[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants":3,"chapter-100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants-100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants-chapter-465":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","100x Rebate Sharing System: Retired Incubus Wants to Marry & Have Kids",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1129727,1459,"Chapter 465 - 464- Bath Time","100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants-chapter-465",465,"\u003Cp>She blinked.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Oh, what am I— what am I even saying.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>An awkward smile. She turned her face aside, the specific motion of a woman who has said something she’s evicting from the record.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Marta arrived.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The old woman entered with the timing of someone who has been managing this family long enough to know when intervention via refreshments is required — a tray, tea, a plate of butter cookies that were the good ones, the ones kept for actual guests.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She set it on the low table.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Looked at the room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At her mistress’s expression. At Viktor’s expression. At Rihana near the door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Said nothing. The wisdom of forty years of domestic service was legible in that specific, diplomatic silence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Please,\" she said. \"Have something.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Eliantra took a cookie without looking at it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Her eyes had drifted, against her will, back to Viktor — who was pouring a second cup of tea with the unhurried ease of a man entirely comfortable in a sitting room that wasn’t his, in a house full of problems that weren’t his, in a situation he had decided to find pleasant rather than awkward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was — she was looking, she couldn’t help looking — he was ’gorgeous.’\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The word arrived in her head without her permission.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She looked at Rihana instead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the other woman’s age — similar to her own, she thought, give or take — and the full, warm figure under the commoner’s clothes and the specific, settled quality of a woman who knew exactly what her relationship to the man in the room was.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>’Why her,’ Eliantra thought, with a logic she couldn’t fully justify. ’He could have anyone younger. Anyone—’\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She stopped that thought before it arrived at its destination.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because it was not a thought she was entitled to have.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because her daughter had made choices and Viktor was entitled to make choices and she had no ground to stand on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She looked at her cookie.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ate it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Viktor stood.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The motion was easy — he stretched, the suit pulling slightly across his shoulders with the movement, and looked out the window at the city below.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The chimneys. The market district visible from here, the thin thread of smoke above the guard station that was probably a bribe-fire. The general, visible entropy of a city that had been operating on corruption for a decade and was now operating on inertia.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"The condition of this place,\" he said, conversationally. \"It’s not good.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"No,\" Eliantra agreed, from the sofa.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Should I help?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She looked up.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"What?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He turned from the window.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Easy enough. Just say the word.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"You’re my guest,\" she said, and heard herself sound more formal than she’d intended, the hostess reflex rising above the genuine warmth underneath. \"You don’t need to— I can manage—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Fine.\" He smiled. Short, warm. \"Then walk with me in the city. Let me be your bodyguard for the afternoon.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She laughed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Actually laughed — the surprised, unguarded sound of genuine amusement — before she caught it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"You. My guard. Truly?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He raised an eyebrow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Rolled one shoulder.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Do you doubt my manhood?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The air changed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was the word. ’Manhood.’ In the context of this room, with Rihana standing near the door and the phrase ’bed-warming maid’ still warm in the air and Eliantra’s own brain doing things she was actively supervising and failing to stop.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She looked at Rihana.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Rihana looked back at her.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With the calm, warm, entirely composed expression of a woman who knows exactly what Viktor’s manhood involves and has opinions about it that she is generously not sharing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Eliantra stood.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Faster than necessary.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I’ll— prepare. I need to change. I should—\" She smoothed her robe. \"Marta, prepare the bath.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Of course, my lady.\" Marta set down the tea things. \"I’ll have it ready in—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Have it ready together.\" Viktor, from the window, not turning around.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Marta stopped.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"...Sir Viktor?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Why should Marta do it alone?\" He turned. Looked at the room. \"Rihana can help. Save the wood. Efficient.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"That is absolutely—\" Marta started.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"What are you talking about?\" Eliantra said, at the same time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"It’s practical,\" Viktor said. \"Three women, one bath preparation. Faster. Less work for Marta specifically.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I don’t need—\" Marta said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"This is very unusual—\" Eliantra said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Yes,\" Rihana said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Both women turned to her.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Rihana was already moving.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Her voice, when she spoke, carried that quality — the warm harmonic undertone of Siren blood, the specific melodic weight that didn’t command so much as ’suggest’, the way a comfortable room suggests staying — and she was already at Eliantra’s side, one hand at the woman’s back, steering with a gentle, cheerful pressure that felt less like being pushed and more like being accompanied.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Yes, that is a very good idea. We can save the fuel and I can help you and it will be much faster and also I have been wanting to speak with you and—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"No, I really don’t think—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"—and I know how to prepare a good bath, I am very experienced, and the wood savings really are significant, and also—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"This is my home, I—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"—it will be nice, come, come on.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They were at the door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Eliantra was looking at it with the expression of a woman who has just been navigated to a destination she didn’t choose by a current she didn’t feel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Marta, on Rihana’s other side, had the expression of a woman who has met unstoppable forces before and has developed a procedure for them: compliance, careful observation, report later.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The door opened.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>All three of them through it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"No! Wait— this is— Rihana, I don’t know you, you cannot simply—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"It’s fine, my lady, I am very clean, I assure you—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"That is not what I—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The door closed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Viktor stood alone in the sitting room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Hands in his pockets.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tea cooling on the table. The butter cookies half-eaten. The window showing him the chimneys and the corruption and the general exhaustion of a city that needed more help than one afternoon walk could provide.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He breathed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Looked at the city.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thought about it — the scope of it, the underground networks, the bought officials, the specific, comprehensive rot that a dead man had cultivated over a decade — and felt the weight of it land in the practical part of his brain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>’Too much hassle,’ he thought.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>’I need sleep first.’\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He turned toward the door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From somewhere deeper in the mansion — down the corridor, past the second turn, where the bathing room was — came a sound.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"NO! Do not remove my— this is VULGAR, you cannot simply—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Eliantra’s voice. Pitched at the specific register of a woman confronting something she is both offended by and insufficiently armed to stop.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Viktor paused at the door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sounds of protest continued. Then a splash.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then, faintly, what might have been Marta making a sound of resigned professional acceptance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He stood there for a moment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Pfft.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sound left him without permission.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He pressed his mouth flat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It didn’t help.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Rihana looks energetic about it,\" he said, to the empty room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The empty room had no comment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He walked out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Behind him, distantly, Eliantra’s voice reached a new register:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"THAT IS MY— THOSE ARE PRIVATE— MARTA, SAY SOMETHING—\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And Marta, with the resignation of forty years:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"She’s very strong, my lady. I don’t think arguing is helping.\"\u003C\u002Fp>",1237,"2026-06-03T11:53:54.934Z",1,"novelbin.me","3aa9084638312042b5ca02dcf7bb127c2c4da8a561d562ec3c51843c959bbe18","100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants-chapter-466","100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants-chapter-464",486,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002F100x-rebate-sharing-system-retired-incubus-wants-cover.jpg"]