Chapter 498: Chapter 497- Why Sofia have Horns?

The impact drove Sofia’s head sideways so hard her neck cracked — the flat, open, ’weighted’ impact of Elena’s full arm behind it, the sound of it in the small dormitory room considerably louder than it had been in the garden.

Sofia’s nose.

The , immediate, warm rush of blood — the thin, copper-bright stream of it appearing immediately at her right nostril, running over her lip, the taste of it arriving on her tongue before she’d finished processing the impact.

She fell.

Her knees finding the floor, her hands catching the stone, the , total, ’everything-at-once’ impact of the physical and the everything-else simultaneously.

She looked up.

From the floor.

At Elena above her.

At the cold face looking down.

Elena crouched.

The , deliberate movement of a woman bringing herself to your level because she wants to look at you directly.

"Say it," she said.

Quiet.

"I don’t have a dick."

Sofia stared at her.

"Say it."

Blood running down her lip.

"Isn’t it funny," Elena said. Her voice had gone somewhere softer, which was worse. "If I had one. I’d have done exactly what your father did. Right here. In that chair. In front of that mirror." Her eyes moved over Sofia with the , clinical quality of someone describing architecture. "I wonder if you’d make the same sounds."

Sofia’s jaw clenched.

The , whole-body clench of a woman gathering everything she has left into the only container still standing.

"You," Sofia said.

Her voice was wrecked and she didn’t care.

"It’s fake. All of it. You fabricated that recording. You—"

"Then explain the horns."

Sofia went still.

The , cold, ’everything-stopped’ still of a body that has received a sentence its owner was not prepared for.

Elena’s eyes. On her horns.

The small, pale, Cow Tribe horns that curved forward above her temples — the thing she couldn’t explain, the thing the academy whispered about, the thing that sat in the gap between a Mermaid Tribe mother and a human noble father and had no clean answer in either taxonomy.

"Your mother is a mermaid," Elena said.

"Your father is human."

"Neither of them have horns."

A pause that lasted approximately forever.

"So." Elena’s smile returned. The , satisfied, I-have-been-building-to-this smile. "Why do you have them?"

Sofia’s mouth was open.

Nothing was coming out.

"Oh, I think it would be ’fascinating," Elena said, standing, smoothing her dress, the , casual motion of a woman wrapping up a meeting, "to see what else is in that recording."

She looked at Sofia on the floor.

At the blood on her lip.

At the tears running silently down her face — not the dramatic tears of performance but the , unstoppable kind that come when the body decides the eyes are going to do this regardless of the owner’s opinions.

"Your mother," Elena said, sweetly, "getting filled by demonic bastards."

She tilted her head.

"Fufufu."

The light, ’delighted’ laugh of a woman who has just done something she has been looking forward to doing.

She turned.

Walked to her desk.

Sat down.

Picked up a book.

As if Sofia were not on the floor of her room with blood on her face and everything she had ever been told about her family in pieces around her.

As if this had been a brief, pleasant errand.

Sofia stayed on the floor.

Her hands on the stone.

The blood dripping.

Her horns catching the lamplight.

’Why do you have them.’

’Why do you have them.’

’Why do you—’

"Now let’s play the portion where your mother got impregnated with you."

click

"ANNNNGHH~~!"

The sound came before the image.

"ANNNNGHH~~!"

Raw. Wet. The specific, broken-open cry of a woman whose voice has been doing this long enough that the edges of it have worn down — not the clean, startled sound of someone new to pain but the ’ragged, lived-in’ cry of a throat that has been here before and is here again and has stopped expecting it to stop.

Sofia’s body flinched before her eyes focused.

The immersion snapped back in.

Not the auction hall this time.

A room.

Familiar.

The specific, domestic familiarity of a space Sofia had visited — the carved bedposts, the blue curtains, the wide window overlooking the estate’s east garden. The vanity table with the silver-handled brush. The small, particular disorder of a woman’s private space that had been lived in long enough to develop personality.

Her mother’s bedroom.

The one at the Ravenon estate. The one Sofia had sat in as a child while her mother braided her hair and told her about the ocean.

The same room.

Different now.

The bed was the center of it.

And the bed was —

Sofia’s brain tried to stop itself.

It did not succeed.

Four men.

Four identical men.

The Count — her father, the broad-shouldered, gray-templed, serious-faced Count Ravenon — reproduced four times over, four versions of the same body moving with the specific, coordinated, ’unified’ purpose of a single mind operating multiple vessels simultaneously.

The Clone Ability.

Sofia knew it. She had always known her father carried it — the Ravenon bloodline’s rare, coveted combat ability, the capacity to manifest up to four additional bodies that shared his consciousness, his strength, his intention. She had grown up hearing about it in the context of war, of battles won at impossible odds, of enemies who couldn’t understand how a single man could be at four places simultaneously.

She had never.

’Never.’

Considered this context.

Her mother was in the middle of all of them.

The full, warm, generously-built body of Williana Rafia — the mermaid queen who had spent the first months at the estate slowly, carefully, deliberately constructing the story of a gentle rescue — was currently arranged in a configuration that had no gentleness in any of its dimensions.

One clone behind her.

His cock buried in her pussy from behind — the scaled, tight, ’specific’ entrance of mermaid anatomy that was clearly not designed for this but had been ’persuaded’ over the course of weeks, the wet, stretched, clinging grip of it visible where his shaft disappeared into her body, his hips slamming forward with the flat, rhythmic, workman’s pace of a body that has been going for a while and has found its stride.

PAH! PAH! PAH!

"HNGHIK~!! HEEHIK~!!"

One clone in front, his cock in her mouth — her mother’s face tilted upward, her jaw working, the tears running from the corners of her eyes in the continuous, unstoppable stream of a woman who has been in this position long enough that crying has become ambient rather than reactive.

Her hands.

Both occupied.

The remaining two clones at either side, her fingers wrapped around their shafts — not by choice, the specific, arranged grip of hands that have been placed and held — working in the rhythm that all four bodies had apparently agreed on.

Her mother’s body — the center of it, the warm, full, ’generous’ body that Sofia had watched move through the estate with the specific, composed dignity of a woman who had built herself back up from something and was proud of it — currently suspended in the coordinated occupation of four identical men who shared one mind’s worth of intention.

Her breasts.

Moving with every thrust from behind — the full, heavy, ’enthusiastic’ jiggle of them, swinging forward on each impact and back, the nipples dark, the specific, overwhelming reality of breasts responding to sustained motion, the clone in front catching them in his hands on the upswing and ’squeezing,’ his fingers sinking in with the working, deliberate grip of someone who has decided this is his current project.

Her mother cried out around the cock in her mouth.

"Mmphh~!! MMMGHH~!!"

The clone behind increased his pace.

PAH! PAH! PAH! PAH!

"HNGHEEK~!! NNGGHH~!! MASSSSTERR~!!"