My Five Beast Wives Want Me Dead in the Apocalypse

Chapter 4 Part 2

Kyle ripped two pieces of cotton from the roll on the nightstand and stuffed them deep into both ears. Riley's screaming faded to a muffled buzz. He sank onto the edge of the bed, his heart hammering, his hands shaking, and let out a long, slow breath through his teeth.

"She can scream all she wants," he murmured to himself. "The law says a wife cannot divorce without the husband's written consent. As long as I don't sign, they can't leave. And as long as they can't leave, they have to keep me alive."

It was a horrible thought. He knew it was a horrible thought. But it was also the only thought keeping him breathing.

He pulled up the terminal beside the bed. The small screen glowed pale blue in the dim room, and he navigated to the star map, the government registry that held the profiles of every matched wife under his name.

Five files. Five faces.

Riley Fox. Three star Firetail Cat. Combat rating: low. Primary Ability: advanced healing and cellular regeneration. The system classified her as a support type, not a fighter. That explained why she had gotten thrown around by the bear like a ragdoll. Her power was keeping people alive, not killing them.

Bianca Steele. Four star Black Panther. Combat rating: high. Primary Ability: enhanced speed, reflexes, and predatory instinct. A born hunter. The profile picture showed a lean, hard faced woman with cropped black hair and eyes that looked like two pieces of polished obsidian. Kyle remembered seeing her in the system's original screenshots, the fighter standing in a combat stance with her fists raised.

Scarlett Reyes. Five star Dragon Sparrow. Combat rating: extremely high. Primary Ability: classified.

The profile picture showed the red haired woman from the screenshots, golden eyes narrowed, her entire posture radiating the kind of energy that told you she was not someone you interrupted. Five star. Classified Ability. Kyle swallowed hard.

Hailey Grant. Three star White Sheep. Combat rating: minimal. Primary Ability: emotional perception and calming aura.

The gentle baker from the screenshots. Flour on her apron, curls behind her ear, and that soft, sad smile that never quite reached her eyes. The original had called her the weakest. A sheep among predators.

Vivian Cross. Five star Black Serpent. Combat rating: extremely high. Primary Ability: corrosive black fog, capable of organic dissolution at the molecular level. Current status: injured, scale regeneration stalled. Even injured, even starved, even after being caged and sold as live feed, she had reduced a four star mutated bear to a pile of polished bone in three seconds.

Kyle stared at the five profiles and felt something cold settle into the pit of his stomach.

Even Hailey, the three star sheep with a calming aura and minimal combat rating, could snap his neck without breaking a sweat. He was a baseline human.

No Ability. No beast blood. No strength, no speed, no power of any kind. Every single one of his wives outclassed him so completely that the gap was not even measurable.

Divorce was not freedom. Divorce was a death sentence with a smile on its face.

"Thank God for marriage protection laws," Kyle whispered, pulling the blanket over his head like a child hiding from a thunderstorm. "Thank God, thank God, thank..."

The bedroom door exploded inward.

The chair he had jammed under the handle flew across the room and shattered against the far wall. The lock tore clean out of the frame and bounced off the floor with a metallic ring. Standing in the doorway was a woman he had not yet met in person, lean, sharp jawed, with cropped black hair and eyes like two flat pieces of black glass.

Bianca Steele looked at him the way a cat looks at a mouse it has already caught and is deciding how slowly to eat.

"Dinner's ready." Her voice was low, unhurried, and carried the quiet promise that this was not a request. "Get downstairs. Now."

Kyle pulled the cotton out of his ears, swallowed what was left of his pride, and followed her down the stairs on legs that felt like they were made of wet paper.

The dining room was small, square, and lit by a single overhead light that buzzed faintly. A narrow wooden table sat in the center with six chairs around it, and every chair except one was already occupied.

Bianca stepped aside the moment he entered and blocked the doorway behind him with one shoulder against the frame, her arms folded, a thin, sharp smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

Her dark eyes tracked his every movement the way a predator watches something small trying to find a place to hide.

Riley sat at the far end of the table, her body angled away from him, her jaw locked so tight the muscles in her neck stood out like cords. She did not look at him. She did not need to. The fury coming off her was almost visible.

Vivian sat directly across from the empty chair, her amber eyes fixed on the space where he would sit with the patient, unblinking stillness of a snake watching a mouse walk toward a trap. Her scales had been cleaned. Her hair had been combed. But the look on her face had not changed one bit since the basement.

And at the head of the table, sitting with one leg crossed over the other, a porcelain cup of tea held between two elegant fingers, was a woman Kyle had only seen in a screenshot until now.

Red hair like a slow burning fire, falling in loose waves past her shoulders.

A fitted black and red leather jacket. Golden eyes that did not even bother to flick in his direction when he walked in.

Scarlett Reyes sipped her tea with the relaxed, unbothered calm of someone who could not be less interested in the trembling man standing in her dining room.

Kyle stood in the center of the room, surrounded on all sides by women who could kill him six different ways before he hit the floor, every single one of them looking at him with some shade of contempt, and he understood with perfect, sickening clarity that this was his life now.

He pulled out the empty chair and sat down without a word, his hands flat on the table to keep them from shaking, his eyes forward, his breathing carefully controlled, and his brain screaming one single thought on an endless, deafening loop.

Do not give them a reason.