Chapter 129: Forgotten Desires
The air in the library was a living thing, thick with the scent of crumbling parchment, beeswax, and the cool, mineral breath of the earth. Sunlight, pale and indirect, filtered through high, narrow windows, illuminating swirling motes of ancient dust. Around a massive oak table carved with unfamiliar constellations, five figures were nestled in a concentrated silence broken only by the whisper of turning pages.
Bruce ran a hand over his shaved head, a gesture of frustration. The books before him—treatises on cosmic energy, catalogs of known species—were dense, dry, and useless. “Nothing,” he grumbled, leaning back in his chair. The wood groaned under his weight. “It’s all theoretical physics or broad galactic surveys. Not a damn thing about Saiyan culture. Not a poem, not a recipe, not a drawing of a fucking tree.”
Across from him, Isabella peered over the rim of her reading glasses, her ocean-blue eyes sharp. “The universe is adept at erasing unwanted histories. Frieza’s genocide was thorough. It’s possible the only records that survived are the ones he kept, and those would be in the Cold Dynasty archives, which are…”
“A smoking ruin,” Lena finished, perched on the table’s edge beside Bruce. She swung her legs, her sandal dangling from her toe. Her energy was a bright counterpoint to the room’s somber gravity. “I checked. Julianna’s portal couldn’t even get a lock. It’s just… cosmic debris and sad vibes.”
Briana, seated next to Isabella, traced a line of faded text with a delicate finger. “The absence itself is a record. The scale of the silence is… profound.” Her voice was quiet, thoughtful. “It tells us something about the terror Frieza wielded. It wasn’t just murder. It was un-creation.”
Ketut, sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor by Bruce’s feet, had been silent. Her dark, almost black eyes weren’t scanning the books; they were fixed on Bruce’s face, reading the subtle tightening of his jaw, the slight dip of his shoulders. She felt the weight he carried, not as a physical burden, but as a hollow space inside him—a missing foundation. She reached out and placed a warm hand on his ankle. “You won’t find your parents in these books, sayang,” she said softly, using the Balinese term of endearment. “But you are not the empty space. You are what grew in it.”
Her words, simple and true, landed in the quiet room. Bruce looked down at her, his hazel eyes softening. He covered her hand with his own, giving it a squeeze.
The heavy iron-bound door at the chamber’s far end creaked open. Astrild stood silhouetted against the torchlight of the corridor, her form so unnervingly beautiful it seemed to warp the air around her. In her hands, she held a single, slender volume. Its cover was not leather or vellum, but a strange, opalescent material that seemed to swallow and then emit the candlelight.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” she said, her voice like wind through dead leaves, melodic and faintly sorrowful. “I have been… cataloging the oldest sections. The ones your previous librarian deemed cursed or corrupted.” She glided forward, her movement silent. “I avoided this one for a time. Its resonance is… cold. It speaks of the Dead King.”
A hush fell over the group. The Dead King was the title they’d given to the entity Bruce had destroyed to claim his role. Its influence had touched Astrild, driven her into a thousand-year hiding.
She placed the book on the table with a soft thud that echoed in the vaulted space. “It is not a record of Saiyans. Not directly. It is a log. A… hunter’s journal. One of the Dead King’s early lieutenants. He was an archaeologist of sorts, before his corruption. He sought power in the remnants of dead civilizations.”
Bruce pulled the book towards him. The opalescent cover felt smooth and cold, like polished stone. He opened it. The pages were not paper, but a flexible, metallic film. The script was a flowing, angular script that swam before his eyes for a moment before resolving into something he could understand—a psychic impression, not written language.
“Cycle 42,791,” Bruce read aloud, his voice low. “Scanned the debris field of the planet designated Vegeta. Bio-signatures extinct. However, residual genetic code lingered in the stellar dust. A robust, warrior lineage. Traces of a unique organelle, a biological power converter. Remarkably adaptive DNA. Seeds of a conquered people, scattered on the solar winds. Collected samples for potential hybridization.”
The words hung in the air, toxic and heavy.
“Fuck,” Lena breathed, all her playful energy gone.
“He wasn’t just killing them,” Isabella said, her physician’s mind recoiling at the clinical tone. “He was harvesting them. Like specimens.”
Bruce kept reading, his finger moving down the page. “Hybridization project ‘Reaper’ initiated. Seventy-three viable embryos gestated. All exhibited heightened aggression, but lacked the core power conversion stability. They burned out. Failed. Concluded that the ‘Zenkai’ trait requires a specific soul-structure, a cultural trigger. The body is nothing without the fighting spirit. The project was shelved. Samples archived.”
“Soul-structure,” Briana repeated. “A cultural trigger. Your will to fight, Bruce. Your loyalty. Your love for your family. That’s not in the DNA. That’s you.”
