Chapter 136: Safe Enough Is Not Safe Forever

Chapter 136: Chapter 136: Safe Enough Is Not Safe Forever

"You have a secret support?"

"How many times are you gonna ask this?"

"Until I’m sure you’re the only one who can do this to you."

"You think I’m going around kissing others? I never had a supporter before."

I smiled at her confession.

"I didn’t even think about it until you brought it up."

"Because your face does that jealous math the second anyone mentions proximity."

She exhaled, still almost smiling.

"I’m going to the public hall to run telekinetic load drills with ranked cadets who are not on my slate and not in my bed. You can come if you keep your mouth shut and your chains off other people’s bodies."

"Copy."

"And you don’t start a scene if some woman stares at you."

"I never done that before."

"I don’t know. You’re a pervert."

"I won’t."

"And you don’t start a scene if I talk to another man."

That one landed sharper.

I held her gaze.

"Is there another man?"

Gianna’s expression flattened into something dangerously close to satisfaction.

"See. Contagious."

"That’s not an answer."

"There isn’t one on my training block," she said.

"If there were, I would have told you the same way I told you about the Empress problem, directly, not as bait."

A beat.

"Are you still coming, or did the idea of ordinary cadets bore you now that the fantasy rival collapsed?"

"I’m coming."

"Then walk. And if Rei finds out you followed me like a lost puppy, I’m not saving you from the commentary."

"She told us to make out."

"She also treats jealousy like free entertainment."

Gianna pushed the door open.

"Public hall. Load drills. You observe. After that, separate homes. Board week is not an excuse to live in each other’s mouths."

"Separate homes," I repeated, falling into step beside her.

"For the record, I wasn’t looking for a secret support. I asked because I wanted to see you work when the room isn’t built around me."

She side-eyed me in the corridor light.

"That sounds almost healthy."

"I’m full of surprises."

"You’re full of something."

We took the lift down toward the public training levels.

The closer we got, the more the air changed: more bodies, more competing signatures, the sound of ranked noise instead of a private hall’s controlled silence.

"It’s within the guild?"

"Yes. I train here most of the time."

"I’ve never seen guys here before."

"They are all hidden with their teams. We rarely come across anyone here."

"Next time, take me to the public hall outside."

"Why?"

"I want to make the other guys realise who they are competing against if they approached you."

Gianna’s posture shifted with it: not softer, not harder, simply public.

The primary anchor channel dimmed to a polite background hum, as if she had consciously turned the volume down.

"Rules again," she said without looking at me as the doors opened onto the wide floor.

"You are not a demonstration. You are not recruiting. You are my guest for one block. If someone asks what you are, you say provisional dual support and nothing else."

"Provisional dual support."

"And if someone asks for a taste of your output—"

"I decline."

"Good."

She stepped out first.

"Because the Scramble is in a week, and I refuse to spend it peeling ordinary greed off you before the hooks even deploy."

I followed her into the public hall.

In Jenna’s private analysis room, the maps painted the air in quiet columns of light.

Mira, who had survived late nights enough in the annex, stood beside the primary display with a stylus tucked behind one ear and three compatibility graphs expanded side by side.

Jenna sat forward in the chair, coat discarded, eyes moving from line to line with the same attention she gave gate casualties and sponsorship clauses.

"They’ve improved."

The numbers refreshed under her hand.

[Unit compatibility — Triad baseline: 32%]

[Revien & Gianna Everheart: 45%]

[Revien & Rei Lawless: 32%]

"It’s good," Jenna said.

"They’re more than teenagers in love now. That matters. Academy will give them less room for romance and more room for action. Soft attachment without structural trust gets people peeled in the Scramble."

Mira zoomed the Gianna graph.

The curve had climbed in uneven steps, mock extraction, bench conversation, dual filing, the private-hall sequence work.

Not a fairytale slope.

A working one.

"Is Gianna okay?"

Jenna’s gaze stayed on the pane.

"What about her?"

"She’s close with him."

"They already had the talk."

Jenna’s voice didn’t sharpen, but it lost any decorative softness.

"Gianna is mature enough to handle outcomes. If she truly wants to stay on that slate, she will. If she doesn’t, the review clause exists for a reason."

"But—"

"I know what you’re circling."

Jenna finally looked at her.

"You’re asking whether I’m watching my daughter attach herself to an anomaly with an open core and a queue of future claimants."

Mira didn’t deny it.

"Jealousy has rendered plenty of ranked warriors useless. They always want the man entirely. They refuse the share structure this world runs on. Then they break in a gate, or they break the support, or both."

"It’s precisely because of that pattern that I’m not panicking on schedule."

Jenna tapped the primary line.

"Gia knows when to stop. She already did: distance protocol, review language, refusal of night-sharing clauses. He didn’t let go. He also didn’t drag her into a fantasy of exclusive ownership the academy will punish. Both of them appear to know what they want well enough to sign paper under stress."

"You’re taking it rather easily."

"I’m taking it as a handler who has seen worse math."

Jenna leaned back.

"Even if Revien supports others, and he will, if he survives long enough for the network reality to stop being theoretical, his behavior still treats Gianna as primary return. Not a convenience. A channel he stabilizes toward. That doesn’t make the future painless. It makes it navigable."

Mira folded her arms.

"And if something drives her past navigable?"

"Then we step in."

Flat and absolute.

"I will not sacrifice my daughter to his class, his Empress-shaped visibility problem, or Sector politics dressed as destiny. For now, the graphs say safe enough to continue. Safe enough is not the same as safe forever."

Mira held her stare, then nodded once and switched panes to the new week’s blocks, radius integrity, denial drills, Zenith cooldown testing, anti-hook movement under pursuit.

"I’ll lock the schedule. One joint recovery window so they don’t fracture the triad trying to out-train each other."

"Do it."

Compatibility percentages glowed at the edge of vision like a weather report: not romance, risk management.

Then someone knocked.

Not the soft cadence of a runner.

A measured strike, polite and certain of entry.

Jenna turned.

Her eyes widened before she could stop them.

The door opened on Cecilia Lawless.