2026-09-11 15:57:07Kyle scanned the table one more time. Bianca blocking the door with that predator's smirk. Riley radiating fury so hot it could warm the room. Vivian watching him like prey she had already killed in her mind. Scarlett sipping tea without acknowledging he existed at all.
And then there was Hailey.
She sat in the last remaining chair at the corner of the table, her brown curls tucked behind both ears, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was the only one in the room who was not openly glaring at him, staring at him with murderous intent, or pretending he was invisible. Her expression was soft, almost polite, and in a room full of loaded weapons pointed at his face, that tiny sliver of gentleness felt like the only safe corner left.
Kyle walked over and pulled out the chair beside her.
"This seat taken?"
Hailey looked up at him with wide, brown eyes and shook her head slowly. "No. Go ahead."
He sat down. For exactly one second, he felt something close to relief.
Then Hailey scooted her chair six inches to the right, putting a clear gap between them. She did it quietly, without looking at him, the way someone shifts away from a stranger on a bus who smells wrong. Her polite smile stayed perfectly in place the entire time, and somehow that made it worse than if she had just cursed at him.
Kyle let out a slow breath through his nose. Not even the sheep wanted to sit near him.
The table was set with empty bowls and clean chopsticks, but there was no food in sight. No pot, no pan, no rice cooker steaming on the counter. Kyle looked around the room and frowned.
"Is anybody going to tell me why there's nothing to eat, or are we all just sitting here for the atmosphere?"
"Oh, there's food." Bianca pushed off the doorframe and walked toward the kitchen with the loose, rolling stride of someone who knew exactly what was coming. "You ordered something special before you went out today. Don't you remember?"
Kyle's stomach tightened. The original's memories were messy and full of gaps, but the way Bianca's voice curled around the word special made his skin crawl.
Bianca returned carrying a covered plate with both hands. She set it in the center of the table directly in front of Kyle, then stepped back and folded her arms, her dark eyes gleaming with something that was not quite amusement and not quite hate but lived somewhere between the two.
"Go on," she murmured. "Open it."
Kyle reached forward and lifted the cover.
A skinned rabbit head sat in the center of the plate, its lidless eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. Raw, pink, and still faintly bloody. Arranged in a perfect circle around it were white lilies, their petals just starting to brown at the edges, laid out with the kind of careful precision that turned the whole thing into a message rather than a meal.
Kyle stared at it for a long time.
He understood. The rabbit head was not food. It was a mirror. A small, dead animal, skinned and displayed, surrounded by funeral flowers. This was what the original had done to Vivian. Stripped her down, sold her off, and arranged the aftermath like it was nothing. Bianca had just put it on a plate and served it back to him.
"Eat up," Bianca told him, her voice smooth and cold. "Or should I feed it to the dogs? Oh wait, I forgot. We don't have dogs. We just have you."
Riley let out a short, bitter laugh from her end of the table. Even Scarlett's golden eyes flicked toward the plate for half a second before returning to her tea. Vivian did not look at the plate at all. She was looking at Kyle.
Kyle set the cover down gently beside the plate. His hands were steady, which surprised him, because everything inside his chest was shaking. He looked at the rabbit head, then at Bianca, then at the four women watching him from their seats, waiting for him to crumble, to gag, to beg, to give them one more piece of weakness they could use.
He leaned back in his chair.
"Nice presentation," he told Bianca, keeping his voice flat and even. "Really artistic. You should open a restaurant. But here's the thing."
He held up one finger.
"There are four divorce certificates sitting in that terminal upstairs. One for each of you. I already promised Vivian and Riley theirs, and I've been thinking about it, and you know what, maybe four divorces is better than two. Maybe I should just clean house entirely."
