Tristan’s eyes opened to blackness...
For one disorienting second he thought the executioner’s blade had simply left him in some endless dark and the woman with the sensual voice was just some unreal bullshit.
Then his lungs dragged in air and his body screamed back to life in a violent rush of sensation.
Immediately, he felt everything... From the cold sheets under his bare back, a dull, deep ache in the center of his chest, to the faint smell of blood already in the room.
He was lying down.
Alive?
Before the thought could finish forming in his mind, he heard the gentle shift of weight beside him and his eyes seemed to open clearly now. He could make out two pale hands rose into his limited field of vision. Between them, a long silver knife caught what little light existed in the room.
The blade was already on its way down toward his heart.
Tristan tried to shout but what came out was a broken, hoarse rasp. The sound was enough, though. The knife stopped a finger’s width from his skin.
A pair of eyes stared down at him, wide with shock.
"Lights! Someone turn on the damn lights!" the woman hissed urgently.
A switch flipped and the small bedroom was flooded with light, forcing Tristan to squint as he shoved himself up onto his elbows.
Then he saw his surroundings...
Three women stood around the bed.
They were all beautiful in ways that felt almost aggressive.
The one who still held the knife was the tallest. Long, thick brunette hair spilled over her shoulders in heavy waves. Her eyes were a bright, furious gold, and there was something wild and barely restrained in the way she held herself.
To her right stood a shorter blonde with porcelain skin and eyes the color of fresh blood. Her expression was cold, irritated, and openly murderous. When her upper lip curled, Tristan caught the glint of fangs.
The third woman was the smallest of the three. Full, bouncing wavy hair framed a face that looked deceptively delicate until you noticed the sharp wickedness in her eyes and the faint purple sparks in them.
The long-haired brunette stared at him like he had personally crawled out of hell just to ruin her night.
"Why the fuck won’t you stay dead?" she demanded through clenched teeth.
The blonde clicked her tongue in pure annoyance. "I told both of you. We should have cut the heart out the second he stopped breathing. But no. We had to follow the ’proper sequence.’"
The wavy-haired one frowned, her mouth twitching, defensively. "The ancestral instructions were specific, Nadia. If we skip steps, the ritual fails. We’ve already sunk everything into this. We can’t afford another failure."
Nadia’s red eyes flicked back to Tristan.
"Then we just kill him again, He’s already inconvenient." she said flatly.
"Excuse me... What is-" Tristan had just cleared his throat and couldn’t get out a complete sentence when Nadia moved.
One moment she was standing at the side of the bed; the next she was lunging, her fingers reaching for his throat with lethal intent.
Tristan’s body reacted on pure survival instinct. He rolled hard to the side. The mattress bounced. Nadia’s hand slammed into the pillow where his neck had been a split second earlier.
At the exact same moment, a sweet, filthy voice slid into his skull like warm oil, followed by glowing text that burned across his vision.
[Ding!]
[Hello, my darling Host.]
[Soul transfer complete.]
[Host body successfully occupied.]
[Three wives detected.]
[Wife 1: Nadia Bellrose - Vampire][Hostility Level: Extreme]
[Wife 2: Talia Moon - Werewolf. [Hostility Level: Extreme]
[Wife 3: Cora Boone - Witch] [Hostility Level: Very, very high]
[System initialization: 34%...]
Tristan’s heart slammed against his ribs.
"These are the three wives?" he muttered under his breath, still scrambling backward across the mattress. "You’re serious?"
Lysander’s voice purred with open delight.
"Deadly serious, Host. Aren’t they lovely? Try not to die before I finish loading your interface. I’m still setting up the fun parts."
Meanwhile, what gave Tristan a moment of peace was that Nadia had been thrown off by how fast he could suddenly move. Her brows furrowed but then she recovered fast. She crawled onto the bed with terrifying speed, her eyes locked on him like he was an annoying prey that had already been claimed.
"Calm your wife, I need a little more time." Lysander said lightly in his head.
"Calm her? How do I calm someone who is trying to kill me?" Tristan snarled under his breath then dodged Nadia’s attack again by scrambling move backward, he sank onto the floor and quickly stood on his feet.
"Oh, this motherfucker has suddenly known gymnastics overnight?" Nadia yelled as she stood on the bed,and the other two women hissed.
"Isn’t it obvious?" Lysander’s tone turned sweetly wicked as she added;
"Okay, this is how you do it..."
"Spank those heavy breasts of hers and tell her to stop putting them to work for the wrong reasons."
"What?" Tristan’s brain short-circuited for a full second. The gentleman in him wouldn’t allow him to say and do such to a woman he was just meeting for the first time.
That threw him off and Nadia seized the opportunity. She lunged forward and threw herself on him. Her legs wrapped around his hips and she gnashed.
Tristan staggered but his feet held the floor.
"Hey woman, can you calm down and let us use words instead?" Tristan requested like a gentleman he was but all he got in response was a hiss. Nadia’s hands went to his throat.
"How many seconds does it take to kill a man, Nadia? Need me to show you how I did it earlier?" A voice rang out from where Tristan’s eyes could no longer reach.
Hearing that made Nadia became more aggressive. Her grip on his throat tightened and she began to strangle him.
Air knocked out of Tristan and his eyes watered. There, he knew he needed to act fast before he died again.
Dignity could wait, his life couldn’t.
With that thought, Tristan’s hands moved but Instead of doing as the system said, his hands suddenly developed a mind of their own and came down to grip Nadia’s breasts.
They didn’t stop at gripping... They squeezed.
Nadia froze.