Divine Milking System

Chapter 473: 473 | A Full-Service Arrangement

We drank. The cider tasted like apples and money, probably because Aurora bought it. Naomi finished hers in three sips and immediately looked pleased with herself for participating.

"Okay." Belle set her glass down and clapped her hands once. "Games."

"Absolutely not," I said.

"You don’t get a vote. You’re the guest of honor, which means you have zero rights."

Addison sat up on the couch, and something behind her violet contacts lit up in a way I’d learned to associate with either violence or extremely bad ideas. "I have a game."

"Your games always end with someone crying," Aurora said.

"That’s a feature."

Belle produced a small notebook from somewhere on her person, because of course she did, and flipped to a page already covered in her handwriting. "I prepared a structured itinerary. We start with something low stakes to establish comfort, then escalate."

"That’s the most Belle sentence I’ve ever heard," Naomi said from the floor.

"Thank you."

"It wasn’t a compliment."

"I’m choosing to receive it as one."

Aurora rolled off the couch and folded herself onto the carpet beside Naomi, close enough that their shoulders touched. She grabbed a handful of chips from Naomi’s plate without permission, and Naomi let her, which told me everything about how the last few days had gone while I was busy nearly dying.

"Fine," Aurora said. "Belle can have her structured itinerary. But I’m adding an amendment."

"You can’t amend my itinerary."

"I just did." Aurora popped a chip in her mouth and grinned at me. "The amendment is honesty. Whatever the game is, nobody lies. If you lie, you drink."

"That’s just every drinking game."

"It’s a classic for a reason."

Addison swung her legs off the couch and dropped to the floor with the rest of them, and suddenly I was the only one in a chair while four women arranged themselves in a loose semicircle at my feet like I was about to give a lecture. The graft in my chest hummed with the kind of smug satisfaction I’d stopped fighting somewhere around the time Naomi carried my corpse out of a Void Gate.

I looked at the four of them.

Aurora, all long legs and firelight hair, watching me with green eyes that had already decided how the night would end.

Belle, blue hair loose around her shoulders, notebook open, pretending this was a business meeting she’d scheduled.

Naomi, soft and warm in grey, her braid catching the string lights, her mother’s necklace against her chest.

Addison, sprawled and dangerous, black lipstick fresh, one boot still on despite the fact that she’d taken the other off at some point.

Four women who knew exactly what I was. Four women who’d chosen to sit at my feet at a party they threw because I hadn’t died.

I was either the luckiest man in nine realities or the most doomed. Possibly both. The old man in the library would probably say those were the same thing.

"So what’s the first game," I said.

Addison’s mouth curved around her lollipop. "Truth or dare. Except we skip the boring truths."

"That’s just dares."

"Now you’re getting it."

Belle held up a hand. "Structure. We go around the circle. Guest of honor picks who goes first."

"Naomi," I said.

Naomi’s eyes went wide. "Why me?"

"Because you’re the only one I trust to not immediately turn this into a war crime."

"Rude," said Addison.

"Accurate," said Belle.

Naomi twisted her fingers together and glanced at Aurora, who gave her an encouraging nod, and then back at me. "Um. Truth."

"See, this is the problem," Addison said. "Truths are boring."

"Let her have a truth," Aurora said. "She earned it. She’s been babysitting him all afternoon."

Naomi’s ears went pink. "I wasn’t babysitting."

"You took him to a fake garden," Belle said.

"It was a real garden."

"You took him to a real garden as a stall tactic. It’s the principle."

I decided to save Naomi before she combusted. "My question. Truth." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and let the room narrow down to the pink-haired girl looking up at me. "What’s the boba place actually called? The one with the couple who yell at each other."

Naomi blinked. Whatever she’d braced for, it hadn’t been that. "It’s called Auntie’s. On the ferry road."

"We’re going Sunday."

"We are?"

"You’ve been going alone since orientation. That’s over." I said it plainly, the way I said things I actually meant, and watched the smile break across her face like a wave hitting shore. "That’s my question and my answer both. Aurora, amendment satisfied?"

Aurora had gone very quiet, watching the exchange with an expression I didn’t have a name for. She recovered fast, because she always recovered fast. "Amendment satisfied. Boringly wholesome. Next."

"My turn to ask," Naomi said, and there was a new confidence in her voice, the kind she got when she stopped apologizing for existing. She turned to Addison. "Truth or dare."

Addison bit down on her lollipop. "Dare, obviously."

"Tell everyone why you really came to the hospital."

The room went still.

Belle’s pen stopped moving. Aurora’s chip paused halfway to her mouth. I felt my own pulse do something stupid.

Addison pulled the lollipop out with a wet click and pointed it at Naomi. "That’s a truth. You disguised a truth as a dare. That’s cheating."

"You said we skip the boring truths." Naomi’s chin lifted. "This isn’t boring."

Addison looked at me. I looked at Addison. Somewhere in that look, a decision got made that I had zero control over, which was becoming a theme with this particular goth.

"Aurora already knows," Addison said. "She sent me."

"I sent you to check on him," Aurora said, but her voice had gone silk-soft and dangerous. "I did not send you in a trench coat and garter belt."

Belle set her notebook down. Slowly. Like she was defusing something. "In a what."

"Oh, this is good," Aurora said, delighted, all her jealousy dissolving into something feral and gleeful. "Addison. Explain the garter belt."

Addison flopped backward onto the carpet and threw an arm over her face. "The nurse said his heart rate spiked whenever a woman walked in. Sakura. She said he was dying and needed a certain kind of medicine, and I put two and two together, and I walked through a hospital lobby in lingerie and a coat to keep him alive." She lowered her arm and glared at all of us. "You’re welcome."

"You slept with him," Belle said. Flat. Reading it off the air like it was already documented.

"I saved his life."

"With your body."

"It’s a full-service arrangement."

Naomi had covered her mouth with both hands, but I could see the laugh underneath it. Aurora had gone from delighted to something warmer, watching Addison with the specific tenderness of someone who’d been trying to get her friend to this exact spot for weeks.

"So," Belle said, and now she turned to me, amber eyes narrowed to slits. "You almost died. And you added a fourth."

"She added herself."

"He’s not wrong," Addison said to the ceiling.

Belle stared at me for a long moment. Then she picked her notebook back up, flipped to a fresh page, and started writing.

"What are you doing," I asked.

"Updating the roster."

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