. Kestrel valued each drop, carefully taking a tiny sip, wetting her lips, and offering some water from her hand to Ren.
Ren squinted, his face showing discomfort, not even opening his eyes. He hesitantly took two sips from Kestrel’s hand.
A lot of his skin was burnt from the extreme heat, but being an alpha, he was good at healing quickly. These kinds of hurts shouldn’t have made him look so in pain. Kestrel understood that his deep pain was because his psychic incarnation was seriously hurt.
To keep Kestrel safe, Ren had to expose his psychic incarnation fully to the harsh temperatures, making a safe passage for them and enduring the extreme heat that could destroy every living thing on the planet instantly.
Kestrel gently covered his eyes, as her psychic incarnation dove into the sea in Ren’s psychic landscape. The sea looked bright blue and deep, with barely noticeable ripples, giving off a quiet and somewhat lifeless calmness.
Just a short while before, it had been unbearably hot, but now, as Kestrel entered this known sea, she felt welcomed by the cool water. Even though it was just in her mind, it felt like the heat and stress on her body disappeared too.
Feeling relaxed and calm, Kestrel happily floated and swam deeper into the sea.
Everyone believed that only a beta could soothe an alpha, but to Kestrel, this comforting experience seemed to go both ways. Whenever she came to this sea, she felt a freeing sensation in both her body and spirit.
There was plenty of room here; her tendrils could extend without any limit.
The underwater garden was breathtaking. If they weren’t in the middle of a fight, playing with the cute orca would be absolutely joyous, making someone not want to leave at all.
Indeed, the only alpha in this world that could give Kestrel this kind of joy was Ren.
She swam along the ocean floor for a bit and inside a deep palace, she found an orca lying on a rock. The gorgeous black back of the orca was now severely burnt, even having spots that were charred.
When Kestrel found it, the poor fish was breathing heavily among the rocks and corals, looking really sad.
Seeing Kestrel, it blinked its tiny eyes and cried softly, barely able to wiggle its tail.
Kestrel often thought that Ren’s psychic incarnation was quite different from his actual self. In real life, he was a tall and thin alpha, a guy who didn’t talk much, but his psychic incarnation seemed innocent and loving, having a chubby and rounded shape.
Actually, Kestrel’s psychic incarnation didn’t really look like her actual self, at least that’s what she thought.
Her tendrils felt great sympathy for the orca, moving hastily to reach out, caressing it tenderly and meticulously, coiling around it, smearing the mucus they secreted everywhere.
The liquid filled with a strong beta pheromone made the orca tremble with comfort, its mouth opening with soft moans. Its tail swept back and forth amidst the seabed’s sand and corals, scattering hidden pearls and shells everywhere.
Kestrel stroked its head, and it nuzzled her palm with its black snout.
Kestrel could sense its intolerable pain and the joy when being touched — it liked Kestrel so purely that even in such pain, it would feel joy by her mere approach.
Here in the depths of the underwater palace, pearls carrying Ren’s memories rolled everywhere. Kestrel saw many scenes related to herself: the breakfast they had together, the battles they took part in, their first meeting in their youth, and that dim storage room in the Tower...
A beautiful pearl rolled to Kestrel’s feet. The scene inside was murky, shaking unclearly, as if it was in a den with just a flicker of light.
Kestrel squinted to look closer; her face kept appearing inside, yet strangely, she couldn’t recall having this memory.
The dim environment, the rough stone walls, the sticky sound of water, and the wriggling tendrils. They restrained Ren, coiling around his arms above his head, and took liberties with him, doing many things that now seemed way out of line.
Kestrel was stunned, lifting the memory-loaded pearl. Those trembling fingers, reddened skin, sweat, and the flick of the fishtail, every now and then a detail magnified before her eyes... In that memory’s perspective, her pupils glowed with a golden light, cold and merciless, with a taunting and malicious demeanor.
Kestrel felt that every frame seemed familiar, yet she couldn’t remember when and where this event happened or when she had acted so terribly towards Ren. She had no impression at all.
She tried to identify the environment in the memory and finally confirmed it was in the Eyehole, in a den deep underground. Then she realized that only in the Eyehole had she gone through a hazy period, losing some of her memories.
"So I did such a thing to Ren so early on?" Kestrel tried to piece the timeline together. At that time, Ren had fought fiercely, venturing alone through the dungeon’s layers, overcoming countless hardships to reach the deepest den to find her. "So this was the treatment he got in the end? Being bound and toyed with so cold-heartedly by me... No wonder he looked at me with that indescribable, somewhat resentful gaze back then."
Kestrel nervously fiddled with the seabed using her tendrils.
The really crazy part wasn’t what she did to Ren, not suddenly making him a hundred times more sensitive, not forcing him to show his whale tail, but the fact that after letting her do all this, she just opened her eyes and said she couldn’t remember any of it, refusing to own up to her actions.
She couldn’t figure out how Ren could be so patient with her for so long. "How can he still smile at me?"
Kestrel hid her face, letting herself float around in the underwater world for a bit.
The orca was gently comforted by the tendrils, and the noticeable burns on its back seemed to be healing quickly. It started making happy sounds, having fun in the warm sea currents and showing its white belly. The tendrils followed it joyfully, twisting and playing with it.
Kestrel stopped focusing on Ren’s psychic landscape and exited from there.
Inside the deep cave, they were by themselves. Outside it was scorching, but here it was safe, with bits of light shining in from far away, making the dust in the air dance and giving this winding underground cave a kind of dreamy, misty feel.
The psychic incarnation was now healed, and Ren seemed to be feeling a lot better. His forehead was relaxed; he was sitting leaning against the rocky wall, slightly opening his eyes. Since the psychic grooming had just finished, he wasn’t fully alert, and his eyes seemed a bit foggy, looking gentle and a bit confused.
He had burns from the extreme heat. Without a coat and having faced the hot weather while escaping, his shirt and gloves were now just torn pieces of cloth.
Kestrel didn’t have any burns, but a large portion of Ren’s skin that was not covered was red and burnt.
Kestrel started to assist him in taking off his shirt, gloves, and boots. Before coming to Mantidale, they had packed really well, bringing along a tube of burn cream in their backpacks. Kestrel took hers out to use on Ren.
There wasn’t a lot of cream, so they needed to use it carefully and smartly. Kestrel spread the cream using her fingertips, gently and slowly treating the reddish burns.
She began with great caution and precision, but for some reason, her moves changed as she progressed — the images she saw underwater earlier kept flashing before her eyes.
While holding his ankle, she kept getting lost in her thoughts, with visions of the red tendrils wrapping around constantly coming to her mind.
