My Scumbag System

Chapter 556: The Purr That Rattles the Soap Dish

The bathwater had gone lukewarm by the time Natalia declared the session over. Maki transformed back into her cat form with a lazy shimmer of darkness, padded across the wet tile, and leapt onto the counter to lick her paw like she hadn’t just been naked in a bathtub with two people. Natalia wrapped herself in a towel with the regal composure of someone who hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes collaborating with a supernatural cat on massage therapy.

I hauled myself out of the tub and grabbed the nearest towel. My muscles felt like warm taffy. Whatever those two had done to my back and shoulders had erased tension I’d been carrying since the Necropolis. The regenerator brace hummed against my ribs with quiet mechanical optimism.

"You’re eating before bed," Natalia said. Not a question.

"Yes, dear."

She narrowed her eyes. The Cryo-Lich Ring pulsed once, a warning shot.

"Don’t push it."

Maki chirped from the counter, her twin tails swishing with feline satisfaction. Cat form Maki radiated smugness in a way that should have been physically impossible for a creature without visible facial expressions. I scratched behind her ears on the way past, and the purring kicked up to a frequency that rattled the soap dish.

The hallway was mercifully empty. Most of Onyx House had retreated to their rooms after the day’s chaos. I could hear Jaime’s muffled voice from behind his closed door, delivering what sounded like a motivational monologue to his protein shaker. Somewhere below, Juan snored loud enough to vibrate the floorboards.

Natalia walked beside me in her towel, water droplets trailing down her collarbone and disappearing into the cotton. The white streaks in her purple hair caught the hallway light. She looked like a painting that had come to life and immediately started judging everyone around it.

We reached the kitchen. Natalia opened the fridge and started pulling out containers with the focused intensity she brought to everything. Leftover chicken. Rice. Some kind of vegetable situation Emi had prepared earlier. She loaded a plate and shoved it into the microwave without asking my opinion.

Maki hopped onto the counter in cat form and watched the plate rotate behind the microwave glass with the rapt attention of a creature who considered food one of life’s three great pleasures. The other two being violence and physical affection.

"Sit."

I sat at the kitchen table. The chair was cold through the towel wrapped around my waist. The kitchen smelled like Emi’s earlier cooking, green tea, and the faint ozone from Maki’s residual electrical signature.

Natalia set the plate in front of me and sat across the table, her chin resting on her folded hands. Her purple eyes tracked every bite I took.

"You fought well today."

"That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in twelve hours."

"Don’t get used to it." She reached across the table and wiped a grain of rice from the corner of my mouth with her thumb. "You were sloppy in the second round. Reyna almost had you with that reformed marionette wall."

"Almost. Key word."

"The kiss was sloppy too."

"The kiss got seventeen million views in the first hour. According to Akari."

"Akari is a menace." Natalia’s lips twitched. "She made thirty-seven thousand credits betting on you."

"She bet on me? I thought she’d bet against me for the payout."

"She bet on you in every match. Said the odds against you were too good to pass up."

I shoveled more chicken into my mouth. The food was warm and good and exactly what my demolished body needed. Natalia watched me eat with an expression that mixed satisfaction and something softer she’d never admit to in daylight.

Maki dropped from the counter and padded across the kitchen floor. She stopped at Natalia’s ankle and butted her head against the bare skin. The contact made Natalia flinch, but she didn’t pull away. After a moment, her hand dropped to scratch behind Maki’s ears. The purring resumed.

"Your familiar is growing on me," Natalia said, like she was confessing to a crime. "Against my will."

"Maki grows on everyone. Like a fungus."

Maki’s purring intensified. Agreement or offense, impossible to tell.

I finished the plate and drained the glass of water Natalia had placed beside it without me noticing. The microwave clock read 11:47 PM. Tomorrow’s individual events started at nine. I needed sleep more than I needed oxygen.

Natalia stood and collected the dishes. She washed them by hand instead of leaving them in the sink, her movements methodical as the water ran warm over her fingers. The towel had slipped slightly off one shoulder, revealing the curve of muscle beneath pale skin. She’d earned every ounce of that definition through years of telekinetic training and the last two months of Braxton’s torture sessions.

I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. She stiffened for half a second before melting backward against my chest. The Cryo-Lich Ring was cold against my forearm where her hand rested over mine.

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow."

"Six events. You’re competing in four of them."

"I know." freēwēbηovel.c૦m

"Reyna will be in three of those four."

"I know that too."

"And I won’t be able to help you."

Her voice caught on the last word. Just barely. Anyone else would have missed it. I didn’t miss it because I’d spent two months memorizing every frequency Natalia Kuzmina produced, from furious to vulnerable to the specific pitch she hit when she was trying very hard not to cry.

I tightened my arms around her.

"You already helped me. You showed me what Reyna looks like when she’s pushed to her limit. You made her create ten marionettes and still walked away standing."

"I walked away unconscious."

"Standing counts if you fell forward."

She turned in my arms. The movement pressed her body against mine through two layers of damp towel. Her hands found my chest and rested there, palms flat against the regenerator brace’s subtle hum.

"I hate watching you fight. It’s worse than fighting myself."

"I know."

"Do you? Because you seem to enjoy making me watch you get hit by things that should kill you."

"The getting hit part is strategic."

"The getting hit part is stupid."

"Strategically stupid."

She rose on her toes and kissed me. Soft this time. Not the bruising possessive contact of the arena. This was the kiss she gave me at two in the morning when the world was asleep and she could stop pretending she was made of ice. Her lips tasted like mint toothpaste and the faintest trace of the copper tang that clung to everyone who’d fought today.

The Nectar hummed between us. Not the aggressive chemical surge it once was. Since Aphrodite’s quest, since the night I’d told all five of them the truth, the Nectar had shifted into something that amplified what was already there instead of manufacturing sensation from nothing. What was already there between Natalia and me was a lot. Enough to make my pulse hammer and my hands tighten on her hips and the towel around my waist feel like a problem that needed solving.

Natalia pulled back. Her pupils were blown wide, the purple of her irises reduced to thin rings around darkness.

"Bed."

"Your room or mine?"

"Mine. Maki has annexed yours."

Maki chirped from the kitchen floor. Guilty as charged.