Chapter 210: I Stole Your Power When We Fucked

Chapter 210: Chapter 210: I Stole Your Power When We Fucked

Yelena left first.

The door sealed with the same quiet finality she brought to every dismissal.

I walked to the far corner of the hall, sat against the cool wall, and let my head tip back until it touched stone.

My heart still beat too fast.

The echo of her drain signature sat behind my ribs like a bruise that refused to fade.

She had almost taken my core.

For a few stretched seconds it had felt exactly like someone reaching into the centre of me and starting to pull the soul out through my teeth.

Invasive.

Absolute.

I understood, suddenly and completely, why Gianna had asked for a week of distance after the night everything went wrong.

A week was merciful.

If someone installed that kind of fear at the moment you were most open, most physical, most yourself, most people would never willingly stand in the same room again.

Gianna had stayed.

She had trained, argued, signed the dual slate, kissed me in cars and corridors, and kept the primary anchor alive even after I had given her every reason to cut it.

The realisation landed heavier than Yelena’s power.

I was still turning it over when a flash of white hair entered my peripheral vision.

Giselle’s hand was already rising for a slap.

I caught her wrist, used the momentum, and brought her down onto the mat with me.

Her back met the floor, white hair spreading in a pale fan.

I followed, kissed her hard, and felt her free hand fist in my hair hard enough to sting.

[Now we are talking.]

Giselle’s eyes were hazy when I pulled back just enough to speak, but the focus underneath the haze was pure steel.

"I told you to stop slapping me."

"You zone out too much."

Her voice was rough.

"Are you thinking about Sera with her hands on your crotch, or about your Gianna again?"

"Why do you care?"

"I care because I’m the one here. Not her. I already told you once. Focus on me when you’re with me."

She dragged me back down into another kiss, all teeth and heat, then shoved me off and sat up in one smooth motion.

The fragment of her core under my ribs pulsed once, sharp and proprietary.

We left the guild without further discussion.

Night had settled over Sector 5 by the time the vehicle delivered us to a high-tier restaurant near the administrative spine.

The top floor was nearly empty.

Floor-to-ceiling glass showed a sky that actually had stars: faint, scattered, more than I had seen since arriving in this world.

The city’s light pollution usually erased them.

Up here the air was thinner, and the view felt almost private.

Food arrived.

Giselle cut into her portion with precise movements, then set the utensils down and looked at me directly.

"Tell me how you did the gold chain."

I let out a long breath.

Giselle was already an anchor.

The compatibility rating, the favourability, the fragment living under my ribs: lying would only rot the connection from the inside.

"It’s your technique."

Giselle stopped moving.

"What?"

"The way you copy skills. The comprehension that lets you look at a construction, break it down, and rebuild it as your own. I took a lesser version of that. That’s how the gold edge happened. I watched Draven cut, understood the vector the way you would have, and forced my chains to approximate it."

Silence stretched across the table.

Her red eyes had gone wide.

"I can replicate because I can understand and deconstruct—"

She stopped herself.

"You took that."

"I didn’t take the whole thing. It’s a weaker copy. But yes. The capacity came from you."

"You can do that?"

"When I get intimate enough. Deep contact. The gate only opens under those conditions."

Giselle sat back slowly.

The starlight caught in her white hair and made her look, for a moment, younger than the Empress’s daughter who had ordered me to focus on her twenty minutes earlier.

She picked up her glass, set it down without drinking, and studied me like I was a new kind of weapon that had just revealed a second edge.

"So every time we..."

She didn’t finish the sentence.

"The deeper the contact, the more the channel can transfer. Not always skills. Sometimes it’s just power. Sometimes it’s something the system files under evolution. I don’t control the catalogue."

"And Gianna?"

"Same rules. Different results."

Giselle’s jaw worked once.

The fragment under my ribs tightened, then loosened, as if she were consciously testing the bond.

"So I wasn’t the only one who was getting the benefits..."

"No."

"You’re telling me this because I’m already inside you."

"I’m telling you this because lying to an anchor is a good way to wake up with the connection rotting. And because you asked."

She was quiet for a long time.

The restaurant around us stayed hushed. The few other diners were too far away to matter.

Finally, she picked up her utensils again and resumed eating with deliberate calm.

"We’re going to my apartment after this," she said.

"Not the suite. Mine. You’re going to show me the exact limits of what you copied, and you’re going to do it without black chains, gold edges, or whatever voice is currently judging my technique."

[I like her more every hour.]

I ignored it and met Giselle’s eyes.

"All right."

"And Revien."

"Yeah?"

"If the copy you took ever lets you understand me better than I understand myself, you will tell me before you use it."

"Mm."

[It’s gonna be a sexy night.]

We finished the meal without further interrogation.

The stars outside remained faint and unfamiliar.

When the last plate was cleared, Giselle stood, collected her coat, and looked at me with an expression that mixed calculation, heat from the mat, and something that might eventually become trust if neither of us broke it first.

"Come on."

I rose and followed her toward the private lift that would take us down to the residential levels.

Behind my thoughts, the succubus’s presence settled into watchful quiet, waiting to see what move I would make.