Chapter 76: Shared Claim

Selene’s private chamber was already cold when Arthur arrived.

He expected her alone.

He did not expect Iris Blackthorn to be standing near the frost-lined window with her arms folded and her violet eyes sharp enough to cut.

The temperature in the room dropped another degree.

Selene closed the door behind him with a soft, final click. She had discarded the instructor coat. The close-fitting dark clothes she wore left very little to interpretation.

Iris still wore her academy cloak, but the way she held herself made it clear she had not come for polite conversation.

"You both asked for honesty," Arthur said. "This is what it looks like."

Iris’s gaze flicked to Selene, then back to him.

"I came to speak with you. I did not expect the professor to still be here."

"And I did not invite a princess into my private chamber," Selene replied, voice calm and icy. "Yet here we are. Sitting in the same room with the same man, both of us carrying permanent marks from him. How efficient."

Silence stretched.

Jealousy sat between the two women like a third presence—controlled, adult, and sharp enough to draw blood if handled poorly.

Iris broke it first.

"I’m not leaving simply because you were here first tonight."

"And I am not yielding the room because you carry a dream book and a tragic expression," Selene answered. Her ice-blue eyes moved to Arthur. "You refuse to choose. You refuse to lie. Fine. Then you will deal with the consequence of both of us standing here with a claim."

Arthur looked from one to the other.

"If either of you wants me to walk out right now, say it. I won’t force this into something ugly."

Iris exhaled slowly through her nose.

"I dislike her," she said, blunt. "I dislike that she had you before the dungeon. I dislike that her print sits on the first page while mine sits on the third. But I am not a child, and I am not going to start a war I cannot win cleanly. You already told me balance or nothing. I’m still here. That should tell you enough."

Selene’s mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile.

"Pragmatic. Good. I expected tears or demands. This is cleaner." She stepped closer to Arthur, fingers trailing along his collar. "I still dislike sharing. That has not changed. But I also dislike the idea of you walking into a mandatory mission with fractures between the bonds that keep you alive. So we resolve it. Here. Now."

Iris’s eyes narrowed.

"Resolve it how?"

Selene looked at her directly.

"We both want him. He refuses hierarchy. Therefore we stop pretending the jealousy is going to vanish if we take turns behind closed doors and never acknowledge each other. You can leave. Or you can stay. If you stay, you accept that I will not pretend to be soft about my claim while you are in the room."

The air felt thinner.

Iris was silent for a long moment. Then she unclasped her cloak and let it fall over a chair.

"I’m staying."

Something heated and dangerous moved through Selene’s expression.

"Then stop standing there like a spectator."

What followed was not gentle.

Selene kissed Arthur first—possessive, cold-edged, claiming his mouth like she was reminding everyone in the room who had refined his frost.

Iris watched for two heartbeats, eyes dark, then stepped in, gripped Arthur’s jaw, and turned his face toward her so she could kiss him with equal heat. The contrast was sharp: Selene’s controlled hunger against Iris’s jealous intensity.

Arthur did not choose between them.

He kissed one, then the other, hands moving with deliberate fairness—one at Selene’s waist, one at Iris’s hip.

When Selene bit his lower lip, Iris answered by dragging his shirt open and scraping her nails down his chest.

When Iris pressed closer, Selene’s hand slid lower and cupped him through his clothes with proprietary confidence.

"Bed," Selene ordered.

They moved.

Clothes came off in pieces. Selene’s pale, precise body on one side. Iris’s softer curves and dark-blue hair on the other.

Arthur ended up on his back with both women over him. Selene straddled his thighs and wrapped long fingers around his cock, stroking once, slow and firm.

Iris leaned down and kissed him hard while her hand joined Selene’s, the two of them touching him together for the first time.

The jealousy did not disappear.

It transformed into something sharper and more competitive.

Selene sank down onto him first, taking him in one smooth, practiced motion. She rode him with controlled, deep strokes, ice-blue eyes locked on Iris the entire time as if daring her to look away. Iris did not look away.

She watched with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, then leaned in and kissed Arthur again, swallowing the sounds Selene dragged out of him.

When Selene finally lifted off, breath uneven, Iris took her place without hesitation.

She sank down harder, less polished, more urgent, and started riding him with the same raw need she had shown in the alcove.

Selene moved behind her, silver-white hair brushing Iris’s shoulder, and reached around to cup Iris’s breasts, pinching her nipples while she watched Arthur’s face over the princess’s shoulder.

Iris shuddered at the contact but did not stop.

"You don’t get to monopolize the view," Selene murmured against Iris’s ear. Cold and intimate. "If we are doing this, we do it properly."

Arthur sat up, wrapped an arm around Iris’s waist, and thrust up to meet her. The change in angle made her cry out.

Selene used the moment to kiss him over Iris’s shoulder, the three of them locked in a tangled, heated configuration that left no room for careful distance.

Iris came first, clenching around him with a broken moan, forehead dropping to his shoulder. Arthur held her through it.

Before the aftershocks fully faded Selene was already guiding Iris aside and taking her place again, sinking down with a low, satisfied sound.

"My turn to finish what I started."

She rode him harder this time, less restrained, frost beginning to form in delicate patterns across the sheets.

Arthur gripped her hips and drove up into her until Selene’s controlled expression cracked. She came with a sharp, quiet cry, body locking around him, and the feel of it pulled Arthur over the edge with her.

He spilled deep inside her while Iris watched with dark, complicated eyes, one hand still resting on Arthur’s chest as if refusing to surrender contact.

For a long moment the only sound in the chamber was ragged breathing and the soft crackle of residual frost.

Selene lifted off him slowly. Iris’s gaze dropped to the evidence of what had just happened, then rose again to Arthur’s face.

The jealousy was still there—tempered now by the undeniable reality of shared pleasure and the fact that neither of them had been erased by the other’s presence.

Selene spoke first, voice rough but steady.

"This does not make us friends."

"I did not ask for friendship," Iris answered. "I asked for balance. Tonight was... a start."

Arthur looked between them.

Two powerful women. Two permanent prints. One bed that now smelled of frost, dream residue, and sex.

The five days were almost gone.

And the hardest negotiation of the pre-mission arc had just rewritten its own rules on Selene’s sheets.