They traveled down to the fifth level—the command center, to be precise.
Monstrang was there, just like the last time they’d seen him. He was speaking with a yōkai, a male nekomata wearing jeans and a Superman T-shirt.
“… and that’s nyall I have to report, nya.” Kevin caught what sounded like the tail end of their conversation.
“No cat puns, please,” Lilian reprimanded.
“I didn’t say anything,” Kevin said, startled.
“Not you, Beloved. I was talking to the author.”
“Ugh, right.” Kevin decided to pretend he hadn’t heard that.
“Uhuhuhu,” Iris laughed.
“Stop laughing,” Kevin snapped.
“Ufufufu.”
His shoulders slumped. “E tu, Lilian?”
He ignored Kiara’s and Kotohime’s chuckling as the group stopped several feet from Monstrang, allowing him to finish his conversation with the nekomata.
“I see,” Monstrang grunted. “Thanks for the report. You’re dismissed.”
The nekomata left and Phoebe stepped in front of the massive man. “I have done as you requested and scouted the surrounding area.”
“And?” asked Monstrang. “How’s it looking up there?”
“Tense.” The single word answer was further elaborated on. “The announcement made on the news has caused widespread paranoia. Everyone is suspicious of everybody else. The people are filled with anxiety. While Polydora and I were walking through the streets, we received many looks of suspicion.”
“Did you ever think that maybe you received suspicious looks because of your outfits?” Kevin asked.
Phoebe looked down at her outfit. The black bodice fit snugly against her body and pushed up her breasts, while the white undershirt was frilly and had a dip in the front that revealed her cleavage. She also wore a short skirt, garters, and heeled shoes.
In other words, she was wearing a skimpy maid outfit.
“Is there something wrong with my clothing?” Phoebe asked with a frown.
“Not at all, unless you take the fact that most people don’t wear maid outfits into consideration.” Kevin tried keeping the sarcasm out of his voice but wasn’t sure if he succeeded.
“Hmm. So, you are saying that I should get another outfit to wear?”
“Yes.”
“But, if I wear another outfit, how will I be able to properly serve you?”
Must. Not. Facepalm.
“Just why are you so dead set on serving me?”
“Because I have been told that maids often become mistresses,” Phoebe said, her tone completely serious. “And if I become your mistress, then it means you will take me to your bed. And if you take me to your bed, it means I’ll be able to sire your child.”
Kevin facepalmed.
“I should’ve seen this coming,” he muttered, his words muffled by his hand.
***
The group strolled through a hallway, traveling towards their temporary residence. Kevin didn’t know how long they would be staying here, but he hoped it wouldn’t be long. He didn’t want to spend years in an underground base surrounded by cement walls.
Apartments were divided by wings. East. South. North. West. They were then further divided by floor and number. The apartment belonging to him and the Pnév̱ma clan was on the fourth floor, in the east wing, and was the 22nd apartment—E422.
“You’re looking a little stressed, Stud.”
Kevin didn’t even glance at Iris. He just kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
Grinning, Iris leaned into his left side and wrapped her arms around his, pulling until it rested firmly between her breasts. “It’s just cuz I know you so well.”
“Whatever,” Kevin sighed as his arm was squashed between her soft pillows.
“Kevin?” Lilian garnered his attention. “Weren’t you looking for Kotohime to get something from her?”
It took him a moment to remember the original reason he’d gone in search of Kotohime. “Oh! That’s right! Kotohime, do you have my cell phone?”
“Ara? Cell phone?” Walking several paces behind them, Kotohime tilted her head curiously. “Ah, yes. I do have your cell phone.” She reached into her cleavage, pulled out his phone, and held it out to Kevin. “Karen-sama called several times while you were unconscious. I had been trying to call her back, but your phone stopped working at some point.”
Kevin shook his left arm out of Iris’s grip. The raven-haired girl pouted, but he ignored it and took the phone from Kotohime. He tried turning it on and sighed when the screen remained blank.
“It doesn’t work because it’s out of battery. I’ll have to charge it tonight.” He resisted the urge to rub his eyes. “Not like it matters. With the blackout in place, I can’t call anyone anyway.”
Mom called… He frowned at his cellphone. How could she get a phone call through during the communication blackout? Or did she call before the blackout?
Ever since he found out that his mom had known about yōkai all along, and that he was living with a family of kitsune, he’d realized his mom was an enigma. However, Kevin was beginning to realize that his mom might be even more mysterious than he’d assumed.
“I apologize, Kevin-sama.” Kotohime bowed her head.
“It’s fine.” He waved her apology off with a smile. “I know that you’re still not used to using some of the new technology. This is my fault. I should have bought you guys a couple cell phones to use in case of emergencies.”
“You are too kind.”
“Of course he is,” Phoebe stated, puffing her chest out proudly. “My master is the kindest and strongest person ever.”
“Aren’t you going to start screaming about how the love of your life is calling the stud ‘master’?’” a curious Iris asked Polydora, who looked stoically ahead.
“I have given up on trying to convince Lady Phoebe that she shouldn’t be with that ape.” Polydora then cast Iris an irritated glare. “And Lady Phoebe is not the love of my life. She is the person that I have chosen to serve because I admire her more than anyone else in the world.”
