Chapter 591: Tuna for Honest Feedback
Chapter 591: Tuna for Honest Feedback
I stood in the middle of my room at the Olympus Rising compound, staring at the ceiling while my phone burned a hole in my pocket and Natalia’s pendant burned a hole in my sternum.
Three hundred miles of ocean between us and she still managed to make my chest feel like I’d swallowed a glacier.
Maki stretched in her cat form on the pillow, both tails flicking lazily. Her golden eyes tracked me with the casual disinterest of a creature who had watched civilizations rise and fall and found them all equally boring.
"Master kissed the red one again."
"Thank you, Maki. That’s very helpful."
"Maki could smell it from the shadow space. Master’s lips taste like wine and poor decisions."
"Go to sleep."
"Maki is three hundred years old. Maki sleeps when Maki chooses."
I pulled out my phone. The screen showed 11:47 PM. No new messages from Natalia. The pendant sat against my skin like a chunk of dry ice, which meant she was either sleeping or building a list of creative punishments that would make a medieval torturer weep with admiration.
I typed out a message. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that too.
What do you say to the woman whose soul is literally stitched to yours after you just spent three hours having dinner with someone else and ended the night kissing her outside a corporate skyscraper?
I settled on: Back in my room. Dinner was fine. Nothing happened.
The pendant dropped five degrees.
She knew I was lying. Of course she knew. The Covenant bond didn’t come with an off switch. Every spike of guilt, every flutter of something I refused to name, every goddamn elevated heartbeat transmitted straight to Natalia like a biological lie detector test administered by a jealous telekinetic goddess.
My phone buzzed.
Define "nothing."
I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my face with both hands. Maki watched from the pillow with the expression of someone settling in for quality entertainment.
We had dinner. We talked. She walked me to the door. I came back.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. The pendant oscillated between cold and colder.
Your heart rate spiked four minutes ago. The pendant doesn’t lie even when you do.
I looked at the ceiling.
"Maki."
"Yes, Master?"
"Am I a terrible person?"
"Master killed a tree god with a baseball bat, has five women bonded to his soul, and just kissed a sixth. Maki thinks the word ’terrible’ is insufficient."
"Thanks."
"Master is welcome. Maki will accept tuna as payment for honest feedback."
My phone buzzed again.
I’m not angry. I’m disappointed. Which is worse and you know it. Come home safe. We will talk. I love you. Stop doing stupid things.
Then, a second later:
Also Emi stress-baked seventeen pounds of cookies today and the kitchen smells like a factory. Please come home before she burns the house down.
I smiled despite everything. Typed back: I love you too. I’ll stop doing stupid things when the universe stops putting them in front of me.
The universe isn’t the problem, Satori. You are.
Fair point.
I dropped the phone on the nightstand and collapsed backward onto the bed. The mattress was obscenely comfortable. Memory foam that probably cost more than my mother’s car. Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count high enough to qualify as a mathematical achievement.
None of it compared to Natalia’s bed with its slightly-too-cold sheets and the way she curled into my side like a territorial cat claiming the warmest spot in the house.
The pendant pulsed once. Warm this time. Brief. Like a hand squeezing mine across the distance.
I pressed my palm against it and closed my eyes.
Sleep should have come easy. My body had been through hell over the past week. Three consecutive fights in the tournament. The Gauntlet. The assessment spar with Reyna. Every muscle fiber in my torso held together by Emi’s healing magic and the regenerator brace still humming against my ribs like a mechanical lullaby.
But my brain wouldn’t shut up.
Project Prometheus. My father’s research. Artificial Aspect induction in adult Zeroes. The classified files someone tried to steal from VHC archives. Seraphina watching from her tower with eyes that saw too much. Veronica’s alliance offer sitting in a folder on my nightstand like a time bomb wrapped in legal language. Julian’s family hiring private security firms to surveil my movements.
Nel’s voice slid through my consciousness like smoke under a door.
Cortisol levels elevated. Adrenaline residual from the Cabana encounter still metabolizing. Recommend sleep within the next thirty minutes or cognitive function will degrade below tactical thresholds.
"I know."
The Audience appreciates insomnia as a narrative device, but Apollo specifically requested that you not die of exhaustion before the next dramatic confrontation. He says it would be anticlimactic.
"Tell Apollo I’ll die when I feel like it."
He says that’s the spirit.
Maki shifted on the pillow. Her small body radiated heat disproportionate to her size. She pressed her nose against my ear and purred, the vibration traveling through my skull and settling somewhere behind my eyes like a warm compress.
"Master should sleep. The red woman and the purple woman and the blue woman and the white woman and the chain woman all need Master alive tomorrow."
"You forgot yourself."
"Maki does not need Master alive. Maki has nine lives. But Maki prefers Master alive because Master gives the best ear scratches and Maki has not yet found a suitable replacement."
I scratched behind her ears. She purred louder. The vibration loosened something in my chest that had been wound tight since Reyna’s lips left mine.
Forty-seven seconds later, I was out.
Morning arrived with sunlight and violence.
The knock on my door at 6:00 AM could have doubled as a battering ram. Three sharp impacts that rattled the frame and sent Maki launching off the pillow in a blur of black fur and indignant hissing.
I was on my feet before my brain fully engaged, hand reaching for a bat that wasn’t there because I’d left it propped against the desk instead of within arm’s reach like a rookie.
"Mr. Nakano." Helena’s voice. Crisp. Professional. The vocal equivalent of a pressed suit. "Your itinerary for today has been updated. Guild Master Cabana requests your presence in the executive briefing room at 0700 hours. Breakfast will be provided."
I glanced at the clock. One hour.
"Got it."