Chapter 629: Cringe

Grey started laughing almost immediately.

It wasn’t a polite chuckle either, his head tipping back as the sound rolled across the courtyard, but to his surprise, Mensah only stared at him for half a second before joining in.

Within moments both men were laughing like they had just shared the funniest joke in the world, while Brad looked increasingly tempted to find a chair and a bag of popcorn.

The women were considerably less amused.

Elowen probably cared the least about being casually included in some imaginary harem, though the reason had less to do with Grey and more to do with how she had been raised. Her mother had hand-selected the fathers of every one of her children according to whatever traits she believed might strengthen the Imperial Bloodline, and Elowen had never even learned which man had actually fathered her.

If she had to guess, he probably hadn’t come from Melix at all.

The Goddess Empress had spent most of her life trying to produce a descendant capable of pushing her bloodline somewhere she couldn’t reach herself, and when that failed, she simply sacrificed those same children and concentrated everything into one.

If no man within Melix met her standards, finding one from a neighboring Empire or Kingdom would have been the most obvious solution, and Elowen had been conditioned so thoroughly not to care that she had never bothered investigating.

Sharing Grey therefore wasn’t some horrifying cultural taboo in her mind. She liked him, he clearly liked her, and the rest could sort itself out later.

The Earth women were a very different story, especially considering none of them had even admitted to wanting Grey in the first place.

Mauve’s reaction was muted, her expression barely changing at all, which wasn’t too surprising after everything between them had settled into something far more comfortable than the strange period when she had offered Grey her body out of obligation.

Amara looked almost exactly as calm as usual, though the air around her seemed a degree colder than it had several moments earlier.

Amunet was not nearly so subtle.

Her dark-gold hair began shifting around her shoulders despite there being almost no wind in the courtyard, strands lifting and curling as the Old One power inside her responded to her mood.

Grey noticed it immediately, and his laughter only grew harder.

"How about it?!" Mensah roared, apparently interpreting all of this as the opening of some grand rivalry. "Man to man!"

Grey finally managed to stop laughing and cleared his throat, wiping at the corner of one eye before looking Mensah over again.

"Here’s the thing, as much as I’d love to kick your ass, I think there’s already a pretty long line waiting."

He gave a helpless shrug and raised both palms.

The effects of Ma Famille had already travelled back through the rest of the family after Amara joined, bringing another burst of outside perspective and comprehension with them.

Grey couldn’t know exactly what each person had gained without paying some attention and focus, but considering what the treasure had done for Brad and what had just happened to Amara, there was no chance Amunet had gotten nothing useful out of it.

Honestly, even before the latest boost, Grey would have given Amunet decent odds against Mensah.

"You better not stop me," Amunet said.

Grey turned toward her and immediately raised his hands higher, the chains extending from his rings rattling behind him as the captured Elementals shifted in their restraints. "Wouldn’t dream of it."

It was only then that Mensah seemed to properly notice what those chains were attached to.

His eyes narrowed as he followed them toward the collection of restrained Elementals sprawled throughout the courtyard, lingering noticeably longer on the two Infernal Princes. Something in his expression finally changed, the playful arrogance sharpening as he recalculated the person standing in front of him.

Then he moved anyway.

Mensah took advantage of Grey’s raised hands and closed the distance in a burst, his fist driving forward with the same kind of commitment Grey remembered from the recap episode.

The bastard’s entire fighting style had been built around his hands, packing frightening amounts of force into direct strikes that looked far more complex than they seemed, and Grey could already tell this one wasn’t meant as some friendly tap.

Grey didn’t move. In fact, he cringed. For half a second, Grey almost felt bad for the poor bastard.

Amunet appeared from the side so quickly that Mensah barely managed to turn his head before her foot buried itself into his ribs.

BOOM!

The impact folded his body around her leg and launched him across the courtyard, sending him spinning through the air before he crashed into the stone and bounced several more times. Grey watched him disappear through a cloud of dust, then slowly lowered his hands while Brad made a strangled sound somewhere between laughter and sympathy.

Amunet hadn’t held back nearly as much this time, and maybe the only reason she hadn’t outright killed him with this strike alone was because she would have much rather seen him suffer to his last breath.

The first time Mensah crossed the line, she had still been thinking about the larger problem surrounding Earth and the need to gather every powerful Candidate they could find. Leaving him alive and capable of joining later had been more useful than permanently crippling someone who might eventually become an asset.

But now her patience had run completely thin. He had grabbed her once, survived the lesson, then arrived in Melix and immediately started talking about taking women like prizes before trying to sucker punch Grey the moment an opening appeared. Amunet could tolerate stupidity, arrogance, and even an impressive amount of vulgarity after spending this long around Grey. In fact, even she was known to make a crude, wild joke from time to time.

But there were still limits, and Mensah had found hers twice.

There wasn’t going to be a third.