"Come here, little rabbit." She said, looking straight at me. She wasn't asking—she was commanding, the words carrying the weight of someone who had never once in her life been told no.
I hesitated for a moment, my mind racing through my options, before my form shimmered and vanished as I went completely invisible. She frowned, her brow creasing just slightly as she tried to sense my location, but after a few seconds, it was clear—she couldn't find a single trace of me.
"Although I can't sense you, you hold a special place in the organ that pumps my blood… I know you're here, little rabbit. I enjoyed your little game of showing off your capabilities, but I have grown bored. Come here and love me." She ordered, her eyes narrowing dangerously. At the same time, the domain she had created around the villa began to shrink, the walls of shadow pressing inward from every direction like a closing fist. Each step it took shrank the space I had to work with, pushing me closer and closer to her whether I liked it or not.
Unwillingly, with nowhere left to hide, I revealed myself. She smiled the moment I appeared—that same brief, flickering expression that never lasted—and walked over to me without any hurry. She reached up and cupped my face, rubbing my cheek and running her thumb slowly across my lips as if she were admiring something she owned.
"Let's not waste more time and go get married." She said, and before I could protest, the collar was around my neck again. But this time was different. She channeled her shadow directly through the leather, weaving it into the material until the collar was an extension of her own power. I could feel it. There was no phasing through this one.
There was a reason I had run from this woman for years… I was genuinely, deeply scared of her. And honestly, it was my own fault. Maybe I shouldn't have slept with her in the first place… but come on. A tall goth girl with a choker, legs for days, and that cold stare that dared you to try something? Who in their right mind wouldn't have gone for it?
But ever since that night, I became her "little rabbit," and she had been dead set on putting a collar around my neck as a sign of our marriage. I had been dodging her for years, staying off her radar, moving whenever I felt her getting close. But here she was, standing right in front of me, leash in hand. She had found me.
"My little rabbit… why do you look different?" She asked, cupping my face with both hands now as she tilted my head left, then right, studying me closely. I was confused by what she meant—I hadn't looked in a mirror since my breakthrough—but after a moment, she seemed to come to her own conclusion and nodded.
"You're a cultivator now. I guess the cultivation art you've cultivated focuses on beauty…" She said softly, and then she kissed me. It had been years since she'd had the chance, and I could feel it in the way her lips lingered against mine—longer than she probably intended.
For someone who showed no emotion, that kiss said more than she ever would with words. She was happy. Genuinely, quietly happy.
"Now let's go." She said, and instantly, the shadow domain she had created collapsed inward, reshaping itself into a pair of massive wings of pure darkness that spread out from her back. She lifted off the ground with a single beat of those wings, rising into the sky above the villa. At the same time, tendrils of darkness wrapped around my body, pulling me up with her whether I was ready or not.
"Imagine if we fell from this height…" She said, looking down at the ground far below, before letting out a laugh. It was a unique sound—short, weird, and a little bit off, like someone who understood the concept of laughter but hadn't had enough practice with it to get the delivery right.
"My little rabbit, laugh at my joke." She said with a smile.
"Haha…" I laughed lifelessly, the sound hollow even to my own ears. She had a dark sense of humor, and I was used to it by now. It was actually how I had gotten her to date me in the first place; making that kind of twisted, morbid humor was one of the very few ways to get a genuine reaction out of her.
"Good boy." She said, patting my head like I was a pet, and my shoulders dropped instantly at those two words. I remembered the first time she gave me a hand job, and when I finished, she had said those exact same words in that exact same tone. To this day, I couldn't put into words just how those words made me feel. It was something between shame, arousal, and the urge to jump off whatever height we were currently at.
"My little rabbit, I have missed the way your tongue flowed through me. How it explored every inch of my body, and tasted even the most shameful parts of my body… I will permit you to have a feast again. Eat all you can." She said blankly, her hand still resting on top of my head, patting gently.
'I guess I can escape after we do it...' I thought, sighing internally as I couldn't come up with a single better plan. Maybe after we slept together, when her guard was down, I could find a window to slip away. That was the only way. Even with the infinite number of abilities sitting in my arsenal, there was simply no other option than to sleep with her first… yup, absolutely no other way around it.
[Host, you can just sever your connection to your head, phase your head through it, and flee while she's distracted.] The system said.
'Yeah, there is no other way to escape… she's too good.' I thought helplessly, and the system fell silent, completely speechless.
"I will make the marriage grand. I want the whole world to know I'm marrying my little rabbit." She said softly under her breath, and the moment those words registered, my pupils shrank to pinpoints.
"W-wait, can it be private?" I asked, cold sweat breaking out across my forehead and the back of my neck. Let's just say I was hiding from a lot more people than just her. If she went ahead and announced this to the world, the attention it would bring could cause chaos on a scale I wasn't ready to deal with—and might very well lead to my death.
***
Back at my villa, from beneath the ground, I slowly clawed my way out of the dirt, brushing soil off my shoulders as I looked toward the sky where my other self was being carried away. I had every power in the book, and naturally, that meant I could exist in more than one place at the same time. The trade-off was that it split my power evenly in half, but at my current level, the loss wasn't devastating enough to make it not worth doing.
[What are you doing? If your other half dies, you would lose 50% of your strength and would need significant time to recover.] The system said, clearly not understanding my reasoning.
"Something about this is off. Why would my sister tell Raven where I was? She wouldn't do that just to keep me from running… she already put a tracker in me… on that note." I said softly, my eyes narrowing as I reached down and pulled at the waistband of my pants. Deep within my body—inside my balls, specifically—I could feel a small, pill-shaped tracker that had been implanted.
My fingers phased through my skin, slipping inside like a ghost reaching through a wall, and I carefully pulled the tiny device out. I held it between my fingers for a moment, examining it, before breaking it down at a molecular level and absorbing the materials into my body so nothing remained.
"Why would she be scared of me fleeing? Why would she give out my location to Raven? Why does Raven want to broadcast our marriage to the entire world? And why is Raven even in the United Empire to begin with?" I muttered with a deepening frown, the questions stacking up one on top of another. Throughout my attempts to escape from Raven just minutes ago, I hadn't actually used everything at my disposal. Not even close.
I had wanted to test my capabilities against her—to see how my new powers measured up in a real situation. Otherwise, I would have gone invisible from the very start and begun teleporting away before she even knew I was gone. I had power over reality itself, which meant I had an endless number of ways to escape any situation if I truly wanted to. Running wasn't the problem. It had never been the problem.
My combat capability was lacking; that much was true. But what wasn't lacking—not even slightly—was my ability to survive. I was like a cockroach. No… I was the ultimate cockroach. You could stomp on me, crush me, burn down the house around me, and I'd still find a way to scurry out of the rubble and keep going.