Chapter 231: 232 | Your Harem Is Concerned
I got dressed in silence.
My clothes smelled like Laurana’s perfume and something that might have been ozone. The thermal energy she’d been pushing through her skin had done something to the fabric. Not burned it. More like permanently altered its molecular structure to carry the memory of what happened.
Laurana watched me button my shirt. Her expression had shifted back into something professional. The mask settling into place like armor.
"Your reserves are higher."
I paused. Focused inward. She was right. The drain I’d taken from her during the encounter had pushed my capacity from the pitiful five percent I’d been scraping along at to something closer to thirty. Still not full. Still not what I’d need for serious combat. But enough to function without feeling like a phone running on battery saver mode.
"Your ability does that?"
"My ability does many things." She finished adjusting her stockings. Smooth movements that shouldn’t have looked as distracting as they did considering what we’d just finished. "The thermal regulation allows me to control energy transfer at the molecular level. When combined with your drain, the exchange becomes more efficient than either of us could achieve alone."
"So we’re compatible."
"Extremely." She met my eyes. "I suspect that will become relevant in the coming weeks."
I wanted to ask what she meant by that. Wanted to push for more information about whatever plan she was constructing in that brilliant, dangerous mind of hers. But my phone had been vibrating in my pocket for the last three minutes, and the notification count was climbing toward concerning.
Mera: Where are you?
Mera: It’s been two hours.
Mera: Rome.
Mera: If you’re dead I’m going to kill you myself.
Cheon: Your heart rate elevated significantly approximately forty-seven minutes ago. Please confirm you are not in medical distress.
Aurora: The ramen is getting cold!
Noel: Mera is pacing. It’s making me nervous.
I typed a quick response to the group chat I apparently had now. Still alive. Meeting ran long. On my way back.
Mera responded within seconds. "Meeting ran long" better not mean what I think it means.
I pocketed the phone without answering.
Laurana noticed. Her smile carried edges that reminded me why she’d been one of the most dangerous heroes of her generation before she retired to teach teenagers how to punch things professionally.
"Your harem is concerned."
"They’re not a harem."
"They are absolutely a harem." She walked to her desk. Started reorganizing papers that didn’t need organizing. "You have multiple romantic partners who are all aware of each other and have chosen to share you rather than compete for exclusive access. That is the definition of a harem."
"When you put it that way, it sounds like a manga plot."
"Most extraordinary situations do." She looked up at me. Ruby eyes catching the last light from the darkened windows. "Go home, Rome. Reassure them that I haven’t eaten you alive."
"Haven’t you?"
"Not entirely." The smile sharpened. "I left the important parts intact."
I headed for the door. Paused with my hand on the handle.
"Laurana."
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
She didn’t ask what I was thanking her for. Didn’t need to. The silence that stretched between us held everything that words would have made smaller.
"Win the match," she said finally. "Everything else can wait until after."
The hallway outside her office was empty. Evening classes had ended hours ago, and whatever faculty remained were locked in their own offices doing whatever faculty did when students weren’t watching. I walked toward the elevator and let my mind process what had just happened.
I’d slept with my professor.
Not just slept with her. Opened a channel between us that went deeper than physical contact. Took part of her essence into myself. Let her see parts of me that I’d been protecting since I woke up in this body.
The system should have had something to say about that. Some percentage update or quest notification or sarcastic comment about my inability to keep my pants on for more than five minutes. But the blue text remained absent. Silent. Like it was waiting for something.
I didn’t like when the system waited.
The elevator took me to the ground floor. The lobby was empty except for a security guard who nodded at me without really looking up from her phone. I stepped outside and let the evening air hit my face. Cool. Salt-tinged from the nearby ocean. Century City smelled like possibility and pollution in equal measure.
My apartment was twenty minutes away if I walked. Twelve if I jogged. Three if I used Liminal Step and didn’t care about the spatial headache that came with burning through borrowed abilities.
I walked.
Not because I wanted more time to think. I’d been thinking constantly since I arrived in this world. Thinking was all I did between the moments of crisis and connection. Thinking was what kept me from going insane in a body that wasn’t mine with abilities I hadn’t earned and a deadline that counted down whether I acknowledged it or not.
I walked because Mera needed time to calm down. Because Cheon needed time to update her spreadsheets with whatever data she’d collected from monitoring my vitals during the encounter. Because Aurora needed time to reheat her ramen. Because Noel needed time to figure out how to process whatever she was processing about the sister situation and the federal connections and the fact that she’d committed herself to a man whose life expectancy was measured in weeks rather than years.
The waterfront was beautiful at night. Lights from the commercial district reflected off the dark water like scattered stars. Couples walked along the boardwalk. Families headed home after dinner. Normal people living normal lives in a world where eighty percent of the population had superpowers and the other twenty percent navigated existence as second-class citizens.
I thought about Liam.
Seventeen years old. Kidnapped by my father’s corporation. Subjected to experiments that shoved thirteen different abilities into a body that was never designed to contain them. Turned into a weapon using my stolen blood as the template.
And now free. Because I’d drained myself to five percent to give him a chance at existing as himself rather than a prison for competing powers.
My father would build more.
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