Divine Milking System

Chapter 454: 454 | A Standing Ovation with Confetti

Wait. That was Addison.

Naomi said: "I need five more minutes."

Belle said: "Moo."

No. Belle said: "Property of Belle Fox."

God, I was tired.

The phone buzzed one more time. I reached for it without opening my eyes, read the notification through the glow against my eyelids.

Naomi: "I love you. Sleep well. Eat breakfast tomorrow or I will tell Vale you skipped meals and he will make you do burpees until you cry."

I typed back with one thumb, eyes still closed: "I love you too. I’ll eat breakfast. Please don’t weaponize Vale against me."

Then a second buzz.

Belle: "Naomi says you said I love you. I’m filing a formal grievance. You have never said that to me. This will be addressed. Court is in session tomorrow at breakfast. Bring snacks or the verdict will be unfavorable."

I grinned into my pillow. Typed: "Good night Belle."

Belle: "That is NOT an adequate defense. The court does not recognize ’good night’ as a legal filing."

I put the phone under my pillow and let the darkness take me.

Five fifty-nine AM arrived with all the mercy of a brick thrown through a window.

My alarm screamed. My body screamed louder. I swung both legs off the bed and sat on the edge for a full thirty seconds, cataloging every ache, every pull, every residual complaint from a body that had been dead four days ago and healed by Gold-rank magic eighteen hours ago and then driven up and down the California coast by a man who considered burgers and emotional manipulation equally important mentorship tools.

Hikaru’s door was closed. No light underneath.

But her tea mug was clean and drying on the rack, which meant she’d been awake at some point and tidied before retreating. Classic Hikaru. Terrified of emotional exposure, but incapable of leaving a dirty dish in the sink overnight. Her priorities were so perfectly backward that they wrapped around to being endearing.

I pulled on compression shorts, a clean training shirt that fit properly because Aurora spent nine thousand credits on my wardrobe, and the leather boots she’d bought alongside everything else. The silver ring from Yumi sat on my right middle finger, warm and humming. The four pale scars from the leopard’s claws ran from my left collarbone down across my abdomen, visible through the V-neck that I’d stopped bothering to button all the way.

The mirror showed someone I was still learning to recognize. Sharp jaw. Broader shoulders than the body had any right to possess after six weeks of transformation. Visible muscle definition through the shirt. Hair that Addison was going to dye black on Tuesday because she had opinions about my color palette and the authority of someone who could manifest twin death scythes.

Bite mark on the neck from Addison. Fading hickey below the collarbone from Belle. Scratch lines across my back from both of them in layers that Peterson had refused to heal out of professional spite.

I looked like someone who belonged at San Nicolas Academy. Or at least someone who’d survived it long enough that the difference stopped mattering.

The walk to the Summit gym took nine minutes. Campus at six AM was a ghost town except for the serious athletes, the insomniacs, and the one third-year Ruby student who jogged past me wearing full tactical gear for reasons I decided not to investigate. The California air sat cool against my face, salt-heavy from the ocean below the cliffs. Clean. The cleanest thing about my entire life.

Vale was already inside when I arrived. Same chair. Same expensive jacket. Same mug of coffee held like a trophy earned through the systematic destruction of lesser beings. His mismatched eyes tracked me through the door, and his mouth curved into the expression I’d learned to translate as "I am about to ruin your morning and enjoy every second of it."

"Milk Man." He raised his mug. "You look less dead than yesterday. That’s passing, barely."

"I feel less dead. That’s also passing, barely."

"Glad we’re both barely passing. Warm up. Same routine. Twenty-two rounds." He sipped his coffee. "And Monroe."

I stopped halfway to the mat.

"The ring." He glanced at my right hand. "Yumi texted me at four AM. Your baseline frequency spiked twice last night. Once at eleven thirteen PM and once at eleven seventeen PM. She wants to know what you were doing at those specific times and whether the subject was within physical contact range."

Eleven thirteen. Hikaru’s hug.

Eleven seventeen. Hikaru’s smile.

I looked Vale dead in his ice-blue-and-storm-grey eyes and said, "My roommate made me tea."

Vale held my gaze for three seconds. Then he nodded once and turned back to his phone. "I’ll tell her it was the tea."

I started push-ups.

The first five rounds came easy because the C-rank body had finally learned what Vale expected and stopped wasting energy on protest. Round six brought the familiar burn. Round ten brought the trembling. By round fifteen, my arms had opinions about the direction my life had taken and were expressing those opinions through involuntary vibration. Round twenty saw me on my knees for the push-ups and using the wall for squats because gravity had become a personal enemy.

Round twenty-two ended with me face-down on the mat, breathing like a bellows, while Vale made notes on his tablet and drank his coffee with the satisfaction of a man who had found his life’s purpose and it was the systematic destruction of lottery students.

"Good," he said.

One word. No elaboration. No sarcasm. Just good.

Coming from Vale, that was a standing ovation with confetti.

He set down the tablet. "Resistance bands. Bronze tier. Fifty reps per exercise. You know the stations."

I groaned into the mat.

"And Monroe." His voice carried something I hadn’t heard before. Not humor. Not the detachment he wore like a second skin. Something else. Something that sounded almost like the tone he’d used in the car when he told me he wanted me to catch up.

"The Monday after winter evaluations. Be ready."

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