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Chapter 59 Part 3
Kyle looked at Scarlett. Scarlett looked back. Hailey sipped her tea by the stove, her brown eyes calm behind her glasses, her face carrying not a single trace of surprise.An hour later, Blake appeared at the front gate with Delaney at his side. His shirt was fresh, his smile was warm, and the bruise on his arm from Dakota’s outburst was already hidden beneath a clean sleeve.“Kyle!” Blake waved. “I wanted to introduce you to Delaney. She rescued me in the fog last week. Incredible woman. I’m very fortunate.”“Fortunate.” Kyle leaned against his doorframe. “Is that what we’re calling it? Because from where I was standing, it looked like your wolf wife just got kicked through a wall by your new girlfriend.”“Dakota is adjusting.” Blake’s smile held. “Change is difficult for everyone.”“You traded Dakota for a dragon pretty fast, Blake.” Kyle tilted his head. “What’s the shelf life on your wives? Do they come with an expiration date, or do you just swap them when a newer model walks ou
Chapter 59 Part 2
Kyle had looked at the divorce papers in his hand. Then at Hailey. Then at the altar beyond the door where a ten star fallen beastwoman was waiting for him to keep a two hundred year old promise.“Half a month.” Kyle had said slowly. “Delay the divorces for half a month. If your prediction is wrong, I sign them and Wren gets her wedding.”“And if I’m right?”“If you’re right, then Blake walked straight into a trap he didn’t see coming because he was too busy counting wives to notice the quiet one with the glasses was counting faster.”Hailey had smiled. That same small, private, untouchable smile she wore like armor.Kyle had walked out of that room and cancelled a wedding. And in the privacy of his own skull, he had looked at Hailey’s prediction, looked at the terminal’s event system, and silently mocked the Divine Gold System for copying its entire plot structure from a pirated web novel site.A crash from outside yanked him back to the present.Kyle ran downstairs and joined the ot
Chapter 59 Part 1
Vivian leaned against the kitchen counter with her arms folded, her amber eyes resting on Bianca across the table with an expression caught between disbelief and grudging respect.“You said Hailey blew up the black market.” Vivian’s voice was low. “The top floor. The explosion that collapsed every wall and every ceiling in Torres’s office. That was Hailey.”“I said what I said.” Bianca took a sip of water without looking up. “And I’m not repeating it.”“Hailey.” Riley sat at the table with both hands wrapped around a cup of cold tea, his pale eyes wide. “The woman who bakes bread and grows orchards and cries when someone steps on a flower. That Hailey blew up a building.”“An Aries is still a ram.” Bianca set her glass down. “A ram with plant manipulation, golden energy transfer, and the kind of quiet focus that lets you place an explosive root network inside a building’s foundation without anyone noticing until the whole thing comes down.”“She’s never even raised her voice.” Riley s
Chapter 58 Part 3
Beneath the surface, things moved. Long, pale shapes with too many fins and mouths that opened wider than their bodies. Deep sea piranhas, drawn to the surface by the violence above, fleeing from something below that was hitting them with enough force to crack the ocean itself.“Nine star energy.” Scarlett’s golden eyes locked on the water. “Coming from directly below the surface. Massive output. Sustained.”“That’s Wren.” Kyle whispered, watching another hundred meter column rise and shatter. “She’s fighting something in the deep water.”“She’s not fighting.” Vivian’s amber eyes narrowed at the display of destruction spreading across the horizon. “She’s screaming.”Kyle stared at the ocean for five more seconds. Then he turned east and kept walking.The bracelets ticked down point by point. The fog thinned as they approached the barrier. The eastern shimmer appeared ahead, and they crossed through with the counters sitting at double digits, close enough to zero that Kyle’s hands were
Chapter 58 Part 2
She disappeared through a doorway at the far end of the hall. The crystal walls absorbed the sound of her footsteps, and then she was gone.Kyle stood at the altar in a white tuxedo that no longer felt like it fit, staring at the empty doorway, his chest aching in the exact same spot where an eight year old boy had felt a hollowness he could never name.He took the three signed divorce papers from Vivian’s hand. She surrendered them without resistance, her amber eyes watching his face with something complicated and quiet.Kyle tore them in half. Then in quarters. Then in eighths. He kept tearing until the indestructible paper finally gave up and crumbled into fine white dust between his fingers.“Those won’t be needed either.” Kyle brushed the dust from his palms.He changed out of the tuxedo in a side room, pulling on his regular clothes with the mechanical focus of a man running on autopilot. The diamond crown sat on the dresser where he left it. He looked at it for three seconds, t
Chapter 58 Part 1
Kyle walked back into the wedding hall three minutes after Hailey had closed the door behind them. His diamond crown was gone. His white tuxedo was wrinkled at the collar where his own hands had been gripping it. His eyes were red but dry.Wren stood at the altar where he had left her, her gloved hands resting on the velvet box that still held two pigeon egg rubies, her masked face turned toward him with the still, patient attention of a woman who already knew what was coming and was daring him to say it anyway.“I can’t do it.” Kyle stopped five feet from her. “The divorces. I can’t go through with them.”The silence that followed lasted exactly four seconds. Then the mask tilted, and the mouth beneath it changed from still to something sharp and broken and furious all at once.“You signed them.” Wren’s voice came out low and controlled, each word bitten off clean. “Three hours ago. With a steady hand. You looked me in the eyes and told me you were keeping a promise.”“I was wrong.”
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