Chapter 328: Alcohol and Hot Spring
Aria took a delicate sip first. Her eyes widened instantly, surprise dancing in them as she pulled back. "Wait, this is alcohol?!" She blinked, as though she hadn’t fully believed it until the taste hit. Her lips curved into a bright, childish grin. "It’s really nice! I thought it would be bitter or burn, but this one’s... kind of like juice!"
Kaiden chuckled, nodding knowingly. "That’s because you got the sweet one."
Aria beamed, satisfied with the reasoning of her beloved. With a content hum, she nestled closer against his shoulder, her smile turning soft as she tilted her head to rest just beneath his jawline. From there, she watched Nyx and Luna’s bickering with a motherly amusement, as though she were watching children fight over candy rather than acting like women her own age.
On Kaiden’s other side, Bastet raised her glass with a feline caution. Instead of tipping it back for a gulp, she brought it to her lips and extended her tongue in the most literal way possible, lapping at the golden fizz like a housecat drinking milk. The tiny, precise movements of her tongue, the faint twitch of her ears, and her narrowed golden eyes focused in suspicion made the entire motion utterly, irresistibly adorable.
Kaiden couldn’t help it; a loving laugh escaped him as he watched her go at it with a stubborn kind of dignity.
Bastet glanced at him with side eyes, and instantly, her lips curled upward to show she’d caught his amusement, but she didn’t stop. She just kept sipping in her peculiar way, as though that were the most natural method of drinking suspicious things in the world.
Finally, Kaiden picked up two glasses, one of each, and tried them for himself. He took a measured sip of the first, humming in approval. "Mmh. Smooth. Sweet." Then the second, and his face crinkled into a lesser version of the sour grimace Luna had worn, earning himself an instant round of laughter from all four girls at once. Their surprise was clear to see, having expected him to take it without struggle. But they forgot to consider that...
"What? Why do you look at me as if I were a hopeless alcoholic? I barely ever drank in my life."
Indeed, Kaiden was only 22 years old, and back in his college days, he wasn’t exactly the king of partying.
He grinned widely as he set the glasses back down and dismissively shrugged his shoulders. "I guess I’m not refined either."