98 The Truth About Everything (Part 1)
When Nathalia, Luke, and Ayumi had already left the dinner table, Leo and Noah took advantage of the moment to chew even more intensely. Chunc! Chunc! Their jaws made such loud, rapid noises that Luke and Ayumi felt the need to go outside to talk.
On the back porch, the half-wolf was still searching for the right words to say to the Matriarch. It was night and the weak wind, which shook both of their hair, also made the light of the modern lantern he was holding flicker.
Luke placed the lantern on the porch’s wood and turned to look at the Matriarch. Just then, a strong wind tossed the woman’s long blond hair back, and the light illuminated her emerald green eyes.
Blushing, Luke resisted the urge to kiss her and turned away. “What time did you get back?” he asked, starting the conversation.
“Early afternoon…what did you want to talk about? Did everything go well?”
“Yes, as Alexis said, the problem was fully resolved. Sigh… The demons behind the Chaos Followers, so everything was interconnected.”
Ayumi tenderly touched the half-wolf’s shoulder and asked, “So why don’t you seem satisfied with that? Now you and Nathalia can continue your missions without fear that something bad will happen.”
Luke took the right hand that was touching his shoulder affectionately and fitted his fingers together. “No, that won’t happen. The demon who coordinated this whole order of events knows me very well, well enough to know the extent to which it affects me, my friends, my family.”
Arching her eyebrows, the Matriarch was surprised to hear the half-wolf talk about his personal life. “Did he threaten them?”
“He didn’t use the blessed cliche words, but I could sense it from his tone. And he is strong, very strong.”
“So, you thought about resigning, so you could go protect them, right?”
Luke’s throat locked for a few seconds, and he felt it was dry; however, soon, the answer came out. “Yes… Oukiwa is a huge city, with many dangerous people, Dungeons, Adventurers and, if what Alexis said is true, the Chaos Followers have a strong influence in the underworld.”
“And no other city in this Empire has an underworld as leavened as that of Oukiwa…” The woman’s hands were shaking, as were the pupils in her eye sockets.
Ayumi has no desire to lose the exemplary employee that Luke is. In fact… she does not wish to lose the warm companionship that the half-wolf provides her. So, she turned around and hugged him tightly around the waist. The half-wolf is a few inches bigger than she is, so he stood at just the right height to kiss her forehead.
After a few seconds in this position, she whispered, her voice muffled by Luke’s clothing, “Luke, tell me who you really are, and I will give you all the resources you need to help your friends. I will keep them safe.”
The woman didn’t request something so hard for the half-wolf as she looked him in the eye. Instead, she chose to hug him tightly so that he would at least have a sense of how cold he would leave when he rejected telling.
Luke’s heart pounded, and he pushed her away with both arms. He couldn’t reveal to her who he really was and about his dark past because the fact that the Elf didn’t know who he was was the only thing that allowed him to work for her.
At that time, Luke did not know that Ayumi was never a woman to care about her employees’ pasts. Was that always a risk she took? Yes, but it gave her the best professionals in the job market and guaranteed the undying loyalty of those who didn’t dare to betray her.
Martha and Shiro were two of the best examples. The maid was just an abandoned girl when Ayumi found her and adopted her, and the patrol guard, Shiro, bears the surname of a great noble family that rivals the Strogueher’s and has been all but extinct. Although these facts about them are recent, she still accepted them in the place where she hid her daughter and entrusted her safety to them.
However, what made Ayumi care about the past of the bodyguard, Luke, was a brief conversation she had with Thomas Landford. Right after the meeting of the eight family commanders, he took advantage of the fact that she was the last to leave the hall and pulled her into a conversation.
“Mrs.Strogueher, may we have a word?” he asked, stepping out of the shadows that formed behind the large gold door that closed the meeting hall.
The man’s gray eyes were imposing, but Ayumi was not the least bit frightened. “What do you want, Mr. Landford? I’m in a hurry.”
“Sure, sure… lots of problems to solve right? It’s just that some rumors are going around the streets that you’ve hired a half-beast. Is that true? Are you doing charity work now? You’ve been more… adamant than that, haven’t you?”
Ayumi’s eyelids drooped halfway down her eye, and she looked at him as if bored and annoyed.
“Okay, I overreacted this time. Let’s just answer me this, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“For someone who didn’t say a word during the meeting, you’re quite talkative… Yes, I hired a half-beast.”
Thomas’ eyes manifested surprise, and a devious smile appeared on the corner of his mouth. “What’s he like? I need to know.”
“That doesn’t interest you.”
The man closed his face as he heard the Matriarch’s answer. “That is really important. I never told anyone about it, but my family was murdered by a half-beast… That night, I could only hide in my room and watch him through the keyhole. For a few minutes, I watched him kill everyone dear to me.”
“Oh… I’m sorry, Mr. Landford. I swear I didn’t know that you had witnessed the massacre personally. Are you sure it was a half-beast who did all this? You’ve even gone so far as to say it was a demon.”
“Demon? No… a demon wouldn’t tear people’s skin off as easily as a beast. I’m sure that being I saw was a…”
“It upsets me that I can’t help you. The half-beast that’s working for me is pretty serious and hardworking, plus he’s cute, he would never do something like that.”
Thomas opened his mouth to answer her but closed it soon after and nodded as he stepped out of Ayumi’s way.
Since that night, the possibility of the half-wolf being the half-beast that slaughtered the Landfords had crossed Yamazaki’s mind a few times, creating a certain amount of doubt. She knew nothing about his past. Moreover, she didn’t know how he was so strong without ever entering a Dungeon, and she also didn’t know what he spent his own money on.
‘So, he’s not going to say, right?’ she thought, looking away to the dark green field at the back of the residence. What she couldn’t foresee was that within the half-wolf, the urge to tell kept growing.