I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties-Chapter 503: Second Skin part three

---

Her voice spilled into his mind in chaotic, overlapping fragments.

"You were hurt," she said. "You were stupid. You fell down a battlefield. You bled. You did not call for me. Why did you not call for me. You smell tired. You smell like too many dead things and not enough sleep."

Kai swallowed past a lump in his throat that had no business being there.

"I was busy," he said.

It was a terrible answer. She accepted it anyway.

"You are always busy," she said. "That is why you have me."

He almost laughed. It came out more like a choke.

Behind him, someone cleared a throat with the cough of a person who has just realized they have walked into a very significant moment and would like to register a complaint with the scheduling committee.

Luna stood in the doorway, eyes wide open.

It was not, in fairness, the first time she had walked in on Kai in an emotionally complicated embrace with someone mostly naked. It was, however, the first time the mostly naked person had been a girl she had previously known as a bitey lizard the size of a backpack.

Akayoroi stood just behind Luna, one hand on the curtain, head tilted. Her dark eyes tracked every inch of Miryam, taking in the scales, the lines of muscle, the way her aura wrapped around Kai’s like a second, possessive blanket.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Luna’s brain returned from its temporary vacation.

"Oh," she said faintly. "Of course she is naked. Why would any of my patients ever keep their clothes on. That would be too easy."

Kai, who had been valiantly keeping his eyes on Miryam’s shoulders and very determinedly not on anything below, suddenly became acutely aware of just how little fell under the category of "shoulder."

He felt his face heat. He tried to gently loosen his arms.

"Miryam," he murmured. "You might want to—"

"Later," she said, tightening her grip. "You left. I hatched. I woke up. You were not here. You were somewhere else being stupid. I am catching up."

Luna pinched the bridge of her nose.

"This is not how reintroduction from cocoon is supposed to go," she muttered. "There is supposed to be observation. Controlled conditions. Clothing. At least one adult who is not flustered."

"Akayoroi is an adult," Kai said, grasping for solidarity.

Akayoroi, regal queen that she was, raised an eyebrow.

"I am observing," she said serenely. "I did not say I was not flustered."

She stepped fully into the chamber, her gaze still locked on Miryam. The aura around Akayoroi shifted, her own queenly instincts bristling in interest rather than hostility.

"She is different," Akayoroi murmured. "More... focused. The first time she felt like a blade still being forged. This time she feels like a blade that has decided what it wishes to cut."

Miryam’s head turned slightly, golden eyes flicking toward Akayoroi. For a heartbeat, their gazes met, queen to wyrm, authority to predator. The air between them thickened.

Then Miryam dismissed her.

Not rudely, exactly. Simply with the unselfconscious prioritization of someone whose entire world was currently anchored around one particular ant.

She pressed her face against Kai’s chest again, ignoring everyone else.

Luna sighed and started unbuttoning her coat.

"Fine," she said. "We are doing this in reverse order. Hug first, embarrassment second, lecture third. Story of my life."

She stepped forward with the careful, wary movements of someone approaching a powerful, unstable spell.

"Miryam," she said, keeping her tone as gentle as she could manage while her medical sensibilities were having a quiet meltdown. "I am going to put this on you. It is called clothing. You will like it. It will keep you from catching a chill and keep me from having a stroke."

Miryam did not answer. She did not speak aloud at all. She continued to communicate in private through Kai, which did not stop her from hearing the words in the room. He felt her attention brush Luna, curious but not affectionate.

Another fragment of thought slid down the Road.

"She is loud," Miryam observed.

Kai tried very hard not to smile.

"She is your elder," he said. "She has earned the right."

Luna draped the heavy coat around Miryam’s shoulders with the brisk competence of a woman dressing a very dangerous, very confused kitten. The coat was slightly too large, designed for Luna’s own broad shoulders and practical layering. On Miryam, it hung past her knees, swallowing her in dark fabric. Only her bare feet and the tips of the golden scales along her calves remained uncovered.

"Better," Luna said firmly. "Now I can look at your face without feeling like I should apologize to half the mountain."

