Read Novel Full Chapter 966: Step Dad?
Chapter 966: Step Dad?
Around a dining table four people were having breakfast.
Two male and two females.
What was immediately striking about the arrangement was the visual symmetry of it. On the male side the two shared extremely similar features. The female side mirrored the same situation.
What made it more striking was that each pair seemed to be an older and younger version of the same thing.
The females sat across from each other, one appearing to be in her late twenties, the other in her mid-teens. The males were closer in age, one in his late teens and one just behind him. All four had green eyes.
Together they looked like a family.
’Well, we all are family,’ Michael thought in silence as he glanced at Jester. ’Well, except for one maybe.’
In any case, everyone at this table carried his blood in some form. Aunt Mia and Lily had both been evolved using it. Jester’s vessel had been built from his body entirely.
Familiar blood could not run any stronger than this.
Michael looked around the table at the four of them and felt a certain quiet satisfaction.
Lily was staring at her mother with undisguised curiosity from across the table.
The differences between them post-evolution were considerable.
Aunt Mia had gone into the process as a woman in her mid-thirties who had weathered the ordinary difficulties of life. They had left visible marks regardless of how much things improved afterward.
Evolution had addressed all of that at once, and had done so dramatically enough that even Michael, who had performed the evolution himself and knew what to expect in general terms, found himself looking twice.
Her posture was the first thing. Her back had straightened completely. If she wanted to hunch now it would have to be a deliberate choice. Her voice when she spoke carried a lightness to it that had not been there the previous evening.
She had also grown taller. Not dramatically so, but enough to be immediately visible. Not quite Michael’s height, which had climbed steadily over the past year, but tall by most women’s standards.
Then there was the bob cut, which Aunt Mia had kept deliberately short out of professional habit.
Then there was the face.
None of the other three at the table had what Aunt Mia had, which was the particular quality of maturity thather evolution had refined rather than removed.
Michael and Lily both carried a youthfulness that the evolution had only sharpened. Jester was simply a copy of Michael. Aunt Mia alone brought something different to the table.
She looked like a top tier model.
Michael noted with some private amusement that though her evolution had traded a certain endowment for refinement making what had been there before was less pronounced now, what remained in its place was a quality of elegance that was harder to quantify but considerably more difficult to ignore.
He returned his attention to his breakfast without comment.
Lily had not returned her attention to anything. She was still staring.
Aunt Mia was a thin-skinned person but being stared at with sustained intensity eventually wore through her composure.
She threw a glare at Lily.
Lily was not frightened in the slightest.
"Who would believe you’re my mother," Lily said, looking between them. "We look like sisters now."
Aunt Mia’s expression shifted toward something between embarrassment and a complicated pride.
Lily clicked her tongue thoughtfully.
"I just hope this doesn’t bring about a step dad."
Michael paused mid-bite and turned to look at his aunt.
He took in the full picture of what she looked like now and realized that Lily’s concern was not without merit.
Michael was not opposed to his aunt having a romantic life. That was entirely her choice and he had no standing objection in principle. She had given a significant portion of her life to raising him and Lily under difficult circumstances and deserved whatever happiness she wanted for herself.
Yet the thought of a step-father appearing from somewhere unannounced left Michael genuinely unsure of how to feel about it.
He returned to his breakfast without comment.
Across the table Jester’s expression had not changed, which was normal for Jester. But his thought process, had anyone been able to read it, was considerably simpler than Michael’s.
Aunt Mia was Michael’s family, which meant her wellbeing fell under his concern by extension. Any man who intended to involve himself in that picture would, before anything else, have to pass through whatever judgment Jester formed about them. His master would not always be present to supervise.
Though Jester also understood his master well enough to know that Michael would ultimately support whatever made his aunt genuinely happy, as long as it posed no threat to her wellbeing.
Still. Any man with the ambition to be with Aunt Mia would need to treat her accordingly. If he dared to do otherwise then it meant he processed the balls of a god.
Even Aunt Mia could not hold her composure entirely at Lily’s comment. A blush came to her face.
Lily noticed immediately. "Mom! What are you thinking!"
"Shut up." This time her glare shut Lily up.
Aunt Mia exhaled quietly when no one was looking at her anymore, her eyes losing focus as she drifted into thought.
She had been a widow for many years. To say she had not been lonely through any of it would have been a lie. But the conditions of her life before Michael’s awakening had never given romantic thoughts much space to breathe.
It was only after Michael became a supernatural and things finally improved that the pressure had eased but the thought of a relationship had still never appealed to her much.
With what Lily said, Aunt Mia found she could not quite refute it.
Michael noticed his aunt’s silence. His expression became distinctly strange.
He glanced at her from the side.
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