Chapter 510 | A Man Who’s Earned It

Chapter 510: 510 | A Man Who’s Earned It

I stood under the spray with my eyes closed, letting the water run over the scratch marks on my back, the bite on my hip, the hickey on my collarbone that Belle had left like a territorial flag. The sting felt good. The warmth felt better. But what felt best was the number floating in the corner of my vision.

Eighteen days. Six hours. Forty-three minutes.

Two weeks ago, I’d been running on fumes. Twelve hours here, eight hours there, scraping by on Bronze-tier essence and desperation. Now I had a full vault, four women who’d chosen me with their eyes open, and a captain who’d kissed me in a tree line like I was oxygen and she’d been drowning.

The graft hummed against my sternum, warm and satisfied. Eight rings burned in the back of my skull. Seven steady, one flickering at the edge where Blair Davenport sat in her uncertainty, unable to decide what she wanted from me.

I turned off the water and grabbed a towel, catching my reflection in the fogged mirror. The guy staring back at me didn’t look like the same person who’d woken up in a fat body with seventy-two hours on the clock. C-rank strength showed in the definition across my shoulders and arms. Six weeks of training had carved away the softness, revealing something harder underneath. The scars from the leopard attack traced pale lines across my ribs and chest.

I looked like someone who’d earned the right to be here.

My phone buzzed on the bench. I wrapped the towel around my waist and checked the screen.

Aurora: "Guild scouts tomorrow. Vermillion Dawn. Try not to die before I impress them."

Belle: "Updated the rotation schedule. You’re on backup extraction duty tonight. Don’t argue."

Addison: "You owe me three coffee jellies and a black hair dye appointment. Tuesday. Non-negotiable."

Naomi: "Auntie’s boba Sunday?"

And one more, from a number I’d saved as "Lime Menace."

Misato: "Stop thinking about this morning. Focus on the gate bid. That’s an order."

I smiled at the screen. Couldn’t help it.

"You’re grinning like an idiot."

Jordan’s voice came from the next row of lockers. He appeared around the corner with a towel over his shoulder and dark circles under his eyes that suggested the morning drills had taken years off his life.

"Morning constitutionals," I said. "Good for the soul."

"Uh huh." Jordan opened his locker and started pulling out clothes. "So are we going to talk about the fact that you and Misato came back from that tree line looking like you’d just made some decisions? Or are we pretending I’m blind?"

"You’re the genius. You tell me."

Jordan pulled on a shirt and sat down on the bench, studying me with those half-lidded eyes that missed nothing. "I’ve known Misato for eight months. Never seen her smile during morning drills. Never seen her let anyone close enough to touch her hair. Today she did both."

"Maybe she’s in a good mood."

"Misato doesn’t have good moods. She has varying degrees of murderous intent." Jordan leaned back against the locker. "You collected another one. That’s what, five? Six? I’ve lost count."

"I’m not collecting anything."

"Sure." Jordan’s tone said he didn’t believe me for a second. "Belle has a spreadsheet. Aurora has a chat group. Naomi has a look on her face every time you walk into a room. And now Misato, who I genuinely thought was incapable of human emotion, is smiling at drills." He paused. "You’re building something. I don’t know what it is, but you’re building it."

The observation hit closer to home than I wanted to admit. Jordan was too smart for his own good, too perceptive, too willing to see patterns that other people missed. It was why he’d figured out Hikaru’s secret without anyone telling him. It was why he’d noticed the change in Misato when everyone else was too focused on the drill.

"I’m trying to survive," I said. "That’s all."

"No." Jordan stood up and grabbed his bag. "That’s what you were doing six weeks ago. Now you’re doing something else." He walked toward the exit, then stopped at the door. "Whatever it is, keep doing it. The squad’s never been better. Misato’s never been happier. And you’re the common factor in both equations."

He left before I could respond.

I finished dressing and checked my phone again. The gate-bid strategy session was in forty minutes, Building C conference room three. Misato had scheduled it before our conversation in the tree line, back when she was still pretending the professional boundary between us meant something.

My graft pulsed with warmth as I thought about her. The lime green ring burned steady in the back of my skull, bright and new and still settling into its place among the others.

I’d kissed a lot of women in this life. In both lives. But Misato had kissed me back like she was staking a claim, like she’d been waiting for permission and finally decided to stop asking. The taste of her lingered on my lips even after the shower.

The walk to Building C took me past the training field where we’d run drills that morning. The grass was still bent where Jordan’s shadows had dragged down clones, still scorched where Blair’s flames had burned too hot. The whole field told the story of a squad learning to work together.

My squad. My people. The ones who’d chosen to follow me into gates and out again.

I found myself at the edge of the cliff overlooking the water, the same spot where Naomi and I had trained that first night. The memory hit me with unexpected force. Her pink hair in the moonlight. Her voice going small when she asked if I was serious about wanting to learn. The way she’d looked at me like I was worth teaching.

That felt like a lifetime ago. Before the Void Gate. Before the leopards and the cliff and the three days of death. Before I’d learned what it cost to care about people in a world that wanted to kill them.

"You’re thinking too loud."

Belle’s voice came from behind me. She appeared at my shoulder with her light blue hair catching the wind and her tablet pressed against her chest like armor.

"Didn’t know you could hear thoughts."

"I can hear your face." Belle studied me with those amber eyes that calculated everything. "You’re running scenarios. Trying to figure out how to keep everyone alive when the gates get worse."

"Am I that obvious?"

"To me." She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume. Something expensive she’d probably bought at a discount. "The others think you’re being noble. Selfless leader, protecting his people. But I know better."

"What do you know?"