Chapter 186: But The Puppy Bit Back~

ADRIEN’S POV

I know why Orion is staying silent.

He wants Niko to pick at me. He wants Niko to slice open those old childhood wounds until I am bleeding and exhausted.

Orion wants me to realize how futile it is to choose to personally look for Louise. He wants me to give up. He wants me to drop the tablet, throw my hands up, and let him handle it his way.

Orion has finally glimpsed what he truly wants— a dangerous version of reality where he and I exist together without the noise of my past pulling me away.

He sees a future where I belong to him completely, without fear, without running. And to secure that future, Orion wants every single loose end from my past dead and buried.

He wants Louise dead. He wants Alice dead. He wants every person who ever hurt me, every person who ever made me feel small or fragile, erased from the earth so they can never touch me again.

Niko is just his hound, barking and biting at my heels to force me into handing over the leash.

I turn my head slightly and catch Orion’s eyes in the dim light of the car. He stares back at me with unblinking calm, waiting for me to break.

A cold clarity settles into my bones. The rage inside me hardens from a wild, messy fire into a thin, sharp piece of ice.

I look back at Niko. I don’t yell. I don’t insult him back. I just reach out, grip the edge of the tablet with force, and yank it cleanly out of his fingers before he can react.

Niko’s smile falters for a fraction of a second, his eyebrows twitching up in surprise.

"I don’t need your commentary, Niko," I say, my voice dropping into a low, dead tone that cuts right through the sound of the rain. "I just need the data. Now get out of my way."

Niko stares at me for a moment, his eyes narrowing as he re-evaluates the cold posture I am holding.

The mocking light in his face turns into something darker, more calculated. He slowly steps back, sweeping his umbrella up to cover his own head, letting out a short, dry chuckle.

"Whatever you say, puppy," Niko murmurs, his voice losing its sing-song pitch, turning flat and dangerous. "Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when you find out absolutely nothing from her."

I don’t give him another glance. I turn on my heel, slide into the back seat of the sedan beside Orion, and pull the door shut behind me.

The noise of the rain, the wind, and Niko’s sickening voice are instantly cut off, leaving only the quiet, low hum of the car’s heater filling the space between us.

I sit down, resting the tablet against my lap. I don’t look at Orion. I keep my eyes fixed strictly on the dark glass screen as I press the power button, bringing the encrypted interface to life.

Orion doesn’t speak immediately. He just sits beside me, his long legs crossed, his posture immaculate.

I can feel his gaze resting on the side of my face, warm and possessive. He is disappointed that I didn’t break under Niko’s prodding, but beneath that disappointment lies that same fascination that keeps him bound to me.

"Niko is cruel," Orion says smoothly after a long moment, his voice carrying no apology, no remorse. "But he is rarely wrong about people, Adrien."

"Niko is a sadist who likes hearing his own voice," I reply, my fingers tapping rapidly against the glass screen as I bypass the security firewalls. "I don’t care about his opinions. I only care about the data I asked for."

"You are looking for a girl who would gladly watch you burn," Orion murmurs. He reaches out, his fingers resting lightly against the fabric over my knee.

He doesn’t grip me tightly, but the weight of his hand is a constant, inescapable reminder of who holds my life.

"You think if you find her, if you get your answers, everything will finally make sense to you. It won’t, Adrien. The past doesn’t change because you ask it nicely."

"I am not trying to change the past," I say, my eyes scanning through rows of encrypted location pings. "I am trying to finish it."

"Then let me finish it for you," Orion whispers, leaning an inch closer until his shoulder brushes mine. His voice is dangerously soft, dripping with a quiet, convincing warmth that makes my skin prickle.

"One word from you, Adrien. Just one word, and you never have to think about Louise Dubois ever again. You never have to hear her voice. You never have to see her face. I will make her disappear so completely that even the ground she walked on will forget her name."

My breath hitches in my throat. I stare at the illuminated screen, feeling the tempting pull of his offer. It would be so easy.

It would be so effortless to just close my eyes, nod my head, and let Orion’s power swallow my sister whole. I could step out of it, wash my hands, and let him protect me from the world.

But if I do that, if I let him kill her just to make my life comfortable, then I become the exact same thing Alice was. I become a creature who uses other people’s violence to clean up my own mess.

"No," I say, forcing the word past my tight throat. "No, Orion."

Orion doesn’t get angry. He lets out a low, slow breath that sounds almost like a sigh, his hand remaining steady against my knee.

"You are stubborn," he says softly. "A sweet, foolish man who insists on touching fire just to see if it still burns."

"Look at the screen," I say, ignoring his words, pointing my finger toward a blinking red cluster highlighted near the state line.

The intelligence feed Niko pulled up is extensive. It maps out cellular towers, train station ticket purchases made under stolen identities, and automatic license plate recognition cameras spanning three different counties.

"She didn’t stay in the city," I explain, my voice growing sharper as I focus strictly on the data, forcing my personal feelings down into a box inside my chest.

"The moment that hotel video hit the national news feeds, she was ready. She knew the Vassilis network would lock down the airports and the harbor within an hour."

"She bought three different train tickets," Orion observes, glancing down at the screen for the first time, his sharp mind immediately picking apart the strategy. "One heading north toward Montreal, one west toward Chicago, one south toward Atlanta. All bought within five minutes of each other using stolen credit card numbers."

"It’s a classic decoy pattern," I say, shaking my head. "Alice would have taught her that."

I zoom in on a small, secondary route branching off the main interstate, far away from the train stations. It is a rural back road cutting through dense forestry, leading toward an isolated county near the northern lakes.

"She didn’t take the trains," I say, pointing to a single, low-resolution frame captured by a traffic camera outside a gas station at two in the morning. "Look at the vehicle. It’s a dark blue SUV with commercial plates. That car belongs to a private transport company that my father used to keep on a retainer."

"Her extra driver," Orion murmurs, his tone shifting into something sharper, more focused.

"Yes," I say, my chest tightening as the realization settles into my mind. "Louise might have been paying that driver all this time. She didn’t run to a friend or a hotel. She used her own connections to get out of the state quietly, completely off the public grid."

I tap the screen, expanding the property records tied to that specific region.

A small, elegant house appears on the display, surrounded by deep woods and a private dock overlooking a black, freezing lake.

"She went to the old lake house," I whisper. "Alice bought that property four years ago under a shell corporation. Nobody in the family ever went there except Alice."

The red ping flashes steadily on the map, sitting right over the private driveway of the lake house.

We have her.

I sit back against the seat, my hands trembling slightly as I lower the tablet onto my lap. The first useful lead is staring me right in the face, concrete and precise.

Beside me, Orion looks at the flashing red light on the screen, then slowly turns his soulless, unreadable eyes back onto me.

A small smile touches his lips— a smile that carries no warmth, no comfort, only the patient, unyielding promise of a predator who has finally tracked his prey to its den.

"She is waiting in a quiet house in the woods," Orion says softly, his voice echoing in the interior of the car as the sedan speeds forward through the rainy morning fog.

"Now, Adrien... let us see what happens when you finally catch her."

******

Hi everyone!

I’m pleased to announce that my omegaverse

BL (You’re Courting Me?! (MxM)) is now live on WebNovel and completed with over 200 Chapters!

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— TheLovePoet