“So you say.” Iris grinned. “But I see yuri in your future.”
Polydora looked bemused. “What is yuri?”
“It’s when…” Iris leaned over and whispered into Polydora’s ear. Those present watched as the girl’s face became redder and redder, until her cheeks looked like they would explode.
The girl reared her head back and gawked at Iris. “H-h-how shameless!”
“Uhuhuhu, that’s what she said.”
Kevin ignored the byplay between the two and sent Phoebe an aggrieved look, as if her words caused him physical pain. “Would you stop it with the ‘master’ thing? Seriously, Phoebe, it’s just so…”
“So what?”
“It’s embarrassing,” Lilian answered for Kevin. “He actually likes it, but he’s too embarrassed to admit it.”
Kevin shot his mate a betrayed look. “Traitor.”
“Sorry, Beloved.” She smiled at him. “You know I’m just teasing you.”
“You don’t sound very sorry…”
“Would a kiss make it better?”
“It might,” Kevin said, trying to act nonchalant.
Lilian giggled and kissed him on the cheek. “Better?”
“A little.”
Iris frowned at the two. “I seriously wish you two would stop doing that, or at the very least include me.”
Kevin opened his mouth to tell the girl what he thought of her idea, but then Lilian placed a kiss on her sister’s cheek.
“Better?” the redhead asked.
Kevin didn’t think he would ever forget the look on Iris’s face. Her eyes had gone wide, impossibly so. They looked like giant dishpans. Her cheeks were stained a dark crimson. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. Kevin thought she looked like a Magikarp out of water.
“Ah…” Iris’s eyes darte
d away from Lilian. She looked around the hallway they were walking down, then glanced at the floor. “Ah, um… yes. A little.”
Kevin and Lilian stared at Iris for several seconds, then shared a grin.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Iris look so flustered before.”
“If I had known that all it takes to fluster my sister is a kiss on the cheek, I would have done this much sooner. It’s pretty amusing.”
They shared a chuckle. Iris pouted, but she was still too embarrassed to say anything.
Phoebe and Polydora split ways with them upon reaching their own room. Phoebe promised Kevin that she would be around early that morning to clean his underwear. He didn’t know where she got the idea that he would let her clean his underwear, but he told her exactly what he thought of her desire—by shoving her into her room and slamming the door shut.
Their room was several doors down from Phoebe and Polydora’s. Upon opening the door, Kevin was greeted to a sight that, in all honesty, he should have seen coming.
“Tee-hee-hee! Catch me if you can!”
“L-Lady Camellia, please put some clothes on!”
Kirihime was chasing Camellia across the room. The mother of Lilian and Iris ran about, stark naked, laughing joyously, like a child who’d just finished taking a bath and didn’t want to get dressed yet.
“Ah! Kevin-kyun!”
Kevin felt resignation as Camellia realized he was present, then suddenly changed direction to charge at him like a, well, like a naked woman with the mind of an overly excited five-year-old.
“Somehow, I feel like I should have seen this coming,” he said seconds before Camellia pounced.
“HAWA!”
Lilian and Iris stood silently as their mom jumped on top of Kevin, sending them both to the floor. The woman laughed some more, wrapping her arms around Kevin’s head and shoving it into her cleavage, smothering him. For his part, Kevin flailed his arms wildly as his ability to breath became hampered by the mother’s superlative bosoms.
“That Kevin is becoming more genre savvy with each novel,” Iris claimed, crossing her arms and nodding several times.
“Of course he is!” Lilian puffed up her chest in pride. “He’s my mate, after all.”
“… Right.”
***
Lilian sat down in front of her desk. Technically, it was her and Kevin’s desk… and Iris’s too, she supposed, but since Kevin had been unconscious until today, she’d been the one using it the most. Iris hadn’t used it at all.
Kevin was in the shower. He’d asked if she wanted to join him, but while she was tempted to do just that, Lilian had reluctantly declined. A lot had happened in the past two days, and she had spent all that time with Kevin, tending to him while he’d been unconscious. While she didn’t really feel like being alone and wanted to be with him, she also wanted to do some drawing for the manga she’d been working on.
It was still a work in progress. She hadn’t started to truly work on her manga until after Kevin had rescued her from the Citadel of Light. Before that, she’d mostly just practiced her drawing techniques.
Drawing manga was a lot harder than Lilian had first imagined it to be, and not just because drawing was difficult and required her to constantly hone her craft. There was so much that went into creating a manga. You couldn’t just throw together a bunch of random drawings and hope for the best. Each drawing had to flow into the next and tell the story you wanted it to. Panels had to be planned out. A seamless flow of illustrated scenes that told a story through chapters.
Lilian was only halfway through chapter one. She had the chapter planned out, but drawing was an art that required patience. Grabbing her lightest graphite pencil, the first thing she did was draw manga panels in an approximation of where she felt they should be placed. After that, she grabbed a slightly harder pencil and made very light sketches without adding any details.
“Hawa…” she muttered in concentration as she looked at her panels… and then erased them and began again.
