Nyx set Alexandra down but kept both hands on the blonde’s shoulders, pink eyes bright with the look that meant she’d already thought three steps ahead and was enjoying the view from there.

"Alex," she said. "More spots opened up."

The color drained from Alexandra’s face, then flooded back twice as fast, and her blue eyes went so wide the lantern light caught in them like coins at the bottom of a fountain.

Valkyrie spots. Kaiden had three from the start, and all three were basically instantly filled the moment he got them.

For as long as Alexandra had known this household, there had never been room for anyone else.

Now there was.

"Nyx." Kaiden’s voice cut across the room, lacking the usual cadence when he was speaking to his lovers. "Don’t."

He was already moving, putting a hand on Nyx’s shoulder to calm the situation before it spiraled.

"Alex doesn’t want to fight."

Behind him, Aria’s silver eyes had gone cold in Nyx’s direction, apprehensive.

Nyx opened her mouth to protest, but before she could...

"I want it."

Every head in the room turned to the blonde girl.

Alexandra’s hands were shaking. Her cheeks were so red they looked sunburned, and her voice had come out barely above a whisper, but her eyes were locked on Kaiden’s back with a focus that didn’t waver even as her fingers trembled at her sides.

"I... I want it," she repeated, louder this time, and then immediately looked at the floor, then at Kaiden, then at the floor again, then back at Kaiden with the desperate expression of a girl who had surprised herself so thoroughly she didn’t know where to put her face.

"W-wait. Let me explain before anyone says anything." She pressed both hands to her burning face and took a breath that shuddered on the way in. "Valkyries can only be non-awakened women, right? That’s the rule. Scarlet is awakened. Vespera is awakened. Alice is awakened." Her gaze flicked to Kaiden again, quick and shy, like checking if he was still listening to her explanation. "I... I’m assuming the Dungeon Born can’t qualify either. They’re not..."

She gestured vaguely, lost the word, and settled for waving both hands at the room.

"We’re inside a dimensional battle for survival." Her voice was still trembling, but the logic underneath it was not. "Everyone here is either awakened or a Dungeon Born. I’m the only one who is a normal, powerless person."

She looked at Kaiden again. Held his gaze for a full second this time, and the pink in her cheeks deepened as she did, the shy glances building into something that refused to break even though it clearly cost her everything to hold.

After all... Valkyries were not just soldiers. They were bonded to him, woven into his life and his system and his future in ways that went far beyond combat rosters.

And more than that... His Valkyries were the most famous pornstars in the world.

Alexandra knew that. Everyone in this room knew that.

Her hands fell to her sides and the trembling stopped.

"I have to stop hiding," Alexandra said, and the softness in her voice hardened at the edges, quiet resolve she’d been building toward for longer than anyone in this room knew. "This is my home. You guys are my beloved friends. And there are invaders at the door."

She straightened her spine and lifted her chin, blonde hair catching the lantern light across her collarbones, the maid uniform doing nothing to hide the flush that ran from her face down the curve of her neck, and the girl who poured water and folded towels held Kaiden’s gaze with blue eyes that burned quiet and certain. "I must become brave enough to protect everything I care about, or I’m begging fate to repeat."

From across the room, Scarlet leaned forward on her perch with an eyebrow raised, wine bottle forgotten.

"What are you muttering about over there?" she asked no one in particular. "Valkyries? Non-awakened women?"

The stream chat was already flooding.

- SinfullyDevoted: What’s happening?? Why is the maid girl shaking??

- KaidensWife (mod): Something about the Valkyrie spots??!!

- MoonlitSinner: WHY IS SHE SO CUTE?!

- StarryNightCrush: Her face is SO RED...!

Realizing what she’d done, Alexandra snapped her mouth shut.

Both hands flew to her lips. Her eyes went round as dinner plates as the full scope of what she’d just announced, in a room being streamed to millions, crashed into her like a freight train.

She’d said all of that out loud.

On stream.

In front of everyone. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Kaiden looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged. "At this point, I don’t really care about any of that. Don’t worry about it."

"!!" Alexandra let out a strangled sound behind her hands that might have been relief or might have been her soul leaving her body.

Aria stepped forward.

The yandere was nowhere to be seen.

The possessive princess who clung to Kaiden’s arm and made sweet threats about keeping him to herself was nowhere in this room, and the woman who took her place moved toward Alexandra with the quiet care of someone who understood exactly what it cost to survive something terrible and come out the other side still standing.

Aria knew what broken looked like. She’d seen it in her mother’s hollow face and thin wrists and dull hair, in the woman who’d been pulled from a place no one should ever have to see.

She’d watched Julia Levander rebuild herself one day at a time in the safety of the Ashborn manor, and she saw similar scars in the blonde girl pressing her hands to her mouth with wide eyes.

"Alexandra." Aria’s voice was soft, steady. A voice she kept in reserve for moments that deserved it, softer than combat and steadier than love. "If you take a spot, you must fight in real combat, facing real monsters." She held the blonde’s gaze with silver eyes that carried no judgment, only truth. "You’d face creatures that can kill you before you see them move. You’d put your life on the line every time we deploy, and there is no guarantee you’ll come home."

Alexandra nodded along with each point, small and serious.

"I know."

"Do you really, though?" Aria pressed, gentle. "Because I need you to hear the reality you seem so eager to embrace, not from Nyx who’s excited to have her ’Blondie Bestie’ by her side in combat, and not from the adrenaline of the moment. You hear it from me, who simply wants to see you happy. And I’m not confident this is the path for you."

Luna, Bastet, and Calypso all stared at the girl in shock, though none were more surprised than Kaiden himself. His yandere princess was truly coming around to the girls in the harem...

Though, he realized, he probably shouldn’t make such declarations about the girl who just used both hands of hers to force Luna to deepthroat him repeatedly.

"Aria..." Alexandra’s eyes went glassy.

The two of them had never been close, not really.

Aria was the first girl Kaiden met out of anyone in the harem, the Moon Valkyrie, the most beautiful woman Alexandra had ever seen, and Alexandra was the girl who brought her tea and folded her laundry.