Gathering Husbands with a System in a Game Like World [BL]

"Kai!"

He was the first thought that came to my mind when I regained consciousness. I tried to move but immediately found out that moving was literally futile. I have been chained and restrained to a chair in a familiar setting I could remember vividly.

The torture room for rogue Assassins. You could literally feel the residual souls of the many people that have been murdered in this very dark fucking bloody room. The air still carried the same metallic tang of blood and embrace of death. Ten years away and the place still smelled exactly the same. Some things never changed.

"Welcome back Elias."

A familiar voice said from the other side of the room.

I lifted my head slowly. My old master stood near the far wall, arms folded, looking at me the same way he used to when I was younger and had just done something spectacularly stupid. The years had carved deeper lines into his face, but the eyes were unchanged. Still sharp. Still extremely Judge. Still disappointed in a way that somehow felt like pride in a way i couldn’t explain.

He lived for my rebellions, i knew that fact.

"You look comfortable," he said.

"Fuck off."

He almost smiled.

"Still the same mouth."

I tested the chains again. They were Heavy and Reinforced. Designed for people who knew how to escape ordinary restraints. Of course they were. The Dome never half-assed its cages. I should know, I afterall helped design a few of them when I was younger, it was part of the Asassin tests. But i didn’t care about that. I just wanted to know where exactly Kai was.

"Where is he?" I asked.

My master didn’t pretend not to understand.

"Oh you mean Kai? He is doing better than you that’s for sure"

Those were the only words I needed to hear. My shoulders loosened a fraction.

"You shouldn’t have come back," he continued.

This man really had betrayed me, not that i blamed him anyway, the Chairman’s words were absolute so i could understand why he would pull shit like that and i wasn’t particularly pissed.

"Did you have a hand in his kidnap?" I asked solemnly.

The old man chuckled "what do you think?"

"Well i think you set me up"

"And you walked straight into the trap without a thought"

I didn’t deny it. There was no point. He had always been able to see through me when it mattered. The difference was that this time I didn’t care if he saw everything.

He walked closer, stopping a few steps away from the chair. The soft scrape of his boots against the stone was the only sound for several seconds.

"Why do you take interest in this Kai boy again?"

I looked him dead in the eyes.

"I told you, he is the most important person in the world to me"

Silence stretched between us. He studied me like he was trying to find the old Elias underneath the one sitting in front of him. The boy who used to sleep on these floors. The teenager who used to brag about kill counts. The young man who thought the only thing worth protecting was his own freedom.

"You really did change"

I didn’t flinch. There was no point pretending those years hadn’t happened. I had been reckless. Arrogant. Hungry for everything I wasn’t supposed to touch. And I had paid for it.

"You best believe it" i said plainly maintaining eye contact. He sighed.

"Well, you are already captured so there’s nothing i can do about it" he daid moving away. I smiled as a plan surfaced in my mind immediately

"You could release me and i could knock you out and you could say i got the best of you and escaped" i said, half serious but he laughed so loudly i became annoyed.

"What the fuck is funny?"

"Oh please, after all these years you know you could never get the best of me. I can take down fifty of you at a go and still have stamina to fight a dragon. Your plan is weak as hell i raised you better than that"

"Well it’s not like i was serious or anything you just being an asshole"

"Have you fallen so deep that you have abandoned all logic?" He said still laughing and my left brow continuously twitched in annoyance.

He suddenly went quiet for a long moment and nodded once, as if accepting that I wasn’t the same man who had left ten years ago.

Then he said the thing I already knew was coming.

"The Chairman still wants you dead for what you did to his bed. That has never changed."

I already knew that. Ten years hadn’t softened that particular sentence. Defiling the Chairman’s wives had been the kind of crime the Dome never forgot. I had walked out under a death sentence and spent a decade making sure no one from this place ever got close enough to collect it.

"Until now," he added.

I looked up.

"He’s willing to give you a second chance," my master said. "If you join his ranks again."

I stared at him.

Return and serve under Aster Ludacris, Pretend the last decade never happened. Pretend I hadn’t walked out of this place covered in the consequences of my own arrogance. Pretend the man who wanted me dead for touching what belonged to him now wanted me back under his command.

"And if I refuse?"

"Then the original sentence stands."

Death.

I leaned back against the cold metal of the chair and let out a slow breath. Even restrained, my mind was already working. The room. The construction, The weak points in the Dome’s lower levels. The different routes of escape....I didn’t know exactly how I was getting out yet, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty.

I was leaving with Kai but why was he giving me a second chance though, he rarely gave second chances and my offence wasn’t exactly a forgivable one.

My master watched me for a while longer, then spoke again.

"The Chairman has taken an interest in your companion."

My blood went cold.

"What the fuck does that mean?"

He didn’t answer, that silence told me more than any explanation could have. Aster had Kai. And Aster wasn’t a man you left alone with something you cared about. I had seen the Chairman fight once when I was younger. Once had been enough. Men like him didn’t take interest in people for no reason. And they didn’t keep them close unless they wanted something.

If he hurts him, I thought, I don’t care how many people stand between us. I will burn this entire fucking place down.

The thought should have scared me. It didn’t. It felt like the first honest decision I had made in years.

I had spent ten years running from this place. Ten years building a life that had nothing to do with the Dome. Ten years convincing myself that freedom meant never needing anyone enough to stay. Then Kai had walked into my life with his sharp mouth and his ridiculous determination and his way of looking at the world like he still expected it to make sense. And somewhere between the arguments and the nights and the quiet moments on the road, I had stopped being able to imagine a version of myself that didn’t include him.

That was the part that still terrified me more than any death sentence.

I had never needed anyone before. Not like this. Not in a way that made the idea of losing them feel like something that would hollow me out from the inside. Kai had become the one thing I wasn’t willing to walk away from. And the Dome had taken him.

My master was still watching me. I could feel the weight of his attention. He had always been able to read the shifts in my expression better than most people. Right now he was seeing something he hadn’t seen before. Attachment. Fear. Resolve. All of it tangled together in a man who used to pride himself on feeling nothing.

"you really love this kai now do you?"

"Yes i do"

"And you are willing to die for him."

I met his eyes.

"I’m willing to kill for him. There’s a difference."

He almost smiled at that, i swore.

The door opened.

I expected another interrogator or maybe the chairman or executioner themselves to come put me out, but instead i felt the peaceful presence of Kai’s aura....a familiar voice cut through the room and stopped every thought in my head.

"Elias?"

My heart stopped.

I looked up.

Kai stood in the doorway, he was truly Alive and Unharmed. Wearing clean clothes that didn’t belong to either of us. Looking at me like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing either. For several seconds neither of us spoke. The chains around my wrists suddenly felt heavier. The room felt smaller. The entire fucking Dome felt like it had compressed down to the space between us.

Then my entire expression changed.

"Kai..."

He walked toward me.

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