Her spine snapped off the sand.

Her untouched slit sprayed a high, clear fountain of juice into the air while the brand on her chest blazed a blinding, searing level four red.

He yanked his softening length free.

Stepping over, he jammed his tip into Nara’s hollow tunnel, pumping a secondary, thick load of sticky white fluid against her deepest walls, cementing his permanent claim over her biology.

Gia’s glazed, rolling eyes begged for her share.

He obliged, stuffing his aching shaft into her dark, ruined hole. The final, throbbing spurts filled her empty cavity to the brim, until the excess cream began to bubble and leak from her puckered rim in a thick, frothy mess.

The brutal, two-hour marathon finally ceased.

The silver moon hung dead center in the sky. The three women lay scattered across the churned sand, their minds obliterated, muscles twitching involuntarily against the chill of the ocean breeze.

Celia’s eyes rolled shut.

Her overloaded nervous system crashed, her gaping ring weeping a steady, slow stream of his thick seed onto the crushed shells beneath her.

Nara slumped over next.

Her pale, trained slit continued to spasm, pulsing weak, dying squirts of clear nectar into the grit as her consciousness flatlined into peaceful static.

Gia held out the longest.

Her massive, bruised breasts heaved with one final, shuddering intake of air before her head lolled to the side. Her brain shut off, her entire existence reduced to a hollowed-out vessel.

Raven stood tall amidst the wreckage.

Like a dark conqueror observing a conquered land, he looked down. His thick weapon hung heavy and semi-erect, thoroughly painted in a messy cocktail of white seed and slick, earthy slime.

He rolled his broad shoulders.

The vertebrae in his back popped one by one. The pale moonlight caught the sharp, cruel edge of a deeply satisfied smirk.

"Now..."

His voice was a dark rumble over the crashing waves. "...just the professor is left."

He raised his hand. A sharp, echoing crack sounded as he snapped his fingers.

The sandy shoreline emptied.

Without a trace, he vanished into the cool dark, taking his three broken, oozing toys with him.

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The chandeliers of Ashveil Grand Hall had never looked more indifferent.

Seventy years of oil portraits lined the paneled walls. Dead men with dead eyes and congratulatory medals pinned to their dead chests, watching the living ones below repeat the same ritual they always had — drinking, laughing too loud, clapping each other on the back like they’d personally built every brick of this century-old academy with their own hands.

Professor Marla Thornwood sat at the far end of the long mahogany dining table and ate cereal.

Not because it was on the menu. She’d packed her own.

The silver bowl looked absurd against the white tablecloth with gold trim. She didn’t care. She’d rather look eccentric than touch a single thing these men had touched first.

The hall buzzed with the low, self-congratulatory hum of important men being important near each other. Dean Aldris sat three seats down at the curve of the table, gray at his temples and ruddy at his cheeks from whatever they’d poured him already. Director Haas sat across from him — thick-necked, wide-shouldered, the kind of man who laughed at his own jokes before finishing them. The university’s owner, a silver-haired patriarch named Cassius Wren, had already given a speech about legacy and excellence that lasted seventeen minutes and mentioned women exactly zero times.

Marla had counted.

To her right sat Professor Yinna — one of the other two women present. Yinna had come dressed in a champagne-colored wrap dress, laughing too brightly at things that weren’t funny, touching the arms of the men beside her like it kept her warm. She was doing what women learned to do here — perform. Shrink and sparkle at the same time. The thin silk of her dress draped over her curves, the subtle outline of her areolas visible whenever she leaned forward, a detail the men beside her were tracking with veiled, hungry glances.

To Marla’s left was the farthest chair from everyone. She’d claimed it deliberately.

She pressed her spoon through the milk and watched the cereal bob and settle.

’One hundred years,’ she thought. ’And they still can’t find more than three women who are ’eligible’ to be in the same room as them.’

The word eligible always made her jaw tighten. Eligible meant — had she networked correctly. Had she published in the right journals. Had she smiled at the right department heads. Had she made herself small enough, often enough, to earn a chair at a table that was never meant for her. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

She pushed the thought down and kept her face arranged into polished calm.

"Professor Thornwood."

Dean Aldris leaned around the man between them, his voice carrying that particular warmth powerful men used on women they wanted information from.

Marla turned her head with a composed smile.

"Dean Aldris."

"Exceptional work this semester — truly, the social sciences department has never had stronger semester-end reviews. How are the students performing? Engagement levels, retention across the campaigns?"

"Cross-enrollment is up twelve percent from last academic year," she answered, keeping her voice measured and clean. "Student participation in structured discussions has improved significantly — I attribute most of that to the revised assessment framework we piloted in the third quarter. Retention is the strongest it’s been in the past six years."

He nodded, expression warm with approval like she was a student who’d answered correctly.

She wanted to tip her cereal bowl over his head.

"Excellent. Excellent." He leaned a fraction closer. "And — ah, by the way, that social awareness campaign. The one your department was organizing across the inter-college network. What happened with that?"

Marla tilted her head fractionally.

"Unfortunately it was canceled," she said. "The city logistics board withdrew the required permits citing municipal restructuring. Once government clearance was pulled, we didn’t have the operational foundation to proceed — so it was dissolved per compliance guidelines."

"Shame," Aldris murmured.

He was looking at her collarbone.

Marla knew because she’d learned to feel it — the way a man’s attention moved across a woman’s body like he thought she couldn’t tell. Like she was furniture he was appraising.

She hated her dress.

Yinna had convinced her to wear it — ’You need to look like you belong at the table, Marla, not like you’re grading papers at it.’ The fabric was deep emerald, structured at the waist, and two sizes too tight across the chest because she’d bought it three years ago and her body had not cooperated with that decision. The neckline was lower than she liked. Her bra was doing significant structural work, pushing her cleavage up, the stiff peaks of her nipples pressing a faint, telling outline against the tight silk under the chill of the hall’s air conditioning. She felt like she’d walked into a room full of people who saw her body before her face.

She went back to her cereal.

The men around her shifted and murmured. There were glances exchanged — brief, sly, the kind that traveled between men who understood each other without words. One of the younger professors across the table — she didn’t know his name, had no interest in learning it — tilted his wine glass at another, eyebrows raised slightly, gaze sliding toward her then Yinna.

Marla’s stomach turned.

She knew what that meant.

She’d always known what that meant.

She pressed her fingers around the handle of her spoon and reminded herself that she was a professional.

That this was a formal function.