Chapter 243 | Selene Massage

There were hundreds of thousands of known bloodlines in the world. The Bloodline Codex, maintained by the Hero Association, catalogued over three hundred thousand of them across every grade and type — and the Codex was still incomplete. Some bloodlines existed outside its pages. Some had never been recorded at all. Some were so rare, so ancient, or so powerful that no one had encountered them in living memory, and therefore no one had thought to write them down.

Without the system, identifying a bloodline from its early manifestation marks alone was impossible.

What Dexter could tell was that it was high-grade.

The higher the grade, the harder the manifestation. The longer the body took to integrate it. The more the body had to adapt before the bloodline could fully emerge.

That was why the girls hadn’t awakened yet. It seeded the bloodline into the body’s DNA, and then the body had to merge with it. Restructure itself at a cellular level to accommodate a new genetic framework.

With the system, the process would have been instantaneous. When the system had given Dexter his Flame Demon Bloodline, the integration had taken seconds.

But the girls didn’t have the system.

So the bloodline would only integrate with time.

And judging by the marks on Selene’s face and Mira’s back, that pace was accelerating.

The massage continued.

His hands moved down Selene’s spine. The Shockwave Glove hummed. The oil glistened. The 108 Body Massage Sutra guided his fingers through the precise, prescribed patterns that stimulated nerve regeneration and accelerated healing.

He noticed her skin again.

Every inch of Selene was silky and milky white and was cool to the touch. Not cold the way poor circulation is cold.

Dexter suddenly had an idea.

He activated his Heavenly Flame.

A thread — the thinnest, most precisely calibrated thread of heat his evolved bloodline could produce.

He channeled it through his hands, Into her skin.

The heat didn’t stay on the surface. He pushed it deeper. Past the skin, past the muscle, into the bone. The kind of penetrating, reach-the-source application of thermal energy that targeted the Internal Winter Ice at its root.

The effect was immediate.

Selene moaned in relief and pleasure.

That cold was being touched by heat for the first time.

And Selene’s body answered.

The sound hit Dexter like a freight train.

His hands froze and arousal spiked instantly.

Dexter took a deep breath and chanted his cultivation mantra in his head.

But wasn’t working.

His brain was willing. His body was not and his trousers immediately became tight.

Dexter’s face flushed red.

Luckily, Selene was turned away.

Face down on the bed. Back to him. Silver hair spread across the pillow. She couldn’t see him, and her Echolocation had been muted by the deep, relaxed state the massage had induced as she was drifting in the space between consciousness and sleep si She hadn’t noticed.

Dexter exhaled slowly and kept massaging.

None of it worked.

Because his hands were still on Selene’s body. And Selene’s body was still responding. And every response — every micro-movement, every shift in breathing, every subtle change in muscle tension beneath his fingers — was being processed by his Enhanced Hearing and transmitted to his brain through a channel that bypassed every meditation technique he had.

He was losing.

Dexter’s eyes drifted. Without permission. From his hands to her back — to the smooth, unbroken, impossibly white expanse stretching from her shoulders to her lower back.

Her back was beautiful.

The anatomical, structural beauty of a spine’s curve, a shoulder blade’s angle, the taper of a waist — the quiet, graceful architecture nature had designed and three years of isolation had preserved.

And then Dexter noticed something else.

Something that made the situation considerably worse.

Selene was not flat.

Far from it

Her back was wider than he’d thought. The shoulder-to-waist ratio that accommodated her chest was more substantial than her thick cardigans had suggested.

Dexter’s dragon, which had been standing at attention since the moan, reached a state of structural rigidity that was, from a purely engineering perspective, impressive.

He did not look down and kept massaging trying his best to hold himself.

Twenty minutes later

He removed the glove. Set it on the nightstand. Drew the blanket over Selene’s body, covering her from shoulders to feet.

She was asleep.

