Guo Renwang and Huang Zedong passed without acknowledging me, and I watched them disappear down the hall before turning back to Meilan.

She had already reclaimed her smile, but I could see the irritation beneath it. The first stage of taking my house had not gone the way she wanted, and she hadn’t even made it past the front hall yet.

"You’re very calm," she said, like the observation was supposed to mean something.

"I live here," I replied. "Why would I not be calm?"

Her smile thinned as Commander Li’s mouth twitched, but he covered it by looking toward the hallway.

His own men had stayed near the entrance and the outer perimeter, exactly where he had placed them. They weren’t interfering, weren’t helping, and weren’t pretending this was their mess to solve.

That was smart.

If Meilan wanted to own the operation, she could own all of it.

Before I could get too bored, the two men who had ’searched’ the house, were already back, floating over to Meilan like she was the center of their universe.

There was no way they could have searched everything. I looked at Commander Li and raised an eyebrow. He simply lowered his head and shook it.

Our conversation didn’t require any words, we were on the same page.

They hadn’t actually searched, and if they had, it wouldn’t have changed the results.

There was nothing visible to find. Anything useful had already been taken back into my space the moment Meilan knocked on my door, and I wasn’t in the habit of leaving supplies lying around for armed idiots to inventory.

The two men opened doors, checked rooms, and came back with the same empty-handed expression that every other intruder had worn after trying to make sense of my house.

"Nothing obvious," Huang Zedong reported, shaking his head.

Meilan’s eyes flashed in anger even as she put on her princess voice that made every man around her seemingly melt. "Then look harder," she purred, like it was a suggestion more than a command.

"They looked hard enough," I sighed before he could answer. "You can keep making them walk in circles if it makes you feel better, but it won’t change anything."

She turned on me again, and for a second, I thought she might actually lose control. Then she smiled, which was worse.

"You’re very confident for someone who is about to lose everything."

I hummed and looked around the room. "You keep saying that, but I don’t see that happening at the moment. Or are you waiting until we get so annoyed with you that we jsut leave on our own?"

That one landed.

Zhenlan’s arm tightened around me, not to restrain me, but to remind me that he was there.

Lingyun shifted forward, no longer hiding his grin, while Chenghai’s expression didn’t change at all. Yuche’s eyes moved briefly to me, then back to Meilan, and I knew he had already filed away every weakness she had shown since stepping inside.

Meilan’s men registered the threat coming from the four men and stepped between them and Meilan, creating a wall that they thought might be enough to keep her safe.

I yawned in response.

I wasn’t trying to be dramatic. I was genuinely tired of standing. This day was already longer than it had any right to be and I was more than done with it.

"We should go downstairs," I announced, looking up at Zhenlan.

He nodded while Lingyun turned to look at me. "Now?" he asked, his brow wrinkling in confusion. But he wasn’t the only one. Even Chenghai and Yuche looked at me like I had a screw or two loose.

"Movie night," I replied with a shrug. "They can do what they want with the upstairs, we’ll take the basement. Besides, it’s getting too late in the day for us to go anywhere."

His grin widened. "That is the first sensible thing anyone has said since they knocked."

Chenghai exhaled through his nose and glanced toward the soldiers before looking back at me.

He didn’t like turning his back on them, but he liked standing in the living room with Meilan less.

Yuche pushed away from the door with slow precision, not rushing, not asking, simply moving because I had decided the conversation was over.

Zhenlan released me only enough to let me step forward, then followed at my side like he had all the time in the world.

Meilan stared at us. "Where do you think you’re going?"

I looked over my shoulder. "Downstairs."

"I’m not finished with you yet."

"But I am."

I didn’t wait for her response.

Right before I passed him, I looked up at Commander Li and studied the man.

I was turning much too soft, spending time with the guys was doing that to me. But at the same time, I wasn’t about to tell anyone my plans.

Instead, I whispered to him: "I wouldn’t sleep too deeply tonight," I purred, my voice so soft my words almost disappeared in the air between us. But when he looked at me with surprised, I knew he had heard me. "There’s monsters in this house."

I walked away without saying anything more. I could feel both Commander Li’s gaze and Zhenlan’s but I continued to look forward.

That was all the warning I would give him.

The rest was up to him.

The basement door opened with its usual quiet sound, and the familiar stairs greeted me like a reward for surviving stupid people.

Behind me, Lingyun made a satisfied noise as if we had just escaped a terrible social event rather than walked away from a hostile takeover. Chenghai came down last, pausing long enough at the top to make sure no one decided to follow too closely, while Yuche moved ahead and claimed one of the seats like the room had always been his.

Zhenlan stayed near me until I sat, then settled close enough that I could lean into him if I wanted to.

I did not.

Not because I didn’t want to but because Meilan was still upstairs, and I wasn’t giving her a single thing more than necessary.

Lingyun grabbed the remote and turned on the screen. "If I’m picking, we’re not watching anything that requires emotional growth."

"Then we’ll avoid anything with mirrors," Yuche replied.

Lingyun paused, then pointed the remote at him. "That was rude."

"It was accurate."

Chenghai took his usual position where he could see the stairs and the room at the same time. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel his attention still tracking the floor above us. He didn’t trust Meilan. Good. That meant he had functioning instincts.

I looked at the table.

Empty.

Of course it was.

"I’m going upstairs," I announced after a while. I had heard the amount of footsteps upstairs dwindle down to nothing, so I wasn’t worried about crossing paths with the Bitch Queen.

Zhenlan looked at me. "For what?"

"Snacks."

Lingyun’s attention snapped back to me for a moment, narrowing his eyes before he turned his attention back to the TV. "Come back fast or you don’t get a vote."

Yuche leaned back in his seat. "She never respects the vote anyway."

"That’s because everyone else votes wrong," I replied.

I left before anyone could argue and pulled the basement door shut behind me.

Looking around the room, I couldn’t help the smile that appeared on my face. There wasn’t a single person on the main floor. Like the original survivors who thought they could just take what was mine, they had decided to go upstairs and claim all the rooms for themselves. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

That was fine. I wished them a peaceful night’s sleep.

With one last look around, I headed for the back doors at the far end of the house. My footsteps barely made a sound as I unlocked the deadbolt and lock on the handle. I turned the knob just enough that anyone looking wouldn’t be able to tell that it was open...

Still as quietly as I could, I walked back across to the living room, the kitchen, then the front door. The path was still clear.

Lifting up my hand, I paused for a second. My heart was pounding now in a way that it hadn’t with the last door. This went against everything that I believed.

But that wouldn’t be enough to stop me.

In my last life, Meilan opened the gates and let the zombies into the compound before blaming me and having me killed.

I refused to take the blame for something that I didn’t do. And since I had already been punished for it, I might as well make her words true.

I unlocked the two locks on the front door and opened it just a crack.

I stared at it for a moment longer before I let out a shaky breath.

I pulled a bowl of popcorn and a few bags of chips out of my space and headed toward the basement.

The door had a lock on it, and the moment I was through, I turned it. I wished for a brief second that I had my powers from my last life. I could have used my vine whip to make sure that no one got close.

Shaking my head, I walked down the stairs to where the men were sitting, waiting for me.

Lingyun held out his hand without looking away from the screen and I dropped the chips into his palm. "Took you long enough," he grumbled.

"You paused it?" I asked, cocking my head to the side even as I sat back down on the couch.

"Obviously."

"Good."

I wouldn’t sleep tonight. Not knowing what was going to come next.

I just hoped that my guests enjoyed their surprise as much as I would.