Belle watched Naomi walk out of the room. Watched her shoulders stay straight even though they wanted to curve inward. Watched the door click shut with a softness that felt worse than slamming.
The apartnt went quiet.
Too quiet.
Belle stood there holding the space where Naomi had been standing, guilt sitting heavy in her stomach like swallowed stones.
She’d just negotiated having sex with her friend’s boyfriend right in front of her. Reduced the whole thing to a transaction. Made it clinical and professional when Naomi clearly felt the opposite about whatever she had with Jace.
Belle’s chest felt weird.
Not guilt exactly. Guilt was for people who made mistakes. Belle replayed the math in her head. Her bank account balance. The cost of groceries. The pathetic utility of her current ability. The conclusion always remained the sa.
But also.
Also Naomi’s face when Belle said she wanted to do the extraction.
That hurt.
Belle pushed the feeling down where it couldn’t distract her. She was good at that. Years of practice smiling through her mother’s disappointed sighs and her classmates’ dismissive looks. Years of pretending her stomach didn’t drop every ti she checked her bank account and saw numbers that ant another month of deciding between electricity and groceries.
She turned to face Jace.
He sat in the desk chair watching her with those amber eyes that saw too much. Belle hated that about him. Hated how he looked at people like he was reading their entire operating system.
But also.
Also kind of exciting?
Her friend turned out to be a milk vampire. An actual supernatural being who drank essence from won’s bodies and gave them power boosts in exchange. The whole thing sounded like sothing from those Moonlight fanfics she’d read in high school when she couldn’t sleep. The brooding immortal creature who needed blood to survive but fell tragically in love anyway.
Except Jace wasn’t exactly the brooding immortal type.
He was cute in a teddy bear kind of way. Soft around the edges still even after whatever training regin Misato had been putting him through. His uniform pulled tight across his stomach. His face was round with features that hadn’t quite settled into anything sharp or dangerous.
But his eyes.
Those amber eyes with the glow behind them that suggested sothing else lived inside the soft exterior.
Belle’s pulse kicked up a notch without permission.
This was happening. Really happening. In probably ten minutes she was going to take her top off and let this boy put his mouth on her breast and drink milk that her body shouldn’t even be producing.
Her brain short-circuited trying to process that sentence.
Jace was still watching her. His expression had shifted into sothing colder. Sharper.
"What?" Belle said.
"I feel like you disrespected sohow."
Belle blinked. "Huuuh?"
"Forget it."
He stood up. Held out his hand.
Belle stared at the offered palm. "What are we doing?"
"I need to take you sowhere for the noise."
"The noise?"
"So Hikaru doesn’t hear."
Oh. Right.
"Your bathroom works," Belle said.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I have sowhere better."
Belle reached out. Took his hand.
His fingers closed around hers. Warm. Steady.
"Like you could make moa—"
The world pulled.
Not sideways. Not down. Just pulled like reality grabbed her by the sternum and yanked her through a space that shouldn’t exist.
Belle’s stomach flipped.
The bedroom disappeared.
She stumbled forward into absolute nothingness. Her body waded through an atmosphere dense as liquid glass. A second later, the strange pressure vanished. Her boots sank into plush carpet.
"Oh," Belle said.
She looked around.
Then again.
"What the HELL."
The space stretched out around her like soone had pulled an entire luxury apartnt out of thin air and dropped it in the middle of nowhere. Cream-colored walls. Hardwood floors that looked expensive. Floor-to-ceiling windows showing a city skyline that Belle didn’t recognize. The bed was enormous. King-sized with white sheets that probably cost more than Belle’s entire wardrobe.
"Where are we," Belle said.
Jace stood beside her. His hand still held hers. "Private Sanctum."
"Private what now?"
"It’s one of my abilities. A pocket dinsion where ti flows normally but we’re completely isolated from the outside world."
Belle’s brain scrambled to process what he’d just said. "You made a pocket dinsion."
"The System made it. I just access it."
"The System."
"Yes."
"The thing that makes won lactate and gives you life points."
"Yes."
Belle took a few steps forward. Her fingers pressed against the wall. Solid. Completely real. She moved to the window next and stared out at the skyline beyond the glass. Buildings rose into a sky that looked too perfect, too clean. Cities that should exist sowhere but definitely not here. Not on this island surrounded by ocean.
"This is insane," Belle said. Her reflection stared back at her from the window, eyes wide, face pale.
She turned to look at Jace again. He stood near the bed with his hands in his pockets, watching her reaction like he was waiting for sothing. Maybe for her to freak out. Maybe for her to bolt. Except there was nowhere to bolt to. They were in his pocket dinsion.
Belle’s chest felt tight. Not panic. Just the weight of what she’d agreed to settling over her shoulders. This boy didn’t just have so weird ability that let him seduce won for power points. He had an entire frawork of reality-bending powers that operated on rules she barely understood.
And she’d just agreed to let him milk her.
"This is survival."
She turned around. Jace stood near the bed watching her with that sa unreadable expression.
Belle’s pulse kicked up again.
They were alone. Actually alone. No Naomi hovering anxiously by the door. No Hikaru listening through walls. Just Belle and this boy who apparently had a divine milking System and could create private dinsions.
Her life had gotten extrely weird extrely fast.
"How long do we have," Belle asked.
"Thirty minutes per day. Resets at midnight."
"And nobody can hear us in here."
"Nobody can even detect that we’re gone. We disappear completely from reality until the tir runs out."
Belle processed this. "So you brought Naomi in here last night."
"Yes."
"And did the extraction."
"Yes."
"And she got a gold-tier buff from it."
Jace’s jaw tightened slightly. "Silver-tier essence produces a different effect than bronze."
"Right." Belle walked back toward him. Stopped a few feet away. "And you need this to survive. The essence. Without it you die."
"Yes."
"How long do you have right now."
"Six days and seven hours." Jace took a slow step closer. "Are you ready to begin?"
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