She soon lost herself to a world of lines. Her hand moved without conscious thought, flowing from one line to the next. Time elapsed. She had no concept of its passage, such was her concentration. Perhaps it was because she was so lost that Lilian didn’t hear their bedroom door open and close.
“It looks like your sketches have been getting a lot better,” a voice said behind her.
“KYA!”
Lilian was so startled that she jumped out of her seat. Unfortunately, the person who’d crept up behind her had been standing directly over her, and thus, when she leapt from her chair, her head slammed into his with a loud crack!
“OOF!”
Lilian stumbled back into the chair, which tipped over. She hit the ground, the chair clattering to the carpeted floor with her. Her hands automatically went to her head, rubbing the large lump forming on it, which felt like it was the size of a baseball.
“Owch,” a voice said near her. Lilian shook her head, then turned to the source of the voice.
Kevin lay on his back, appearing more than just a little dazed. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes sightless and glazed over. A rather prominent bruise on his chin showed where her head had hit him.
“Beloved!” Lilian hurried to Kevin’s side and helped him sit up. The poor boy stared around at everything in a daze, his eyes unable to focus on anything for too long.
“Ugh, w-what hit me?”
“I-I am so sorry,” Lilian apologized. Kevin’s legs were spread out in front of him, so she crawled onto his legs, straddling them as she leaned over and began kissing his chin where she’d accidentally headbutted him.
“L-Lilian…”
“I am sorry,” Lilian muttered more apologies as she continued kissing his chin. “I didn’t mean to hit you like that.” More kissing. “You just startled me so much.”
“It’s okay.” Kevin’s hands landed on her back, lightly rubbing her skin as she continued planting kisses on him. “I’m sorry for sneaking up on you.” He groaned when Lilian stopped kissing his chin and instead kissed his neck. “Though if this is the kind of treatment I get for being headbutted by you, maybe I should get headbutted more often.”
Lilian smiled as she placed her hands on Kevin’s cheeks and pulled him into a kiss. She resisted the temptation to deepen it, instead enjoying the sweet moment before helping the still somewhat dazed Kevin to his feet.
“I noticed that you’re working on your manga,” he said after regaining full control of his mental faculties.
“Ah, yes.” Lilian blushed. She was still somewhat embarrassed about showing her manga drawings to others. She didn’t think they were that good. “Do you… do you want to see them?”
“Of course I do.” Kevin’s grin was like the brightest light she’d ever seen. It practically glowed in the dark. “I always love seeing what new drawings you come up with.”
Kevin put the chair back up and held it out for her. Lilian thanked him as she sat down, and tentatively flipped her sketchpad back to the first page.
“So… this is what I have so far,” Lilian murmured. “What, um, what do you think?”
She knew that she had no reason to be nervous, but she always felt like an art student displaying their work to a professional for evaluation whenever she showed Kevin her drawings.
Kevin flipped to the next page, not speaking as he gazed at her work with a contemplative expression. Lilian placed her hands on her lap and waited in anxious silence.
As the seconds ticked by, Lilian became more and more nervous. Did he not like them? Would he say he thought they were horrible? A part of her knew he would never say such things, but the other part worried. She wanted him to like her drawings, to praise her and tell her that she was an amazing artist. But, at the same time, she didn’t think her art was good enough to deserve praise.
“I think…”
Lilian stiffened in her seat.
A pair of arms slid under her armpits and wrapped around her tor
so, resting just under her breasts.
“… that my mate is one of the most amazing people in the world.”
Lilian would have normally let out a relieved breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding, but Kevin chose that moment to place a kiss at the junction between her neck and shoulder.
Her breathing hitched.
“Truly…”
Another kiss. Lilian moaned and tilted her head.
“My mate…”
More kisses. Lilian’s breath caught when Kevin lightly suckled on a spot just below where her ears would be in human form.
“Is blessed with a most enviable talent…”
Lilian nearly turned into a puddle when Kevin began rubbing one of her ears. Like most kitsune, her ears were very sensitive. His fingers traced an outline along their edge, before he grabbed it between his index finger and thumb and slowly rubbed it along its length. At the same time, his mouth continued working on her neck, trailing kisses and teasing all of the spots that he knew drove her wild. By this point, Lilian’s shoulders and chest were heaving as she sucked in deep breaths. Her face had become flushed, and a light sheen of sweat glistened on her healthily glowing skin.
A warm hand rubbed her taut stomach, which twitched with little jolts as fingers danced along her skin. It rose up, past her belly button, and then moved higher until it was just below her breasts. Lilian’s breathing hitched seconds before her body caught fire when the hand slipped under her shirt and fondled her directly.
“K-Kevin,” Lilian moaned out her mate’s name, unconsciously thrusting her chest out to get more of this delectable feeling.
Smiling, Kevin slipped his hand out of her shirt. Lilian moaned in complaint, then squeaked when Kevin scooped her up, one hand going under her legs and the other around her shoulders.
He carried her over to the bed. It wasn’t as large as their queen-sized bed back home, which they’d bought because a full couldn’t comfortably fit three people, but it would do for now.
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