Chapter 109 – What She Wants.

Matt didn't move.

The girl was still sitting on the bed with her arms open, waiting, and Aurora was still sprawled on the floor getting her breath back.

Neither of them said anything.

For a moment the room went still.

And Matt used that moment to think.

Because now he could. That was something he had learned with Iris a long time ago: thoughts could only be heard in one direction.

Whoever was outside, controlling the body, had no secrets from whoever was inside. Everything they thought, the other one heard. But when both of them were here, inside the mental world, that connection disappeared.

Each of them was shut inside their own head. So the girl had no way of knowing what Matt was thinking.

Matt looked at her. She smiled back at him, wiggling the fingers of her open hands a little, as if reminding him that the hug was still pending.

Matt had two paths. He had already walked both of them, one with each of the girls who came before her.

The first was Iris's path.

Rejection.

With Iris he had fought, locked her away, hated her for months, and in the end he had found that method to get her out of his body.

With this girl he wouldn't have to fight.

She listened to him. She complained, but she listened. So he could simply ignore her, keep her quiet, and in the meantime prepare another separation ritual.

But this time, Matt knew he couldn't leave anything behind.

All of the vampiric power out. Down to the last drop.

Matt had Aurora now. He had Sun and Moon, even if they were with Noxx. He didn't need the vampiric power to defend himself the way he used to.

And yet something about that idea scared him.

Matt remembered what Noxx had told him in the Forge Cave.

That at the last moment of the first ritual, without realizing it, he himself had decided to keep a part of the vampiric power.

Not because he had to, and not out of habit.

Out of fear.

Matt believed that if he removed all the vampire blood, the queen might stop seeing him as part of her bloodline.

And Elyra had no reason to keep alive someone who was no longer part of her bloodline.

She could make him disappear.

Just like that.

But if he kept that part…

Matt looked at the girl again.

If he kept that part, this was going to keep happening.

She had explained it to him herself, with her ridiculous lottery theory.

As long as there was vampiric power left inside him, every time one of them separated, another would appear.

Iris.

Noxx.

Now her.

And after her, the next one, and the next.

So what was he, then?

A man turned into a vampire woman, or a factory for vampire women?

Lucrecia had said it a little while ago.

The only known methods were conversion and taking a man's seed.

Those were the known methods. But now there was him, and overnight he could produce brand-new princesses without anyone asking him to.

If anyone else ever understood that, they wouldn't want to study him.

They would want to keep him.

And the only person from outside this castle who suspected anything was lying on the floor of the visiting room, weak and without her scythe.

Matt thought that maybe he should go back.

Maybe he should go back and finish what the girl had wanted to do before he stopped her.

But there was another problem on Matt's mind.

If he removed all of the power, then what?

What was he going to do?

Go back to the human world for what?

His career didn't exist anymore. The queen had taken care of that the first time she kidnapped him.

Matt remembered he had been away from home for months, and by now his family had probably gotten used to living without him again.

And the promise he'd made his sister about her graduation, one of the few things he truly wanted to keep with her…

Matt didn't finish the thought, because at that moment something hugged him.

The girl had gotten up without him noticing and now had both arms wrapped around him, her face buried against his neck.

And she was smelling him.

"Mmm," she murmured against his skin. "I love your smell, Papa."

Matt closed his eyes.

What was it with all of them and his smell?

Iris smelled him, Noxx smelled him, and now this girl was smelling him!

Matt was starting to think it was a problem with the whole bloodline.

"Let go of me."

"No~"

Matt put his hands on her shoulders and pushed, but she didn't move.

Matt pushed harder, and the girl only tipped back slightly, without letting go.

That was when Matt realized how strong she was.

"Five more seconds," she said, without lifting her face. "No, wait. Ten would be better, or it could be twenty, hehe~."

"I told you to let go of me," Matt ordered, annoyed.

"Please, twenty is fine," she pleaded, sounding sad.

Matt tensed his arms and pushed with everything he had. He managed to get her a few centimeters away, just enough to see her face, and she looked at him with an expression of complete annoyance before latching back onto him.

"Hey!"

Aurora had gotten up. She came running in from the side, grabbed the girl around the waist and pulled with all her strength.

"Release my master!"

"And what do you think you're doing?!" The girl turned her head, indignant, without letting go of Matt. "You nosy little pest! This is none of your business!"

"Of course it's my business! I'm helping my master!"

"I'm your mistress too!"

"I do not accept a mistress who takes advantage of my master!"

"Take advantage?! It's a hug! Papa owed me one!"

"He said no!"

Between Matt pushing from one side and Aurora pulling from the other, the girl finally lost her grip. She came loose all at once, and the two of them fell to the floor in a tangle of arms and white and golden hair.

The girl tried to get up immediately.

She couldn't, because Aurora wouldn't let her.

Aurora had stayed latched onto her, arms around her waist and legs locked over hers, exactly the way the girl had held her at the start.

"Let go of me!"

"No."

The girl narrowed her eyes and moved her fingers to tickle Aurora.

"Ah…! No! Haha…! Th-That's not fair! Hahaha!"

Aurora squirmed, tears of laughter escaping her, feet kicking in the air.

But she didn't let go.

"Let go and I'll stop!"

"N-No! Haha! Unless my master orders otherwise, I am not letting go of you! Hahaha! Master, if you'd like to give me an order, now would be a very good time!"

Matt gave no order.

He stood there watching.

The girl on top of Aurora, tickling her with an enormous grin.

Aurora underneath, crying with laughter and refusing to let go out of sheer stubbornness. The two of them fighting on the floor of his head like a pair of idiots.

And the second path came back into Matt's mind.

Noxx's path.

Trying to get along with her, the way he'd ended up doing with Noxx. Giving her a place, accepting her, no longer treating her like a problem he had to get rid of.

But Noxx had never called him Papa.

And Noxx, besides, actually listened to him.

She argued, she complained, sometimes she got weird, but when Matt said something seriously, Noxx did it.

This girl listened to him too, yes, but only after taking his body, fighting a princess, inventing an army of blood dolls and nearly eating somebody.

If he had to compare the two, Noxx won hands down.

And then there was the matter of the cells.

That story about how she had been talking with the queen's cells inside him. That they were peculiar. That they had told her things.

That was what bothered Matt most of all, because if that girl spent her time chatting with whatever was left of Elyra in his body, then Matt had no way of knowing whose side she was on.

But there she was, with Aurora on the floor at her mercy, unarmed and with no way to defend herself.

And instead of attacking her, she was tickling her.

Matt didn't know what to make of that.

"Hey."

The girl stopped with her fingers still on Aurora's ribs. Aurora let all her breath out at once, exhausted, but still didn't let go of her.

"Mm?"

"What are your intentions?"

The girl looked at him in surprise, as if he'd asked her something very silly.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No."

She was silent for a second.

Then she smiled. A big smile, happy, completely honest, even though Aurora was still hanging off her waist and not letting her get up.

"I want to see Mama."

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