Page 117 of Mine To Hunt

"That was inevitable."

I swallow slowly. "If he sees you as a threat, he might try to remove you first."

The faintest shift passes through him then, not fear, not concern. Something closer to interest.

"He can try." He says.

"That isn’t a game."

"No." He agrees calmly. "It isn’t."

He moves closer, not crowding me, just enough that I feel the steady warmth of his presence again. There is something unsettling about how composed he remains while I can still feel adrenaline lingering in my veins.

"You think fear protects you." He says quietly. "It doesn’t. It makes you reactive. He wants you reactive."

I force myself to inhale slowly. Exhale.

"He ruins people." I say after a moment. "He spreads videos. Edits them. Twists stories. He destroys reputations without ever stepping into the light himself. He enjoys watching the fallout."

"And you believe I don’t understand that?" He asks.

The question is not defensive. It is measured.

"I know everything about you, Iris."

The words settle between us like something heavy and irreversible. For a second, my chest tightens, not from fear,but from exposure. There is something deeply unsettling about hearing that sentence spoken out loud.

Not because it surprises me. Somewhere inside, I have always known he watches, observes, collects. But hearing him confirm it strips away the illusion of privacy completely. Everything. That means the university. The video.

I glance at the iris flower resting on my nightstand. Dried but delicate. Out of place in a room that suddenly feels like a battlefield.

"You know about that." I say quietly. It isn’t a question.

"Yes." No hesitation.

A strange mix of emotions rises inside me. Shame, sharp and old. Anger, buried but not gone. And beneath both of them, something unexpected. Relief.

He knows. And he does not look at me differently. He does not soften his tone. He does not pity me. He does not judge me.

Most people, when they found out, tilted their heads slightly. Lowered their voices. Treated me like something fragile or something tainted. He does neither.

"You know what he did to me." I say slowly. "How he circulated it. How he stayed anonymous while I carried the consequences."

"Yes."

"And you still stand here."

"I do."

His voice is steady. Unmoved by scandal. Unmoved by shame. That steadiness does something dangerous to me.

Because if he knows the worst moment of my life, the most humiliating, exposed, powerless chapter, and it doesn’t change how he sees me… then he has stripped the stalker of his greatest weapon.

At the same time, the realization is terrifying. If he knows everything, then there is nothing hidden from him. No version of me left untouched.

"You say you know everything." I murmur. "That means you saw how it destroyed me."

"I saw how you survived it." He corrects quietly.