Kai took a breath at the door, turned the handle, and stepped into what was supposed to be an intermediate dorm room.
But to his bustling expectations this roon he entered was by any means not a normal room It was evident in the air even before he stepped in, a wave if difference...A huge difference.
The first thing that hit him was the size. The space stretched far beyond what any ordinary student allocation should have allowed, wide enough and tall enough that the walls felt less like dormitory and more like someone had folded a private luxury event hall into the housing wing. The design made even less sense than the scale. It looked as if the designer of the room had tried to build a royal chamber and a forest retreat at the same time, then resumed to not choose between them and do both instead, it was very... intriguing and the artistic and stylistic clash was blinding.
Polished structure sat beside living greenery. Carved wood mixed with actual trunks. There were trees inside the room, full trunks rising from arranged earth beds, leaves catching the ward light from above, and the whole place carried that deliberate wildness rich people used when they wanted nature without giving up luxury.
Kai’s eyes widened. He set his bag down near the entrance and stared, he didn’t like it one fucking bit and if he was given a choice he would have burnt it down entirely. The place was far too overstimulating and scatter Brain for his liking,he imagined scenarios where these trunks would be inconvenient in the future.
"What the hell?"
System?
The interface answered at once.
[Analysis complete.]
[Current space exceeds standard intermediate dormitory allocation by a significant margin.]
[Design pattern combines high-status residential structure with sustained living greenery.]
[Probability markers for roommate identity currently favor four likely categories.]
[One: a beastman from substantial wealth.]
[Two: a human noble with intense forest aesthetic preference.]
[Three: a high-ranking figure connected to beast nation authority, including possible royal blood.]
[Four: An individual with Questionable taste and weird fetishes]
Prince? Noble? Human?
Whatever. Kai did not care enough to start reconsidering a fucking thing, his decision was final, he did not like it.
"Whoever he is, he better have a good convincing reason to be this nature obsessed."
He looked around again and only then noticed the next problem. There was only one large bed in the entire room, broad enough for more than five bodies and placed in the middle like it belonged there on purpose.
"And why is there only one bed here?"
"They better be delivering mine by today."
[Unlikely.]
"Huh?"
Kai felt his stomach tighten. He was not ready for a setup, and yet everything about the allocation was screaming exactly that. The graceful little vanishing act from Warden Lux Briar suddenly looked less like eccentricity and more like intentional placement. Kai had not even seen his roommate yet, and he already knew this was going to be an uncomfortable arrangement.
If there was one thing he understood about the people running this world, the developers, programmers, or whatever force kept steering his route, it was that they did not play around when they wanted him paired with someone. They pushed. They cornered. They arranged doors, beds, and timing until resistance became a formality or until he could catch up, they were always ahead of the game. Talk about pimping.
He was starting to think rooming with Rolf had not been such a bad idea after all, not that it would have worked even if he asked now. The Academy had been adamant about separating established pairs, and school rules were still school rules even when they smelled like a trap and when they sounded like shit. Was it even schoom rules if the fucking warden had created it at the spot?.
By the way, where was his roommate?
As if answering the thought, a low growl rolled down from above.
The System reacted immediately.
[Notice.]
[Additional life signature confirmed inside the room.]
[Host is not alone, Be cautious of your actions]
"Yeah," Kai muttered, because he was already looking directly at the source, and it was not exactly a person.
It was an animal.
A huge black panther with vivid green eyes was lodged on one of the trunks above him, body stretched along the wood, gaze locked on Kai with open territorial focus. The growl deepened as their eyes met. The scene was not ideal, and under ordinary logic it should have been terrifying, yet Kai did not feel the sharp need to run. The fear was there, real enough to keep his pulse active, but it did not take over his legs.
Was it the confidence that he could put up a fight or was it them developers playing on his face?
[Stand still.]
Kai rolled his eyes.
"I am."
Then the warden’s parting line rose back into his head with ugly clarity.
He is quite catty.
Kai said it out loud before the full meaning finished landing.
"He is a bit catty."
The realization hit immediately after. Did the warden actually expect him to room with a literal beast? Had he been set up with a cat?
"Wow. Wow. A panther is my roommate?"
The panther growled harder and came down from the trunk in one controlled drop. The impact hit the floor with a heavy thud. Kai flinched despite himself, still scared, still not scared enough to bolt. He held his ground and watched as the larger-than-life animal stalked forward, sniffed him once, growled again, and then sat directly in front of him like a judge taking position.
Then it spoke in the deepest voice Kai had heard all week.
"Why don’t you want to room with a beast?"
Kai’s eyes widened.
"What?"
He had not expected speech.
"Do you have anything against beasts?"
Kai forced his brain back into working order. This was a magical world. A talking beast should not have broken him that hard. The only reason it surprised him was because the panther had looked too complete as an animal, too finished in its threat, to suddenly produce language. He even wondered, absurdly, whether Argent could talk too and had simply never bothered.
"I have nothing against beasts," Kai said once he recovered. "It would just be quite a hassle rooming with one."
"I see."
The change began immediately after.
The panther’s massive frame started reducing, shoulders drawing inward, limbs reshaping, black mass compressing through a controlled collapse of form until a burst of dust and smoke filled the nearby air. For a second Kai could see nothing clearly. Then the smoke thinned, and in place of the animal stood the most masculine, handsome man Kai had looked at in a long time.
He was dark-skinned, pitch-dark and cleanly reflective under the ward light, tall enough to change the proportions of the room simply by standing in it. He wore nothing. Long dark hair fell over much of his body, but not enough to hide the hard cut of muscle underneath, the clean lines of his abdomen, or the long resting weight of his cock against his thigh. He was not hard. He did not need to be. The bare fact of him was already a problem.
"Whaaaaa..."
Kai was speechless.
The man watched him with calm green eyes that had not changed from the panther’s.
"Do you still want to room with beasts now?"
Kai’s gaze moved over the large frame before he could stop it, and the realization finally settled in full. The beast was a beastman. Of course he was. The forest room, the single bed, the warden’s warning, all of it clicked into one deeply inconvenient picture.
"Uhmm..."
"What is your name?" the dark man asked.
Kai swallowed.
"It’s Kai. Kai Valerius."
"Kai. My name is Kole Pendraven."
"Hello."
Kai sounded more timid than he wanted to, and he hated that almost immediately. Kole stepped forward, and Kai stepped backward on reflex, not from clean fear this time, from the denser pressure of a body that had already rewritten the room around itself. Kole remained strangely calm, steady as deep water, and there was something so controlled in that calm that it pulled at Kai’s attention against his will. For one dangerous second every other complicated man in his life felt slightly less sharp by comparison.
This was a beastman thing, maybe. Dexter had carried a version of that same composed intensity too.
"Kole..." Kai muttered out loud instead of answering the actual question.
"I will take that as a yes," the man said.
The System chimed before Kai could recover a smarter line.
[Notice.]
[New candidate registered.]
[Candidate 008 identified.]
[Identity: Kole Pendraven.]
[Classification: SSS-rank.]
[Initial affinity threshold detected.]
[Husband Collection record updated.]
Kai stared at the panel, then at the bare dark-skinned man standing among indoor trees like the dormitory had been built around him from the start, and found with no reasonable doubt left in him that he was, against every cautious instinct he owned, fine with it.