Chapter 709: Win-Win

"Cali, don’t lift my skirt!"

"I’m not lifting it, I’m examining it. There’s a difference."

"There is not a difference when your hand is right there and lifting it!"

Alexandra was swatting at Calypso’s fingers while Bastet leaned in from the other side, pulling at the waistline seam with the quiet intensity of a craftsman who’d found a forgery in her portfolio. Alexandra yelped and twisted between them, one hand pushing Calypso away and the other trying to keep Bastet from rotating her like a mannequin.

"The moon yandere redid the entire hemline," Bastet murmured, more to herself than anyone. "The tension is completely different."

"I told you the proportions were wrong," Calypso said.

"The proportions were fine. She changed the stitch pattern."

"P-please, people are watching!"

Nobody was watching except Kaiden, who let them have it.

He instantly saw one thing.

The warmth they showed Alexandra was specific. Protective. The way you handled a girl who’d been broken and was still putting herself back together. Alexandra wasn’t just a guest they tolerated. She was theirs, in the way that mattered, and every gesture made that clear.

They did not extend the same warmth to Brittany and Trisha.

Luna’s gaze passed over both of them the way you’d glance at furniture. Calypso didn’t acknowledge them at all. Aria offered a single polite nod that carried the exact temperature of a business transaction. The distance was pointed and earned. Less than a day ago, these women had been on the other side of a fight that left people dead and wounded. Forgiveness wasn’t on the menu. Cooperation was, because Nyx had explained why it was worth it, but nobody was pretending to be friends.

Brittany noticed. She didn’t say anything. Trisha noticed too, and her mouth pressed flat, but she had the sense to keep it shut.

Kaiden pushed off the wall and turned to Talia.

"I’m grateful," he said. "For all of this."

Talia shook her head once. "It’s nothing. I couldn’t get that scout off your back during the competition. This is the least I can do."

"Oh, come on." Tessa leaned into her friend’s shoulder with a grin that belonged on someone who hadn’t just watched a tearful testimony about institutional abuse. "Shouldn’t you try to squeeze a little more gratitude out of him?"

Talia looked at her flatly. "For what? Because I offered to foot the court bills for these two?" She gestured vaguely at Brittany and Trisha. "Tessa, my friend. I’m not broke. Unlike you."

"Hey!" Tessa’s hands came out of her pockets. "We’re an alliance now! Your money is my money! So we should’ve been smarter about this. Don’t you remember how this guy tossed me into a wall and squeezed my throat? He didn’t even apologize!"

"That’s because you’re an incompetent guild leader who let her A-tier member harass him and his team over and over again."

Tessa’s gaze sharpened into fiery slits.

"I’m sorry," Kaiden said.

Tessa’s narrow eyes found him.

He grinned. "Sorry for calling you a wildly incompetent guild leader who should be replaced as soon as a good candidate emerges."

Tessa’s mouth fell open. It closed, opened again in the perfect impression of a woman who’d just been stabbed in the back by someone she thought was extending an olive branch.

"I’ll support that candidate with everything I have," Talia said with a low chuckle.

Tessa’s face crumpled. She grabbed Talia by the shoulders and shook her. "I knew he was a cruel bastard but I expected better from you! Apologize! Apologize right now!"

Talia’s expression didn’t move. Her head rocked back and forth under Tessa’s shaking with the tolerance of a woman who’d endured this exact treatment before, and her face remained perfectly, immovably stone.

Kaiden watched the two of them and let the smile settle into a quieter one.

This was Nyx’s play.

He looked across the studio at his pink-haired lover, who was still leaning against the far wall with her phone out, scrolling through comments with faint amusement on her lips.

She hadn’t moved to the center of the room or joined the group around Alexandra or said a word since the recording ended. That was Nyx. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Alexandra’s well-being, not at all. Alexandra was her best friend, after all, her childhood Blondie Beastie.

It was just that she knew Alexandra was already surrounded by others. She was just like that, living in the margins of every situation, happy there, whether it was in the bedroom, on camera, or on the battlefield.

She was the only true support in his lineup. Aria and Bastet were backline mages, sure, but either of them could dish out as much raw damage as he could, if not more. Nyx was the one who made everyone else better, and she did it so quietly that people forgot she was the reason things worked.

She’d come to him with this idea, laid it out with the calm tone of someone who’d already run the numbers and knew the answer, and he’d listened and said yes because there was nothing to say no to.

It was a cheap opportunity that was worth taking.

He felt bad for Brittany and Trisha the way you felt bad for someone else’s car wreck.

Genuinely, briefly, and then you asked yourself whether it changed your route. Valhalla’s Sinners were already in the spotlight. Their numbers were climbing rapidly, and every week in the competition brought more viewers and followers, more cultural weight behind the name.

Remaining there was extremely valuable. Expanding further was worth even more. And what better way to expand than to take a mid-tier guild’s public humiliation and turn it into content that elevated your brand?

Ashbound had spent the past week harassing them in front of millions of witnesses. This was the conclusion to that arc, and the audience would love it because it felt like justice.

And about the two girls themselves...

They were promised protection. That was the deal Nyx had brokered.

Truthfully, Kaiden didn’t care if they were technically in the right or not.

He didn’t care if the information about their situation got leaked by Ashbound insiders or by the lawyers the girls had contacted in desperation.

He didn’t care if Brittany and Trisha were breaking every single clause in their contracts by going on camera, because whatever the case, the two of them had enough material to drag it out for years in court.

Predatory callers soliciting sex from desperate women, one of whom had been offered up to service a man’s teenage sons. That wasn’t a contract dispute anymore. That was a criminal investigation waiting to happen, and any judge who heard those recordings would be a lot more interested in who made those calls than whether two women violated a confidentiality agreement.

And in those few years of legal proceedings, Kaiden would use them as his strong fighters and this story and every scrap of public goodwill it generated to grow far, far more powerful than whatever Ashbound amounted to by then.

Or so Nyx had reasoned, leaning against his chest in the dark of their room with her voice low and her gaze sharp and her fingers tracing idle patterns on his arm while she dismantled Maeve Ashbound’s empire one logical step at a time.

And it wasn’t even Kaiden who footed the bill. Talia had offered Runewoven’s legal department before he’d finished explaining the situation, and Tessa had thrown Nova Circuit’s name behind it within the hour. Alliance benefits.

A win-win situation.

Kaiden felt the pride settle over him as he watched Nyx scroll through comments with that faint, satisfied smile. His gorgeous space babe. His brilliant, devastating chess player, who saw three moves ahead and never needed anyone to know it.

He was going to do unspeakable things to that woman tonight.

Just then, movement caught his eye. Alexandra had gently disentangled herself from the others. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and walked toward him with the careful, measured steps of someone carrying more weight than her frame suggested.

She stopped in front of him and looked up.

Her eyes were red. The tears had dried on her cheeks in uneven trails, and her chest still hitched with the aftershocks of the crying she’d done against Brittany’s shoulder. The maid outfit was creased where bodies had pressed into it, and a damp spot darkened the fabric near her collarbone where someone’s tears had soaked through.

She looked fragile and slightly ridiculous in her frilly demonic skirt with mascara still smudged under her lashes.

Kaiden looked at her and grinned.