Chapter 181: Will You Kiss Me Tonight?

Chapter 181: Chapter 181: Will You Kiss Me Tonight?

Yuna brought water and another illegal protein bar and commented that I was starting to look expensive.

Giselle appeared once in the afternoon, checked the collar readings in silence, and left without the usual interrogation.

The Golden ticket remained unopened.

Draven arrived in person.

He filled the doorway like the building had been designed around his shoulders, red hair catching the corridor light, yellow eyes already amused.

He looked me up and down once, slowly, taking in the sharper lines that two days of controlled hunger and nightly residual exposure had left behind.

Then he smiled.

"Why are you looking more handsome after starving?"

I stayed seated on the edge of the bed, collar still locked, tail safely retracted, and met his gaze without offering an answer.

"I’ll take that as a compliment."

"You joke too, now?"

Two days of measured deprivation, Empress-line kisses that ended in anger, and a morphological surprise I still refused to examine too closely had apparently produced a result he found entertaining.

Draven stepped fully into the cell, hands in his coat pockets, and let the door seal behind him with a soft hydraulic sigh.

"Time’s up," he said.

"Let’s go find out whether my niece still wants to kill you, or whether she’s decided you’re interesting enough to keep. And try not to look so tragic when we walk out. The cameras outside already like your face too much."

Draven removed the collar himself.

The magnetic seal released with a click.

He tossed the slim black band aside like it was trash and closed one hand around my upper arm, hauling me out of the cell in a single motion.

The main office was empty.

No lounging supports or Yuna with protein bars.

Just polished floors and the lingering scent of expensive dampeners.

"Something wrong?" I asked, glancing around.

Draven didn’t look back.

"They’re out on a raid. Some mid-tier guild requested a full support package and paid three times the standard rate. Money talks louder than curiosity."

He finally glanced at me sideways.

"How many people have you gotten intimate with, Revien?"

"Is that necessary questioning?"

"I’m curious."

"I like to keep it secret."

He smiled, slow and unbothered.

"Okay. I won’t dig into your sex life. But hey—you can’t hide everything. I will know. And I will get angry if you hide something I specifically wanted to know."

"...Okay."

We exited the building through a private side bay.

Another low-profile vehicle waited, doors already open.

The moment we were sealed inside, the car lifted into the upper lanes with the same expensive smoothness as before.

"Where are we going?"

"You ever been inside a real dungeon?"

"Only simulation."

Draven made a dismissive sound and stretched one arm along the back of the seat.

"Simulations are some of the worst training tools ever invented. It’s like watching an action movie and thinking you understand a street fight. Everything is cleaner. The pain is capped. The fear is theoretical. Real gates don’t care about your practice scores."

He turned his head, yellow eyes assessing.

"I saw your fight in the academy test. Only chains, but several different applications. Very creative with the way you used them."

"Thanks...?"

"You have any other attacks?"

"Only that. And I can move fast."

Draven’s expression flattened into mild disappointment.

"Was it just a fluke you managed to pin Giselle, then? I hope not. I’d hate to waste a week on a one-trick support who got lucky against my niece."

I didn’t answer.

The car continued its smooth arc across the sector until one of the tallest buildings in the visible skyline filled the forward view: glass and dark metal, anchors glowing faintly along its upper floors, the kind of structure that belonged to people who never needed to advertise.

"Welp," Draven said.

"Prepare yourself."

I turned toward him.

"Why?"

He opened the side door mid-flight and pushed me out.

’Huh?’

There was no warning.

One moment I had a seat and a conversation; the next, the wind was screaming past my ears, and the ground was a rapidly expanding problem.

The car continued without him even leaning out to watch.

"Don’t die!" Draven’s voice followed, cheerful and already distant.

’What the fuck?’

I formed a chain on pure reflex.

The blue link snapped out toward the nearest structural pole rising from a lower plaza.

It caught, tension slammed through my shoulder, and the fall converted into a wide, uncontrolled arc.

Another chain, another redirection.

The motion was uglier than the clean Spider-Man fantasy I had once imagined, but it worked.

I swung, corrected, swung again.

Below, people had already noticed.

Phones came up in a scattered wave.

"Look at him—"

"Isn’t that the support who assaulted the Empress’s daughter?"

"He’s kinda... good-looking, though."

"Wait! I see Draven."

I hit the final descent hard, boots skidding across ferrocrete, and managed to kill the last of the momentum without eating pavement.

My shoulder ached.

The energy from the sudden output after two days of suppression left a shitty taste in my mouth.

I straightened slowly, breathing through the adrenaline, and found myself on the broad pedestrian road that ran alongside the base of the tallest building.

Giselle was already standing there.

White hair neat, red eyes flat, posture perfect, as if she had been waiting for the exact square of pavement I would land on.

"You didn’t die," she said.

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Come."

"If I ask where, will you tell me?"

"No."

She turned and started walking toward a private entrance set into the building’s lower levels.

I followed.

After a few steps, I closed the small distance between us and let the back of my hand graze the line of her spine: light, deliberate, testing.

If I was going to survive a week in Sector 5 under Draven’s curiosity and an Empress’s probable hostility, I needed at least one person who was not actively planning to put me back in a cell.

The fragment of her core still sitting inaccessible under my ribs suggested the connection was already deeper than either of us had admitted.

Giselle didn’t pull away immediately.

"Will you kiss me tonight?"