The deep tissue massage, combined with the heavenly Flame and the Grade-4 oil and the Shockwave Glove had produced a cumulative effect that overwhelmed her remaining defenses and sent her under so completely that she hadn’t even noticed when he massaged her face.

She had slept through it.

Dexter was a bit stunned, not by her sleep though.

But the depth of it surprised him. She had always been hyper-vigilant but now, she fell asleep.

And Dexter understood why.

The Internal Winter Ice didn’t just cause pain. Pain was the obvious symptom — the visible, measurable, diagnosable component. But beneath the pain was something else. Something that never showed up on examinations or scans.

Irritation.

The constant, never-ending, low-grade, impossible-to-ignore discomfort of frost energy seeping through your meridians and nerve endings and bone marrow every second of every day.

It made sleep almost impossible.

But with Dexter Flame, things changed.

As she slept, Dexter looked at her for a while, then he turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

As he stepped into the hallway, he suddenly saw Lyra.

She was eating the pastries he had given her. Her mouth was open as she fed herself, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk storing nuts for winter. It seemed she had been about to enter the room when Dexter came out and closed the door behind him.

She stared at Dexter. Then at the door. Then back at Dexter. Her eyes blinked rapidly, processing the situation with the innocent curiosity of someone who had just witnessed something she didn’t quite understand.

Dexter immediately knew what she was thinking.

Before she could think even further, he spoke.

"It’s not like that. I just went there to give her a massage. I just finished giving Selene a massage, and she has fallen asleep already."

Lyra slowly nodded her head. "Oh," she said in understanding. Her mental voice was soft, accepting, but there was a hint of something else there. Curiosity, perhaps. Or maybe just the simple relief of knowing that nothing inappropriate had happened.

Then her eyes suddenly lit up.

She spoke in his mind—because she was mute, but with her talent she could speak directly into his thoughts. Her voice echoed in his head like a gentle chime.

"Oh, what about me? Me too, me too, me too!" she said excitedly, bouncing slightly on her heels.

Dexter smiled at her cuteness. The enthusiasm radiating from her was infectious, a bright spot in the otherwise heavy atmosphere of the house.

"All right, when you are done eating, I will also give you your own massage."

Lyra’s eyes lit up. She smiled excitedly and nodded her head. In that split second, she immediately put all the remaining pastries into her mouth and finished the entire plate in a single bite.

Dexter was stunned.

Under his stunned gaze, she dusted her hands together and said, "I’m done."

Dexter chuckled slightly. The sound was warm, genuine. It had been a long time since he had laughed like that. "All right."

He was about to tell her to head to her room so he could massage her. But then he remembered—Selene was sleeping in their room. If he started massaging Lyra there, Selene might wake up, and they might disturb her. Selene needed her rest. The Eternal Ice was a cruel mistress, and any peaceful sleep she could get was precious.

So he told Lyra, "Since Selene is sleeping in the room, would you come to my room and let me start the massage on you?"

Lyra was immediately stunned. She stared at him.

The words suddenly echoed in her ear. She realized what Dexter meant. She was actually going to Dexter’s room. His private space. The room where he slept. The room that smelled like him.

Her face flushed slightly, a warm pink spreading across her pale cheeks. But she still turned and headed toward Dexter’s room.

Dexter was holding the massage oil and the necessary items he had used for Selene. Now he was going to do the same for Lyra.

Lyra headed to his room. She started to look around, her eyes taking in every detail. The simple bed. The wooden desk. The window that looked out into the backyard. The walls that were bare except for a single painting—a landscape of mountains and mist.

As she looked around, Dexter suddenly said, "You’ve never been here, have you?"

Lyra nodded her head. Her voice echoed in his mind. "No. This is the first time I’m seeing your room. It is quite nice. It is quite nice and spacious."

Dexter blinked his eyes and spoke. "Yeah, it is quite spacious. I would have let one of you girls come share the room with me, but it would be quite inappropriate, and I don’t think any of you would accept."