Galaxy's Only Triple-S: Five Lords Can't Hold Her novel Chapter 98

Chapter 98 The Gentle Mask Was Slipping

Chapter 98 The Gentle Mask Was Slipping

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“What happened to your leg? How did you get hurt this badly?” Phoebe’s voice was soft and full of concern.

Ardon looked at her familiar face and felt his earlier doubts ease. “Just a setback. It’s nothing. I brought what you needed.”

He handed her the metal case.

Phoebe grabbed it without a second’s hesitation. But when she saw the measly ten pills inside, the tenderness on her face flickered for half a beat.

Ardon didn’t catch it.

“Why only ten?” Phoebe looked up, her expression back to that delicate, pitiful mask. “Mr. Flame, didn’t we agree on twenty?”

“Ran into space pirates on the route back.” Ardon delivered the story he’d rehearsed. “Lost half the shipment. These ten-I nearly got myself killed holding onto them.”

“Pirates…” Phoebe let the word hang there. Her left hand, hanging at her side, twisted hard into the fabric of her dress. She pulled in a breath and forced out a strained smile. “The important thing is you’re okay. Lost pills can be replaced. Come inside. Let me take care of that wound.”

She stepped aside to let him through.

The second her back was to him, her eyes went ice-cold. Ardon never saw it.

He climbed the steps, ignored the three A-class husbands and their hostile glares, and walked straight into the living room.

He’d never considered those three worth a second thought. Once he was in this house for good, if any of them dared to mouth off, his spiritual pressure could snap their necks without breaking a sweat.

The living room was cozy and well-kept. Phoebe guided Ardon onto the sofa, poured him a glass of warm water, and pressed it into his hands,

“Drink. I’ll get the medical kit,”

Ardon was parched. He emptied the glass in one go. The warmth hit his stomach and took the edge off the long journey. 1

He leaned back into the sofa and watched Phoebe as she moved around the room. The three A-class husbands hadn’t followed. They lingered at the edges of the room, watching from the shadows.

Phoebe came back with the medical kit and sat down in the armchair across from him. She didn’t open it. Instead, she folded her hands on her knees..

“Mr. Flame, did you check the Starnet forum on your way back?” Her voice was still gentle, like she was making small talk.

“No.” Ardon frowned. “You know I don’t waste time on that gossip trash. Why?”

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12:42 Mon, 6 Jul G

Chapter 98 The Gentle Mask Was Slipping

Phoebe looked at him and said nothing.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

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“It’s nothing.” She let out a light sigh, her voice slow and drawn out. “There’s just an interesting post that went up on the forum.”

Ardon froze. His first thought was that the black market deal had leaked. He opened his mouth to reassure her, but then he caught the look in her eyes.

The eyes that always glistened with emotion held no warmth at all now.

“Ardon, you’re the only one who handled the pills.” She’d dropped the honorific. Her voice had gone flat

and low.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ardon straightened up. The movement jarred his leg, and he sucked in a sharp breath. “You think I’m the one who posted that? I don’t even have a forum account!”

“Who else could it be?” Phoebe’s voice jumped an octave. The gentle mask was slipping.

Ten pills was a joke. It wouldn’t get her anywhere.

She needed half a pill every single day just to keep up the S-class illusion. And the real nightmare-the Purification Department’s mandatory physical exam-was closing in fast. To fake a perfect S-class reading on the scanner, she’d have to down five pills at once before the exam.

That left five. Five pills to cover ten days of normal use. And after those ten days? She’d be stuck doing free labor in Purification, running spiritual power treatments for males. Without the drugs, her spiritual power would collapse overnight. She’d crash back to B-class-if she was lucky. The side effects alone could be catastrophic

Everyone on Prime Planet would know she was a complete fraud.

And now that post on the forum was backing her into a corner. Whoever wrote it had laid out every symptom of the drug in clinical detail. The moment she took another dose, the signs would be impossible to hide.

“Black market dealers don’t burn their buyers. It’s bad for business.” Phoebe’s stare bored into Ardon. Her perfect composure had completely shattered. The strain twisted her features into something almost vicious. “My three husbands are tied to me. We rise together or we fall together. They’d never post something that suicidal. That leaves you. You’re the only one who had access to the pills-and the only one with a motive.”

Ardon stared at the unhinged female in front of him, and his brain went blank,

Is this the same Phoebe? The soft, flawless, perfect one?

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