Chapter 19

Dominic and Lumae, finally managed to make it to Mortiferum the next morning, but instead of taking Lumae to her apartment, he took her to his home. When they arrived, he noticed that she was so fast asleep, that he didn't even want to wake her up, so he carefully got out of the car, trying not to make a lot of noise. He went over to her side and carefully placed her arm around his neck, carefully slid one arm under her legs and lifted her up out of the car.

He then carried her up two flights of stairs and placed her on his bed. Not knowing if and how he was going to change her clothes. So he decided to let her sleep in her dress and just took off her sandals. He then covered her in a nice, warm blanket and tucked her in.

After making sure that Lumae was comfortable, he grabbed a pillow and a blanket and went down to the living room. Popping down on the sofa and sleeping there for the rest of the morning.
Later, around 7am, Lumae finally woke up. Not noticing where she was, she immediately started to jump to conclusions, but came to the rash decision to first go find out where she was and why she was there. When she went downstairs she was met with a heavenly smell of.... BACON.

She quickly followed the smell towards the kitchen where she saw a very unexpected sight. Dominic, with an apron on and, for some reason, without a shirt. Lae stood in the corner just out of sight of the busy-minded cook of this morning and admired certain muscular aspects that he was putting on display.

When he turned and noticed Lumae, his face instantly lit up. "Lumae! Good morning, I'm making us some breakfast."

"Yup, I can see that." She smiles and further inspects the parts of muscle peaking at her from behind the apron.

When Dominic noticed that he was shirtless, he instantly sprung into action, "Oh shoot, I forgot my shirt. He quickly jogged towards the living room, grabbed his hirt that was neatly folded on the sofa, took off the apron and in a swift motion pulled on his shirt.

Lumae was now disappointed that the show was over, but she quickly came back to her senses when Dominic talked to her again. "Did you sleep well?"

"Oh, yeah, I did, but where did you sleep?"

"On the sofa"

Lumae was shocked, "Wait, WHAT! Nope, no, no, no, no, no! You are NOT going to sleep on the sofa in your own house. Why didn't you just leave me on the sofa?"

He smiled, "Because I want the best for my mate, even if that means giving up the bed."

Lumae was then taken aback for a second and re-adjusted her posture. "That's the first time you've recognised me as your mate."

Dominic, clearly confused about what Lumae had just said, tilted his head slightly to the side. "Wait, what now?"

"I mean, you've recognised me as Ms. Moonshaddow, Lumae, your Luna, but this is the first time you've recognised me as your mate."

Dominic dropped everything he had in his hands on the table and slowly started moving towards Lumae. "Lumae, I know I've been very distant with this entire 'mate' thing, but it's just because I'm scared of losing you, of seeing what it'd do to me. Just like what my mother's death did to my father." He sighed.

"I know you might not understand why I've struggled to call you my mate up until now, Lumae, and I know it really hurt you, but I promise from here on out, I will not deny it." He had finally reached her, and reached out to her hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing her hand lovingly and caringly.

Lumae looked at Dominic, not knowing what to say, so instead she led her other hand to wander up his neck and make him look up at her. None of them exchanged any words, but they both understood each other. Dominic was starting to get drawn towards Lumae, he moved in closer and closer until their lips barely touched, but he broke it off and placed his head on her shoulder. "Not yet, it isn't the right time yet," he muttered to himself.

Lumae ,not knowing what to do now, just wrapped her arms around his head, trying to comfort him and instead gave him a small peck on the forehead. "Very well then. Then it isn't time yet. I'll wait."
He looked up at her again and there was clearly love in his eyes, but something held him, she just didn't know what. He then broke free of Lumae's grip and went back to the food.
"Breakfast's almost ready, you can go sit in the living room. I'll bring your food for you in a bit?"

Lumae almost turned and just freely roamed around the house in search of the living room, but she luckily stopped as soon as she noticed that she didn't know where it was. She turned around awkwardly and asked, "Living room?"

Dominic quickly looked up at her, "Oh, there." He pointed in the opposite direction to where Lumae had almost wandered off to, and she slowly went to the living room. When she finally got there, she didn't really want to sit down yet, so she went around the room inspecting all the different gadgets and trinkets on display.

One gadget in particular caught her attention. It was sphere shaped and had a blue pendant, just like her mother's necklace, only this pendant wasn't a crescent moon, it was a gibbous moon. As she inspected it, she started to notice that her mother's necklace is almost the exact size of the shadow of the gibbous moon. Just when Lumae could almost even think of solving some sort of puzzle, Dominic stepped into the living room with a massive tray of food.

"Bon appétit. Hope you like it."

Lumae did in fact already like it, and she hadn't even tasted it yet. It looked so fancy and gourmet.

"Yes, it looks amazing."

Dominic smiled, "Then dig in."

After breakfast, Lumae quickly helped Dominic to clean up. "So I'm guessing we have to go back to work tomorrow, since the weekend will be over." Lumae asked.
"Nope" Dominic's reply was short and subtle.

"What do you mean 'Nope'?"
Dominic smiled, "We're not going to work tomorrow, we're taking the day off. I'm taking you to meet some people and explain to you what I wanted to explain when we got here, but for now, just get some rest. There's a library down the hall if you would like to read."

Lumae was once again shocked, "You have a library?!"

"Yup"

Lumae rolled her eyes, "Of course you do."

Dominic smiled, "Well, I've gotta go out for a bit, you can make yourself at home." He then turned towards the front door and left without saying another word, leaving Lumae all alone in this gigantic house.
She decided to go pay the library a visit. It was beautiful, it had an extremely high ceiling and high windows and had a gazillion books to read, but Lumae, for some reason, didn't have much of an interest in reading today, so she just looked around. Eventually, she found a table with an open book on top.

Interested in knowing what Dominic was reading, she goes to check it out and reads the page that he is on. Then she went to check the book's title, "Greatest Romanian Inventions: South-East Ocean". It looked like an interesting book, but it clearly wasn't for her. She had no intentions of any type of invention.

Even though she knew the title of the book, as well as its contents, something about the book just felt off, but she couldn't seem to figure out what it was and decided to let it go. She then headed back upstairs to take a nice soothing nap.

As soon as her head hit the pillow, words started swirling around in her head. First it was the title of the book, then it completely collapsed. Suddenly, all the capitalised letters started to form a word, one for one. Eventually forming the word, "GRISEO", she didn't know what it meant, but it kept going around in her head. "GRISEO". "GRISEO".

Lumae finally woke up, but what was this dream, with this 'Griseo' word and why did she have a terrible feeling about it?