Miryam finally loosened her grip and stepped back half a pace, still holding onto Kai’s forearms as if to make sure he did not fall over in the meantime. Her eyes flicked down his body, taking in the bandages, the bruises, the way he was putting more weight on his left leg.

Her aura flared.

"You are damaged," she said in his head, flatly.

"A little injury," he admitted loudly.

Luna made a choking sound.

"A little," she repeated. "You had a spearhead in your side and three layers of cooked plate on your back. Your thigh looks like a map of bad decisions. I am starting to understand where Miryam learned understatement."

Akayoroi circled slowly, staying out of arm’s reach but close enough that her own aura could sample Miryam’s without being obvious.

"Her rank," Akayoroi murmured. "It hums. Higher than before. Higher than you, Husband."

Kai had already felt it.

Standing this close, wrapped in her presence, he could not miss it. Miryam’s aura was a steady, blazing column compared to his own battered, flickering beacon. It was not yet fully stretched, still coiled close to her body like a dragon keeping its wings tucked, but even so the pressure of it filled the chamber.

The system, perhaps annoyed that he had ignored its earlier offer, took the opportunity to chime in again.

[Ding! Updated comparative assessment.

Host: Kai. Rank: 7-Star Monarch Devourer Ant (Apex Form capable).

Current effective combat readiness: 43 percent.

Linked dependent: Miryam. Rank: 7-Star Nymid Wyrmling (Humanoid Variant). Current effective combat readiness: 92 percent.

Advisory: Dependent’s raw power, regeneration, and mobility potential exceed host’s in current state. Skill set flagged: "unique / high-impact."

Offer: Display Miryam’s detailed status, trait tree, and skill list? Y/N.]

Kai grimaced.

"Stop trying to turn this into a competition," he said under his breath. "She just hatched."

The system did not care about fairness. It cared about data. The offer blinked again, insistent.

He felt Miryam’s curiosity brush against the notification through their link.

"I have skills," she said, excitement sneaking under the flat tone. "Show me. I wish to see what I can do. I feel... full of teeth."

"We will look later," Kai said, more firmly this time. "Right now I want to make sure you are stable. That your form is settled. That there are no... side effects."

"You mean side effects beyond suddenly being taller than you in aura," Luna muttered.

He glared at her. She shrugged, unapologetic.

"Not now," he told the system again.

[Selection: N confirmed. Status interface snoozed for 06:00:00.

Note: host resists useful information with concerning frequency.]

He chose to believe that last part was a glitch.

Miryam’s eyes narrowed slightly as she studied him and his injuries.

"You are hiding things from yourself," she said. "You do that a lot."

"It is a survival technique," he replied.

"Not a good one," she said.

Her gaze dropped to his hands. One of them was braced on his thigh, fingers digging into the sore muscle. The knuckles were scraped raw from where he had driven his claws into armor and stone. There was a thin, fresh cut along the back of his right hand where a broken spear haft had kissed him on its way past. Luna had not bothered with that one yet. Compared to everything else wrong with him, it was an afterthought.

Miryam’s attention fixed on it as if it were the only injury in the room.

"Kai," she said. "You are bleeding."

"It is nothing," he said automatically. "A scratch."

She stepped closer, catching his wrist before he could pull it back.

Her fingers were cool and strong. The golden scales along the backs of her hands rasped faintly against his skin.

"Do not fuss," he said, suddenly self conscious. "Luna will clean it later. She loves cleaning things that are already mostly healed. It gives her something to complain about."

"I heard that," Luna said.

"I meant you to," he said.

Miryam tugged his hand up between them.

"You are mine," she said simply. "I fix what is mine."

Before he could work out how to respond to that line, she lifted his hand to her mouth.

If she had been the small, lizard like wyrmling she had been before, it would have been nothing. She had bitten him, drooled on him, and slept on his chest like a smug scale blanket. It would have been weird but manageable.

Now, however, she had a fully human mouth. And lips. And a tongue.

He realized this in excruciating detail when she very deliberately licked the back of his hand.

Her tongue was warm. Her breath ghosted across his skin. The scales along her jaw brushed his knuckles as she tilted his hand slightly to follow the line of the cut.

Kai’s brain, still not entirely recovered from the naked hug, threw up its metaphorical hands and went to lie down in a quiet corner