Divorced by Five Beast Wives, I Awakened Godly Powers

Chapter 5

Across four different corners of the country, four light brains chimed at almost the exact same moment.

Autumn Reyes was elbow deep in a patient's chest cavity when the notification hit. The surgical theater at Mount Sinai's beast trauma wing was bright and sterile, and her nine fox tails were bound tightly behind her in a medical wrap to keep them clear of the operating field. Her assistant, a young two star rabbit beastkin named Phoebe, noticed the golden pulse behind Autumn's left eye before Autumn did.

"Dr. Reyes, your light brain just went off. Should I check it?"

"Read it to me. My hands are busy." Autumn's voice was steady, her fingers working with the calm precision of someone who had performed this procedure a thousand times.

Phoebe accessed the mirrored display. Her ears shot straight up. "It's from the Matching Center. You've been matched with an S rank male named Maxver Cole. Compatibility rating is one hundred percent."

Autumn's hands stopped moving. Just for a second. Then she resumed, closing the suture line with perfect stitches while her brain processed what she'd just heard.

"One hundred percent?"

"That's what it says."

"Close this patient up for me." Autumn stepped back from the table, stripped her gloves, and walked toward the exit. "I'm clocking out."

"But Dr. Reyes, you have three more surgeries this afternoon."

"Reschedule them." Autumn was already through the door. "I just got the best match in medical history. The surgeries can wait."

On the forty seventh floor of Helios Defense Technologies in downtown Chicago, Chloe Bennett sat at her engineering station surrounded by holographic blueprints of a next generation combat mecha. Her elk antlers, sleek and branching like polished bronze, occasionally bumped against the overhead display when she leaned too far forward.

Her light brain chimed. She read the notification twice, then stood up so fast her chair rolled backward and crashed into the desk behind her.

"Ladies." She turned to face her three colleagues, all of whom were staring at her. "I just got matched with an S rank male. One hundred percent compatibility."

The silence lasted exactly two seconds.

"You're lying." Renata, a two star lynx at the next station, put down her tools. "Nobody gets one hundred percent. That's a textbook number."

"Read it yourself." Chloe projected the notification onto the shared display. The golden text floated in the air, undeniable.

Renata's face went pale. "I've been on the matching list for three years and the best I got was sixty two percent with a B rank who snored like a dying engine."

"I hate you." Kayla, a one star sparrow, didn't even look up from her screen. "I hate you so much right now."

Chloe was already saving her blueprints and shutting down her station, grinning so wide her antlers seemed to glow.

In a modest apartment on the outskirts of Denver, Winter Hayes sat at the kitchen table while her mother poured tea with hands that trembled slightly. Winter's Ice Soul Snake features were subtle, just a faint shimmer of blue scales along her forearms and a tongue that flickered when she was nervous. Right now, it was flickering constantly.

"One hundred percent, baby." Her mother set the tea down and clasped both hands together. "I can't believe it. My daughter matched with an S rank at one hundred percent."

"I don't know anything about him, Mom." Winter wrapped her fingers around the warm cup. "What if he's difficult? What if he doesn't like me?"

"Then you make him like you." Her mother sat down and took Winter's hands firmly. "You listen to what he wants. You learn his moods. You cook what he enjoys. You keep his house comfortable and you never, ever give him a reason to look somewhere else. A match like this is a gift from heaven, Winter. Don't waste it."

"Your mother is right." Her father's voice came from the doorway. He was a quiet man, a retired B rank who had spent thirty years in contamination management. "I was matched with your mother at sixty one percent and we built a good life. You're starting at one hundred. You have no idea how lucky you are."

Winter nodded, her blue scales shimmering faintly as she squeezed her mother's hands back.

Seven thousand miles away, on a desert outpost somewhere in the Nevada Exclusion Zone, Riley Shaw was having a very different kind of morning.

"Base, this is Shaw. My light brain just gave me a matching notification. I need to request immediate extraction." She spoke into her communicator while crouching behind a sand colored barricade, her lion cat ears swiveling in two directions at once and her tail puffed out to twice its normal size.

The communicator crackled with static.

"Base, do you copy? I've been matched with an S rank male. One hundred percent compatibility. I need to get back to civilization before he fills my slot with someone else."

More static. Then a broken voice cut through. "Shaw, we're picking up movement on the eastern perimeter. Large signatures. Looks like a wave incoming."

Riley's ears flattened. She peered over the barricade and saw dust rising on the horizon, a wall of it, stretching across the desert floor like a brown curtain being dragged across the earth. Beneath the dust, shapes were moving. Dozens of them. Exotic beasts, mutated creatures born from the polluted wastelands, and they were heading straight for the outpost.

"You have got to be kidding me." Riley pulled her sidearm and checked the charge. "I finally get the match of a lifetime and the desert decides to throw a party."