All Chapters of Hate Me Till You Love Me: Chapter 21 - Chapter 27

The monastery felt colder when morning came. Frost clung to the stone windowsills, spider webbing across the glass like white cracks. Evelyn woke without realizing she’d slept, her dreams slipping away like mist. She reached to her right, the pillow was untouched.Alexander hadn’t come back to bed.A knot formed in her stomach. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and followed the faint echo of footsteps down the corridor, her bare feet silent against the worn stone.She found him in the old scriptorium, the largest room in the monastery. Sunlight filtered through the tall stained-glass windows, casting fractured colors across the floor. Alexander stood at the far table, surrounded by flickering monitors and tangled wires, his silhouette sharp against the cold light.He looked like a man trying to hold back the collapse of the world.“What did you hear last night?” Evelyn asked quietly, stepping inside.Alexander didn’t look up. “The same thing you did.”Evelyn’s throat tightene

The darkness in Alexander’s office wasn’t normal. It wasn’t the kind that followed a power outage or a blown fuse.This darkness felt aware of a living thing that curled around Evelyn’s ankles, slithered up her spine, and pressed against her throat like invisible fingers. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Alexander grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against him.“Stay with me,” he said with a trembling voice. It didn't come as an order but a plea. Somewhere deep in the mansion’s belly, a generator hummed to life. A faint emergency light flickered, painting the room in a dim red glow. Yet the screens stayed dead, completely and unnaturally black.“Is she gone?” Evelyn swallowed.Alexander didn’t answer. That told her everything.His eyes fixed on the screens like he expected them to come alive again. His body was rigid, jaw tight, breath too shallow. He wasn’t looking for Afterlight. He was bracing for her.“Alexander” Evelyn whispered. “Talk to me.”He didn’t move.“Alexander.” Sh

The containment door sealed behind them with a heavy, industrial hiss and thick bolts grinding into place. The sound wasn’t just loud, it was final, it was like stepping into the belly of a beast that had just swallowed them whole.Evelyn’s breath fogged slightly in the cold air.This room was colder than the rest of the mansion, an intentional temperature drop to stabilize “anomalous systems,” as Alexander had called them. Except that nothing about this felt like systems, it felt like a tomb or a memory.Alexander led her inside with slow, deliberate steps, scanning the walls with the trained alertness of someone who didn’t trust his own creation.And then, the mirror at the far end of the room flickered, not with light or electricity but with presence.The reflection changed subtly at first. Evelyn almost thought she imagined it. Her stance in the mirror looked too rigid. Her hair fell differently around her shoulders. Her expression was too sharp, like someone who had lived a thous