Divine Milking System

Chapter 292: 292 | The Universal Language of Ownership

The horror movie played for another twenty minutes while Addison sat in my lap under Aurora’s blanket and Aurora drank wine and provided commentary on the fictional teenagers’ survival decisions with the clinical authority of someone who had cleared actual gates full of things that would make these movie monsters file for disability.

"She’s going into the basement alone," Aurora said. "Alone. Without a weapon. After hearing screaming."

"Natural selection," Addison murmured against my collarbone.

"In a real gate, she’d be dead before the first step. The mana density alone would—"

"Babe. It’s a movie."

"It’s an insult to my profession."

I sat between them feeling the specific kind of contentment that comes from having no responsibilities for the next few hours and two warm bodies generating enough heat to keep my core temperature at roughly the surface of the sun. Addison’s weight in my lap felt natural now, her head tucked into the space between my neck and shoulder like she’d been engineered to fit there. Aurora’s knee pressed against my thigh through the blanket in a constant, grounding pressure that said I’m here without requiring words.

My phone sat on the coffee table. The screen had gone dark. Three unanswered messages from three different women who wanted to know if I was alive.

I should answer them.

I did not answer them.

The movie’s protagonist found a cursed doll in the basement and screamed at a volume that would have attracted every Crawler within a five-mile radius. Aurora groaned. Addison didn’t react because Addison had fallen asleep somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark, her breathing evening out into the slow, steady rhythm of someone who had burned through every reserve of energy in her body and finally surrendered to unconsciousness. Her lips were slightly parted against my skin, and occasionally a small, warm exhale would hit the base of my throat and send a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with temperature.

The cherry lollipop she’d been working on before our Sanctum session sat on the coffee table next to my phone, half-finished and stuck to its wrapper. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

"She’s out," Aurora said quietly.

"Yeah."

"She doesn’t fall asleep around people. Like, ever. She sleeps in a coffin-shaped bed with a knife under her pillow and a stuffed bat named Vlad and she still wakes up if someone walks past her door at two in the morning."

"And she’s asleep on me."

"She’s asleep on you." Aurora sipped her wine. The movie cast blue light across her features, sharpening the angles of her face and turning her orange hair into something between copper and rust. "You know what that means, right?"

"That I’m very comfortable?"

"That she trusts you." Aurora’s voice carried no humor. "Addison Baxter does not trust people. She trusts me because I’ve earned it over two years of handling her temper and her insecurities and her four AM phone calls about whether her parents will ever see her as more than an investment. She trusts her mother’s cooking. She trusts her knife collection. And now apparently she trusts the lottery kid who drinks milk and plays fighting games."

I looked down at the woman sleeping against my chest. Without the goth armor and the profanity and the constant aggressive posturing, Addison looked young. Eighteen years old. The heavy eyeliner had smudged into soft grey shadows under her lashes, and the black lipstick had been kissed and bitten off entirely, leaving her lips their natural pink. The piercings in her ears caught the television light in tiny silver flashes. A strand of purple-highlighted hair fell across her forehead, and I reached up and tucked it behind her ear without thinking about it.

She made a small sound in her sleep and pressed closer. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

Something in my chest responded to that sound in a way that had nothing to do with the Divine Milking System or point calculations or ability theft. Reaper’s Edge sat in my library now, Copper rank and waiting to be equipped, an A-rank ability that would fundamentally change my combat potential. The strategic part of my brain had already started running scenarios, mapping how dual scythe manifestation would pair with Wave Motion for devastating close-to-mid-range combinations and how the teleportation dashes would solve my persistent mobility problem during gate runs.

But the part of my brain that responded to the sleeping girl’s small sound wasn’t thinking about any of that.

"Aurora."

"Hmm?"

"Why did you set this up?"

She turned away from the movie. The blue light caught her green eyes and made them look like sea glass, translucent and deep at the same time.

"Because she needed it. And because you’re the only person I’ve met who could give it to her." Aurora pulled the blanket higher on her legs, adjusting herself on the couch with the casual grace of someone who controlled how every molecule of her body moved through space. "Addison has been alone for a long time. Not physically alone. She has me, she has her family’s money, she has a combat ranking that scares most of the academy. But the kind of alone where nobody has ever looked at her and wanted the real version."

"And you think I want the real version?"

Aurora’s voice got quieter. "You’re the first man I’ve met that gave a shit."

I didn’t have a response for that.

On screen, the horror movie’s protagonist had found a second cursed doll in the attic, which seemed like a design flaw in the house’s real estate listing. Aurora returned her attention to the film. I returned my attention to the warm weight in my lap and the complexity of my own motivations, which were becoming increasingly difficult to categorize into neat columns of strategic versus genuine.

The Reaper’s Edge notification pulsed gold one more time in my peripheral vision before dimming.

Four stolen abilities now. Wave Motion for offense and mobility. Treasure Sense for loot and economics. Sensory Hijack for manipulation and combat disruption. And now Reaper’s Edge for pure, unadulterated lethality.

My library was building into something dangerous.

So was whatever was happening inside my chest cavity.

Addison shifted in her sleep, and her hand found my stomach beneath the blanket, her palm pressing flat against my abs in the same territorial gesture Naomi used when she wanted reassurance that I was still there. Different girl. Same instinct. The universal language of someone who had decided you belonged to them and intended to enforce that ownership through physical contact while unconscious.

"I should probably get her to bed," I said.

"The guest room’s upstairs. Second door on the left. There’s a lock on the inside and extra blankets in the closet." Aurora paused. "Are you staying?"

The question held weight. Not jealousy or possessiveness, just an honest request for information from someone who had arranged the evening’s events like a chess grandmaster and wanted to confirm the final piece had landed where she intended.

"For a bit. Until she wakes up enough to move."

"You can stay the night if you want. Both of you."

"I need to answer my phone at some point before Misato sends a search party."