Chapter 238: Shameless

"Oh! Yuki!" Marie called out, her tone laced with patronizing sweetness. "How was your first day? Where did they assign you? I didn’t see your name on any of the standard ward lists."

Yuki stopped, keeping her answer brief as she tried to keep moving. "It was fine."

"Where were you posted, though?" Gareth pressed, stepping forward to block her path slightly. "None of us saw you in general surgery or emergency."

Yuki offered a bland, polite smile. "I was placed in the Magicology Research Department."

The entire group froze dead in their tracks. Silence descended over them like a heavy blanket before Marie let out an exaggerated, shrill laugh.

"Magicology?" Marie scoffed, crossing her arms disdainfully. "Nice try, Yuki. That’s Dr. Kieran’s private elite research team. Not even the top-ranked student in our class got assigned there. You expect us to believe they gave that spot to *you*?"

Yuki shrugged casually, slinging her bag higher over her shoulder. "Believe what you want. Personally, I think it’s just my bad luck."

Their faces soured instantly at her choice of words. Calling the most coveted position in the entire medical facility "bad luck" was a direct slap in the face to all of them. Marie’s eyes narrowed into angry slits.

"You’re lying. You have to be."

Yuki just gave them another indifferent shrug, turning on her heel toward the sliding glass doors. "Think whatever makes you sleep better at night."

Her complete lack of defensiveness made Marie waver. Uncertainty flickered across Gareth’s face as well—what if she wasn’t lying?

"Well, it’s not like it’s impossible," Gareth sneered loudly at her back, his voice dripping with venom. "Must be nice having a sister pretty enough to land the Alpha and make her Luna. Some people just use connections to get everything handed to them."

Marie scoffed in agreement, clutching her clipboard. "Seriously. People like her make real hard work look like a complete joke."

Yuki stopped in her tracks. She turned around slowly, a blindingly bright, utterly harmless smile resting on her face. The sheer beauty of her expression caught them off guard for a second, but the words that tumbled out of her mouth were laced with pure razor wire.

"If you think it’s so easy," Yuki said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness, "why don’t you tell your own sister to do the same thing?"

Gareth and Marie’s expressions turned instantly dark. Yuki feigned a sudden, exaggerated look of realization, tapping her chin with a finger.

"Oh... don’t tell me she can’t? You see, even marrying into the right family takes hard work." She meant every single word. None of these spoiled Dravenhall kids had the slightest clue about the blood, sweat, and sacrifices her sister had made to survive and reach this position.

"You shameless bitch!" Marie hissed, her face contorting in outrage that Yuki wasn’t even attempting to hide or feel embarrassed about the gold-digger insults.

"Even gold diggers usually have the decency to feel shame," another guy in the group spat out, though Yuki hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.

Yuki’s bright smile never wavered. "I’d be very careful with my mouth if I were you," she warned softly, her eyes flashing with a cold, dangerous glint. "You’re talking about the Ravencourt Luna family now."

Watching their faces instantly drain of color as the reality of her warning hit them was absolute bliss. Yuki turned back toward the doors, throwing a final, cheerful remark over her shoulder.

"Besides... digging for gold is exhausting work anyway."

She walked out without giving them another glance, leaving them fuming in the lobby. The warm evening sun hit her face the moment she stepped onto the concrete plaza. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare, scanning the driveway until she spotted Kieran’s blue Aston Martin idling quietly near the curb.

She hurried over and pulled open the rear passenger door to toss her bag inside, but before she could get in, the front window glided down with a smooth mechanical hum.

Kieran leaned across the console, glaring at her with dark annoyance. "Do I look like your fucking chauffeur to you?" he snapped, his deep voice sharp.

Yuki let out a nervous, awkward laugh, quickly shutting the back door and scurrying around to the front passenger side instead. She pulled the door open, slid into the rich leather seat, and pulled the seatbelt across her chest, clicking it into place.

"Look at that, you finally learned how to put on a seatbelt all by yourself," Kieran mocked dryly as he shifted the car into drive and pulled smoothly out onto the main road.

Yuki shot him a lethal sideways glare. "The more you talk, the more you sound like Kaden. It’s unbearable."

Kieran raised an eyebrow, keeping his eyes on the road. "And?"

She let out a harsh, dry laugh. "If I ever had to choose which one of you to kill first, it would definitely be him," she hissed, purely to get under his skin.

"I never realized you spent your free time plotting our murders," Kieran replied smoothly, his tone cool and unbothered. "That isn’t a very appropriate way to think about your elder brothers."

Yuki drew in a long, frustrated breath, rubbing her temples. "Can you stop with the ’brother’ thing? It’s ridiculous."

Kieran gave her a genuinely confused glance as he navigated through evening traffic. "Weren’t you the one claiming earlier that you wanted older brothers?"

"Brothers don’t actively hate their siblings!" she snickered, leaning back against the headrest.

"Siblings absolutely hate each other," Kieran retorted without missing a beat. "It’s practically a biological guarantee."

Realizing she was never going to win an argument against his infuriatingly stubborn logic, Yuki gave up. She unzipped her bag, pulled out her white wireless earbuds, and shoved them firmly into her ears to tune him out completely. A second later, Kieran’s voice slid effortlessly into her mind, cutting right through the silence.

’You do realize I can mindlink you whenever I want, right?’ he snickered in her mind

Yuki snapped her head toward him, glaring daggers at his calm side-profile as he drove. He didn’t even look at her, a subtle, infuriating smirk resting on his lips. Before she could send back a heated reply, his voice echoed in her head again, dropping into that dangerously soft, unexpected tone.

’Tell me, vixen... do you get your dirty inspirations when you’re sitting right next to me like this?’

Yuki froze, completely speechless, her cheeks catching fire all over again. "I thought we were done with that topic!" she blurted out aloud, ripping the earbuds from her ears.

Kieran’s lips curved into a faint, devastating smile as he glanced sideways at her.

’Not by a long shot,’ he replied through the link, his voice dark and hummed with quiet satisfaction. ’No male on earth simply gets over finding a whole book filled with filthy drawings of himself.’

She covered her face with one hand. ’Please forget the sketchbook exists.’ she pleaded

There was a brief silence. Then she felt his amusement through the link.

’Absolutely not.’

Yuki groaned and sank lower into the seat. With a subtle flick of his focus, he severed the mindlink connection, leaving her sitting in stunned, breathless silence as the car sped toward the Alpha estate.