Divine Milking System

Chapter 411: 411 | Emotionally and Physically Attached

Not the careful, exploratory kiss of someone testing boundaries. Not the desperate, hungry kiss of someone acting on impulse they couldn’t control.

Addison kissed me like she was delivering a letter by mouth. Deliberate. Thorough. The kind of kiss that came from someone who’d been given specific instructions and intended to follow them to the letter.

Her lips were softer than I’d expected. Warm and tasting faintly of cherry from the lollipop she’d been working on. Her tongue slid past my lips without hesitation, exploring with a confidence that suggested she’d done this before and knew exactly what she was doing.

The kiss lasted maybe five seconds. Maybe ten. Long enough for my brain to short-circuit and then reboot. Long enough for the monitoring equipment to register a spike in heart rate that had nothing to do with physical exertion.

Addison pulled back with a wet sound that echoed in the quiet room.

"Message delivered." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Aurora says she’s sorry she couldn’t be here. And that you better not die before she gets the chance to kill you herself for scaring her."

"That’s... a lot of mixed signals."

"Welcome to Aurora." Addison retrieved her lollipop and shoved it back between her lips. "She’s complicated. I’m not."

"You just kissed me on behalf of your best friend."

"Yeah." Her violet eyes met mine without flinching. "And if you tell anyone about it, I’ll manifest my scythes and remove parts of you that you’re probably attached to. Emotionally and physically."

"Noted."

She dropped into the chair beside my bed. The same chair where Naomi’s jacket still rested. Addison shoved it aside without ceremony and sprawled across the seat with the boneless confidence of someone who owned every space they occupied.

"So." She chomped on her lollipop with aggressive force. "You want to tell me what actually happened in there? The news is calling it a miracle rescue. Blair Davenport gave some bullshit statement about teamwork and perseverance. But I saw the footage of you getting carried out. That wasn’t the result of teamwork and perseverance. That was the result of someone doing something catastrophically stupid that almost killed them."

"It’s a long story."

"I’m not going anywhere." She kicked her boots up on the edge of my bed. The steel toes were scuffed and dirty. She clearly didn’t care. "Aurora’s gone for at least another twelve hours. Belle and the pink one are in the waiting room pretending they’re not worried. The hot nurse is doing rounds. You’ve got nothing but time and I’ve got nothing but questions."

"The hot nurse?"

"Sakura something. Japanese. Nice legs. Wearing a skirt that’s way too short for professional healthcare." Addison shrugged. "I notice things."

"You notice women."

"I notice everyone, Monroe. Women just tend to be more interesting."

I studied her face. The heavy goth makeup. The multiple piercings catching the light. The resting expression that could curdle milk at twenty paces. Behind all of it was someone who’d come running the moment she heard I was hurt. Someone who’d delivered her best friend’s message with more care than her words suggested she possessed.

"There was a guardian," I said finally. "Bigger than anything we’d seen. Stronger. It killed Charles Leone in about three seconds."

"Good." Addison’s voice carried no sympathy. "He was an asshole."

"He was still a person."

"He was still an asshole." She crunched through the lollipop and swallowed the pieces. "Keep going."

"We couldn’t hurt it. Not really. Blair’s fire, Jordan’s shadows, Dante’s nullification fields. Nothing worked. It was going to kill everyone and then walk through the gate into the real world."

"And you decided to punch it to death with your bare hands."

"More or less."

"How?" She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. The position pulled her already strained uniform tighter across her chest. "I’ve seen the footage. There was this golden light around you. Something that shouldn’t be possible for a first-year lottery student with barely six weeks of training. Something that made you strong enough to rip through a dimensional guardian’s shell like tissue paper."

I didn’t answer immediately.

The System pulsed in my peripheral vision.

LIFESPAN: 1D 5H 12M

How much did I tell her? How much could I trust? Addison wasn’t my enemy. But she wasn’t exactly my ally either. She was Aurora’s friend first and foremost. Her loyalty ran through channels I didn’t control.

"I have an ability." The words came out slowly. Carefully. "Something that lets me push past normal limits. It works, but it costs me."

"Costs you what?"

"Time."

Addison’s violet eyes narrowed. "That’s vague as fuck."

"It’s all you’re getting."

She stared at me for a long moment. The lollipop stick dangled from her lips. Her expression was unreadable behind the layers of makeup and practiced hostility.

Then she laughed.

The sound was harsh and genuine and completely unexpected. It bounced off the hospital walls and made the monitoring equipment flicker.

"You know what, Monroe? I think I actually like you." She stood up, stretching in a way that made her uniform strain in dangerous directions. "You’re full of shit. You’re hiding something big. And you’re probably going to get yourself killed before the semester’s over."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"But you saved Aurora’s friend." She reached down and patted my cheek with more force than necessary. "Blair Davenport. The ice queen bitch who’s been making life difficult for everyone who isn’t rich enough to breathe her air. You pulled her out of a Void Gate and kept her alive when everything in that dimension wanted her dead."

"It wasn’t just me. We worked together."

"Sure you did." Addison grabbed her lollipop stick and flicked it into the trash bin across the room. Perfect shot. "That’s not the point. The point is that you did something. When it mattered. When it counted. Most people freeze up in those situations. Most people watch their friends die and then spend the rest of their lives making excuses about why they couldn’t do anything."

She headed for the door.

"You’re leaving?"

"I’m getting another lollipop from the vending machine. And maybe putting something on to replenish that time of yours." Addison paused at the threshold. "Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back."

"I’m bedridden. Where exactly would I go?"

"Knowing you? Somewhere stupid and dangerous where you’d almost die again."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!