Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 645: Harrowing Realization

A secret Ashborn child?

The pieces crashed together with the subtlety of a collapsing building.

The Shadow Monarch’s son.

The boy who had stood in front of her in high school, nervous and hopeful and so painfully earnest that she’d laughed before he even finished speaking.

The boy she’d mocked in front of their entire class. Whose words she’d repeated with a significant amount of embellishing... She read it aloud in a performance of cruelty so polished that people applauded. The scrawny, quiet, nobody she’d turned into a joke that lasted years.

That boy was an Ashborn.

One of the richest, most connected families in the entire nation.

Son of the most terrifying woman alive.

And she had humiliated him for sport.

Vaelira’s stomach lurched.

Bile climbed her throat, and she swallowed it down with difficulty, the taste burning and acidic. Her vision swam, and for one horrifying moment, she thought she might actually collapse right there at the breakfast table.

She was lucky to be alive.

If the Shadow Monarch took offense personally... If word reached her ears of what she’d done...

The thought crystallized with absolute, bone-deep certainty. She was not lucky in the vague, philosophical sense. She was lucky in the most literal, immediate sense possible.

Vespera Ashborn could have erased her from existence without generating so much as a footnote in the evening news. Her whole bloodline could’ve gone with.

And then, creeping in behind the terror, came something worse.

If she had said yes.

If she hadn’t laughed. If she hadn’t performed. If she had just... looked at the boy with the innocent smile asking her for a date and seen what was actually standing in front of her.

She would have been the luckiest woman alive.

Potentially married into the Ashborn family. Protected. Elevated. Given access to resources and influence that most awakened combatants would sacrifice their mothers for. She would have stood beside a man who was rapidly becoming one of the most powerful and famous figures of his generation.

Instead, she stood beneath him. Literally leashed. Owned.

The universe had offered her a throne, and she’d spat on it for laughs.

The realization was so catastrophically, cosmically terrible that Vaelira almost laughed. Almost. The sound died in her chest before it could form, strangled by the sheer weight of what she had lost.

Then the door to the hallway opened.

Voices spilled in, soft and sleepy, accompanied by the sound of bare feet on stone and the rustle of loose fabric.

Aria entered first, wrapped in a silk robe with her silver-blonde hair in magnificent disarray, the kind of effortless beauty that made stylists weep with envy. She was mid-yawn, one hand covering her mouth while the other rubbed at her eye.

Luna followed, wearing an oversized shirt that hung off one shoulder, her purple hair a spectacular disaster of tangles and static. She looked like she’d fought her pillow and lost decisively.

Nyx padded in behind them, pink hair spilling over her shoulders in messy waves, robe tied loosely enough to be suggestive without being indecent. Well, maybe a bit indecent. Her eyes were half-lidded, still waking up, but a lazy, content smile sat on her lips.

Bastet entered with more poise than any woman emerging from sleep had a right to, her sun-kissed skin glowing even in the morning light. Her robe was draped like a garment of royalty, and her feline ears twitched as the scent of breakfast reached her.

Calypso brought up the rear, stretching her arms overhead with a groan that was equal parts satisfaction and protest at being awake. Her red skin caught the kitchen light, horns gleaming, tail flicking lazily behind her.

They paused when they saw Vaelira.

Eyes sharpened. Spines straightened. The sleepy warmth that had filled the doorway cooled by several degrees as recognition settled across five faces simultaneously.

But none of them made a scene.

They knew.

They all knew Vaelira was being handled. Kaiden had it under control, and that was enough for every single one of them to file her existence under ’not my problem’ and go about their morning.

Vaelira sat perfectly still as the kitchen filled with warmth and noise around her. Laughter, bickering, the clink of a plate.

She watched them.

These women she had ridiculed. These girls she had looked down upon as charity cases, as dirty sluts, as prostitutes even, as lucky nobodies who had stumbled into the orbit of someone extraordinary and clung on for dear life.

They weren’t lucky.

They were loved.

Loved by a man whose true identity she was only now beginning to comprehend. An Ashborn son who chose them, fought beside them, held them when they broke, and built something with them that Vaelira’s sharpest words and deepest contempt could never even scratch.

She had called them whores once.

Arm candy.

Disposable entertainment.

Vaelira lowered her gaze to her lap.

She felt the most pathetic she’s ever felt in her whole life.

But in the next moment, Vaelira was pulled from her spiral by the sound of Kaiden’s voice.

”Alright,” he said, leaning back in his chair. ”Meeting time.”

Alice was perched on the armrest beside him, feeding him a sandwich with the kind of attentive seriousness usually reserved for sacred rituals. Kaiden accepted each bite without complaint, chewing while he spoke, apparently unbothered by the fact that one of the most dangerous young women in the country was hand-feeding him as if he’d forgotten how arms worked.

”The competition’s been running for over ten days. We’re approaching the one-third mark, maybe closer. It either ends at thirty days or when the mountain range is cleared of monsters. Either way, the finish line is becoming visible.”

He swallowed, and his gaze swept across the room. Every girl had found a seat or a surface to lean against, breakfast plates in hand, morning laziness giving way to focus as the shift in his tone registered.

”I want to win this. The benefits promised for first place are massive, and I intend to collect every last one of them.”

”You also want to show it to Bastard Father,” Alice added from beside him, already preparing his next bite.

”Right,” Kaiden agreed without missing a beat. ”I want us to surpass New Dawn.” His eyes moved across every face in the room, lingering just long enough on each to make the words feel personal. ”So let’s discuss how we make that happen.”

The breakfast plates stayed, but the mood shifted.

And just like that, the morning meal became a war council.