Chapter 736: Illusion of Separation
The training could wait twenty minutes; this had been Phei’s quiet, ironclad conclusion as he stood at the lip of the cathedral hollow’s stone amphitheatre.
Above him the endless forest arched in patient green indifference but acknowledging a seventeen-year-old Cosmic Dragon who had enslaved an Original Progenitor, reduced a Heavenchild prince to public and undignified urination, and shattered his First Power-Level Rank without mercy.
By every metric the System cared to measure, he was performing admirably and he was seventeen hours overdue for something among a few only things that could settle the restless, possessive fire now burning low and hot in his veins.
He had been on Hell’s Paradise Island since last night while the woman who his Mark now rested warm and permanent against the underside of her left breast — the woman whose readiness had finally cracked open a seal he had not, until that yesterday, realised he had been carrying — was seven hundred miles away in Main Paradise.
Yes she was recovering from the aftermath of everything and trauma of her life but she was alone in the small private apartment he had arranged for her the day after he dismantled Jonathan.
Her boy was already healed but her soul was healing, quietly and beautifully, beyond the reach of any legacy-adjacent eye that might still wonder what had become of the woman who, only last week, had lived inside the Montgomery mansion.
Phei had not seen her in over twenty-four hours. Or so?
This, in his current estimation, was unacceptable and he was already feeling that emptness and feeling the hunger for her presence.
"Eira."
"Master."
"Twenty minutes."
She materialised at his shoulder in her small crystalline form, wings folded with impeccable posture, her eyes already narrowed in the precise, long-suffering expression of a familiar who had seen this exact negotiation coming from three paragraphs away and had already drafted her objections in triplicate.
"Master."
"Twenty minutes, Eira."
"You agreed to begin training."
"I will. In twenty minutes."
"That is not the meaning of the word begin."
Phei counted on his fingers with theatrical precision, each digit lifted like evidence in a trial only he found amusing, though the heat beneath his words was anything but playful.
"Eira, I have had — let me see — a long 24 hour in which I enslaved a progenitor. I publicly dismantled a Heavenchild’s dignity until his bladder filed a formal complaint. I integrated a DxD-class element that still feels like it wants to renegotiate the terms of my spine. I am currently running on coffee, righteous fury, and the residual goodwill of every woman who shared my breakfast table.
"Before I commit this body to whatever hellish training you have spent the last fortnight designing in loving detail, I require one twenty-minute interval in which to lay my eyes — and my hands — on a woman I have not touched in a full calendar day. My resolve on this point is absolute. The restless inside me is... insistent."
Eira regarded him and it lasted long enough for two full waves of forest-scented air to pass between them, carrying the faint, ancient scent of things that had watched empires rise and politely decline.
Then—
"Twenty minutes," she said with crisp finality, "is what you claimed before the Empyrean breakfast stretched into forty-five and concluded with livestreamed public urination."
"I cannot be held responsible for the Heavenchilds’ bladder control," Phei replied, entirely unrepentant, the corner of his mouth curving with dark amusement. "Some men simply lack the structural integrity required to survive public defeat with dignity intact. I consider it a public service that I exposed the weakness early. My own needs, however, are far more pressing — and far more pleasurable to satisfy. My love for my women has opinions on the matter, and I find myself inclined to agree with it."
"Phei."
"Eira."
Eira sighed — the long, weary exhalation of a being who had survived the fall of civilisations only to find herself babysitting a teenage cosmic dragon with the romantic attention span of a particularly affectionate natural disaster and the libido of one who had just claimed half of Paradise.
"Open it."
"Open it please."
"Open it now, I don’t want to ask again."
She lifted one tiny hand, a vertical seam of pale black-white frost-light parted the air a foot in front of him — silent, neat, unhurried, the edges limned in patient Eira-frost that suggested propriety rather than cold.
The seam widened into a portal six feet tall and three across. Through it, inverted geometry rendered the interior of a sunlit apartment seven hundred miles away in soft, warm tones: pale wood floors, white linen curtains breathing with Paradise breeze, the corner of a low couch, a vase of fresh peonies on the coffee table, and somewhere beyond the frame the gentle settling of a kettle.
"Twenty minutes," Eira said, her tone the verbal equivalent of a very small, very professional guillotine. "I am setting a timer. I am also about to begin counting in increasingly aggrieved increments, complete with timestamps and passive-aggressive footnotes. If you are late, I will begin composing a novel titled ’Incidents in Which My Master’s Romantic Scheduling Conflicts With Basic Training His Powers — And Basic Decency.’
"It will be very thorough. It may even have charts, illustrations. Tasteful ones, of course. Perhaps a small diagram of exactly how many minutes were lost to... dragon-related distractions."
"Noted," Phei said, already smiling, the heat in his chest coiling tighter at the thought of what waited on the other side. "Call it ’threats that only make me want to test the limits of your patience further — and perhaps inspire new Chapters in that novel.’ Anticipated with great interest. Now let’s go before I decide twenty minutes is negotiable in the other direction and your novel becomes a memoir instead."
She huffed — a tiny, crystalline sound of pure exasperated fondness—
They stepped through.
***
Roxanne was reading, his claimed that first and his insides purred at like a beast recognising its favourite, most intoxicating mate at that moment.
She was curled into the corner of the cream linen couch, knees folded sideways beneath her, a soft pale-grey throw pooled across her lap, a hardcover open against her thigh in that particular tender way she held books she was genuinely loving.
Afternoon Paradise sunlight slanted through the drifting curtains and laid a long bar of gold across her dark hair, turning it into liquid midnight shot through with fire.
She wore a simple cream slip dress that clung to every curve like it had been poured over her — the thin fabric whispering against the full, soft swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist and the generous flare of her hips to the long smooth length of her thighs.
The neckline dipped just low enough to hint at the shadowed valley between her breasts; the hem rode high enough on her crossed legs to reveal the elegant line where thigh met hip. There was no makeup on her otherworldly face or any jewellery.
It was just her, bare-faced and radiant, hair half-pinned up off the elegant line of her neck, the rest falling loose along one bare shoulder in a way that made his fingers itch to bury themselves in it and pull.
She was not bruised anywhere.
The Healing Touch Lv.10 he had poured across every inch of her on the day of the rescue had done its work with absolute, patient thoroughness. Her skin was clear, glowing with that soft, warm vitality that made his mouth water. Her colour was good — cheeks faintly flushed from the afternoon warmth, lips parted just slightly as she read.
She looked like herself again — only softer, more alive, the kind of beautiful that made a man forget entire kingdoms existed outside the room she occupied. The slip dress shifted with every small breath she took, the fabric pulling taut across the generous curve of her chest, and Phei felt his hunger and possessiveness surge in answer.
*Ahem* He cleared his throat softly not to startle her.
Her eyes lifted from the page before they went huge.
The book hit the cushion first while the throw went sideways.
Her bare feet found the rug before her conscious mind had finished processing that he was actually here, and by the time it caught up she was already running halfway across the room, both hands lifting toward him, her face cycling through disbelief, joy, a small crumple at the eyes that was not quite tears, and a brilliant, unguarded smile that hit him harder than any progenitor’s reward would ever could.
"Phei~" She called in excitement in a melodic singsong.
He caught her against his chest at full speed.
She made a small oof into his collarbone and laughed a bit throaty and surprised and bright as sunlight on water — and her arms locked around his neck, her face burying itself against the side of his throat.
She simply stayed there, breathing him in, her body folded into his with the absolute trust of someone who had decided, some time ago, that this was the only place left she truly felt like she belonged.
