Chapter 1 - part 2 - The Lion King's Gaze
He stood over her like a statue carved from war—bronze skin gleaming beneath his golden cloak, pale blond hair falling in disciplined waves. His eyes, unreadable, scanned the forest floor where she knelt, trembling.
She didn't speak. Her lips were chapped, her cheeks smudged with earth. The white lashes that framed her avena-colored eyes fluttered like moth wings. She looked up at him—not with fear, but with a kind of quiet awe.
"I'm not prey," she whispered.
He didn't answer. His voice was a weapon, and he rarely unsheathed it.
She was small—1.56 meters, barely reaching his chest. Thin, fragile, with silky white hair that clung to her like mist. An orphan. A creature of the woods. Yet something in her gaze made the lion in him pause.
He had come to hunt.
But now he was hunted—by softness.