Transmigrated Into A Women Dominated World

The following morning, Zaeryn woke long before sunrise.

Only a faint blue-grey light had begun slipping through the narrow opening between Marceline’s curtains, leaving most of the room concealed beneath the darkness. The privacy screen had deactivated sometime during the night, although the rest of the house remained so quiet that he could hear nothing beyond the gentle circulation of air through the room.

Marceline remained asleep beside him, resting upon her stomach with one arm extended across the space he occupied. Her dark hair had spread across the pillow and partly concealed her face.

Zaeryn considered remaining there.

After everything that had happened the previous day, another hour of sleep felt considerably more appealing than leaving the warmth of Marceline’s body and bed to prepare for an Imperial evaluation that he had never requested. Unfortunately, a muted vibration from his wrist terminal reminded him that the decision had already been made.

He turned off the alert before it could disturb her and carefully moved Marceline’s arm from across his chest.

Zaeryn retrieved his clothes from where they had been abandoned the previous night and dressed without wasting time attempting to make himself presentable. He only needed to cross the upper corridor and reach his own bedroom, where he could shower and prepare properly before anyone saw him.

At least, that was what he assumed.

When Zaeryn rounded the final corner leading toward his bedroom, he found Kayla standing beside his door.

She was already fully dressed for the journey. Her hair had been tied back neatly, and not a single detail about her appearance suggested that the morning had begun unusually early for her.

Kayla looked toward him as he approached, allowing her gaze to travel briefly over his disordered hair and wrinkled clothing. Her expression did not change, although Zaeryn knew she understood precisely where he had spent the night.

"Get ready," Kayla told him. "We are leaving soon."

Zaeryn stopped in front of his bedroom door and looked toward the nearest window. The sky beyond it had barely begun changing colour.

"What, now?"

"Yes," Kayla replied without sympathy. "Get to it immediately."

Zaeryn stared at her, wondering whether she had deliberately arranged the earliest possible departure merely because Ysmeine had forced her to accompany him.

She hated him enough to do that. She knew he was not much of an early morning person, and she was doing this to punish him. Kayla possessed enough discipline to wake before dawn without complaint, but that did not mean she needed to inflict the same suffering upon everyone travelling with her.

"And Zaeryn," she added as he reached for the door control.

He looked back at her. "What?"

"You had better not embarrass me while we are in the Capital," she said.

For several seconds, Zaeryn could only look at her.

"When have I ever embarrassed you?" He tried to think of a single occasion and could not find one.

Kayla’s eyes moved over his disordered appearance once again. "You are the embarrassment."

"In case you have forgotten, this journey is about me," Zaeryn continued. "It is not about you."

Kayla turned away and walked down the corridor without responding.

Zaeryn watched her leave before opening his bedroom door.

He entered the room and sealed the door behind him.

His compact luggage unit remained upon the bed where he had left it the previous evening. Although he had packed most of what he needed, several shirts were visible through the partially closed upper section, because he had abandoned any concern for neatness once Marceline began occupying his thoughts.

Zaeryn ignored it for the moment and entered the bathroom.

The first stream of warm water struck his shoulders seconds later.

Zaeryn closed his eyes and stood beneath it, allowing the heat to work the soreness out of his shoulders and back. For the first time since waking, the exhaustion from the previous night began to withdraw from his thoughts, leaving him alert enough to confront what awaited him.

He was travelling to the Capital.

The statement sounded simple when reduced to those few words, but there was nothing simple about the reason behind the journey. The Imperial Council had received confirmation that a male within Sector Seven could wield Vitae, and he was about to present himself before some of the most politically and militarily powerful women in the Queendom so that they could decide what his existence meant.

Zaeryn had survived enough situations that should have destroyed him to possess confidence in his abilities. However, confidence was not the same thing as stupidity. His powers had advanced considerably, and the Eros Engine continued giving him advantages that nobody else understood, but he was nowhere near powerful enough to force his way out of the Capital if the Imperial Council decided to confine him.

That was the possibility nobody wanted to state plainly.

They called the journey an evaluation because the word sounded controlled and harmless. They wanted to examine his Vitae, determine how he had acquired it and decide whether he represented a threat. If the answers displeased them, Zaeryn doubted they would simply thank him for his cooperation and permit him to return home.

Marceline’s words from the previous evening returned to him. Perhaps Athea would take one look at him and decide that Sector Seven had enjoyed his company for long enough.

Zaeryn opened his eyes and raised his face into the falling water.

That was not going to happen.

Athea might be his mother, but she was also a member of the Imperial Council, and he understood that her position would prevent her from treating his situation as nothing more than a family matter. Even so, she had arranged for him to travel through ordinary channels rather than allowing armed officials to descend upon the Noctis estate and remove him like a prisoner. That alone suggested she intended to protect him.

Sage would also be there.

By the time Zaeryn finished showering, his thoughts had become considerably more ordered.

He dried himself and returned to the bedroom, where he selected fitted black trousers and a dark blue shirt. He added a lightweight black travelling coat and pulled on a clean pair of boots.

The result was formal enough for the Capital without making him appear as though he had dressed specifically to impress the Imperial Council.

Zaeryn studied himself in the mirror and adjusted his collar.

Kayla would find something to criticize regardless of what he wore, but at least she would not be able to claim that he had embarrassed her through his appearance.

He returned to the bed and reopened the luggage unit. After arranging the clothing he had carelessly packed the previous evening, he added the personal items from the bathroom and checked the remaining compartments.

Everything appeared to be present.

Zaeryn closed the unit and pressed the compression control against its upper surface. The outer shell contracted around its stored contents, reducing itself to a compact rectangular case that could be carried comfortably at his side. A narrow illuminated strip confirmed that the internal storage field remained stable.

He lifted it from the bed and looked around the room one final time.

Despite his repeated insistence that he would return, leaving the bedroom produced an unexpected emptiness within his chest. He realized how much he loved living here, and the thought of a version of his life that did not include this room was not one he wanted to hold for very long.

Zaeryn refused to indulge the thought any further.

This was not a permanent departure. He was going to the Capital, completing the evaluation and returning to Sector Seven. Whatever the Imperial Council believed it had summoned him there to decide, his future still belonged to him.

He carried the luggage unit out of the room and made his way downstairs.

The house was no longer silent. Quiet voices travelled from the lower atrium, accompanied by the subdued mechanical hum of a cruiser waiting beyond the main entrance.

When Zaeryn reached the final steps, he discovered that Kayla was not the only person waiting for him.

Ysmeine stood near the entrance with Marceline and Aeris, all three of them already awake and waiting despite the early hour. Marceline had changed into a loose crimson house robe, although her dark hair remained slightly disordered from sleep, while Aeris wore a fitted black lounge set beneath an open robe of her own.

Kayla stood several paces away from them with her arms folded beneath her chest, looking as though she had positioned herself near the entrance to avoid becoming involved in whatever farewell the others intended to give him.

Her eyes moved immediately toward the compact luggage unit in Zaeryn’s hand.

"You have four minutes," she informed him, and walked outside.

Zaeryn placed the luggage unit beside the final step before Ysmeine approached him. Her gaze moved carefully over his clothing, checking everything from the fastening of his travelling coat to the arrangement of his hair, before she reached up and adjusted one side of his collar.

"You packed enough clothing for several days?" she asked.

"Yes."

Ysmeine’s hand moved from his collar to the side of his face.

She drew him closer by the front of his coat and kissed him with the same deep, familiar affection she showed him whenever he left the estate, although the knowledge that he was travelling considerably farther than the Lyceum or the Citadel made her keep him against her for several seconds longer than usual.

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