Ketut’s hand tightened on Bruce’s ankle. She saw the storm in his eyes—the revulsion, the fury at being a numbered specimen in some monstrous experiment, and beneath it, a grim vindication. His parents hadn’t just sent him away. They had launched him into the void to deny this. To keep his soul-structure out of a jar.
“There’s more,” Astrild whispered, her cosmic eyes fixed on Bruce. “The later entries. After he became the Dead King. He revisited the project. He believed he could engineer the spirit, given the right vessel.”
Bruce turned the pages, the metallic sheets making a faint ringing sound. He stopped at an entry near the end. The psychic impression was fouler here, tinged with madness and a terrible hunger.
“The vessel has been located,” Bruce read, his voice turning to gravel. “A humanoid, spiritually vacant world. Designation: Earth. The Saiyan scatter-pod signal detected there, long dormant, has now activated. The vessel is mature. Its power is… unprecedented. It has slain my emissary. It has defied my will. It is perfect. The ultimate hybrid. Not a failed copy, but an evolution. It will be mine. Its body will be the crucible for my return. Its will shall be my will. I will wear it.”
The final sentence was a psychic scream that echoed in their minds: I WILL WEAR IT LIKE A SKIN.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the sputter of a candle.
The Dead King hadn’t just wanted to kill Bruce. He had wanted to hollow him out and climb inside.
Bruce slowly closed the book. The cold opalescent cover seemed to leech the warmth from his hands. He looked around the table at the faces of his wives—Isabella’s horrified comprehension, Briana’s pale shock, Lena’s furious protectiveness, Ketut’s empathetic pain, Astrild’s ancient, weary dread.
A cold, dark anger settled in his gut, clean and sharp. It was a clarifying rage. All the abstract weight of his ancestry crystallized into a single, solid truth: he was not a relic. He was a rebuttal.
“Well,” he said, his voice dangerously calm. “Now we know.”
Lena was off the table in a flash. She moved behind his chair, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders from behind, pressing her cheek against his temple. “Bastard,” she hissed. “Fucking bastard.”
The others rose, drawn to him by a gravitational need. Isabella came to his side, her healer’s hands resting on his arm. Briana stood beside Astrild, a silent solidarity. Ketut rose from her cushion, her eyes glistening.
The emotional tension in the room was a coiled spring, thick and palpable. The ancient, violating truth they’d uncovered mixed with a fierce, protective love. It needed a release. A reclamation.
Bruce stood up suddenly, the chair scraping loudly on the old marble. He turned, capturing Lena’s face in his hands, and kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a reaffirmation of life against the necromantic hunger they’d just witnessed. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her fingers digging into his scalp.
He broke the kiss, his hazel eyes burning. His gaze swept over Isabella, Briana, Ketut, Astrild. “He wanted this body,” Bruce said, his voice low and rough. “He wanted to wear me. I want you to wear me. I want you to use me. To remind me who I belong to.”
It was all the invitation they needed.
The library, a place of quiet thought, transformed. Books were pushed aside with a sweep of Bruce’s arm, parchment scattering like fallen leaves. He lifted Lena and placed her on the edge of the heavy table, her gasp swallowed by his mouth. His hands were already under her skirt, yanking her panties down her thighs. They were soaked.
“Bruce,” she panted, “right here, fuck me right here.”
But Isabella was there first, her doctor’s hands deft and sure. She knelt before him, her blue eyes locked on his as she unfastened his pants. His cock, already thick and heavy, sprang free. She didn’t hesitate. She took him into her mouth in one smooth, deep motion, her lips stretching around his girth, her tongue flattening against the throbbing underside.
Bruce groaned, his head falling back. The sensation was fierce, a hot, wet anchor to the present. He looked down, watching Isabella’s head bob, her curls swaying. Briana and Ketut moved to Lena. Briana kissed her deeply, while Ketut’s slender fingers found Lena’s cunt, sliding through her slick folds with an empathetic surety, knowing exactly where she needed the pressure.
Astrild watched for a moment, her ancient eyes wide. A thousand years of solitude, of fear, had not prepared her for this raw, living communion. Then, moving as if in a dream, she approached Bruce from behind. Her hands, cool and soft as moonlight, slipped under his shirt, spreading over the hard planes of his chest. She pressed her ethereal body against his back, her lips finding the nape of his neck.
It was a cascade of sensation. Isabella’s talented mouth, Ketut’s fingers working Lena to a quick, sobbing climax on the table, Briana’s tongue in Lena’s mouth, Astrild’s cool touch tracing his skin. The dark knowledge from the book was being seared away, replaced by a more immediate, more vital truth.
“Enough,” Bruce growled, pulling Isabella gently to her feet. Her lips were swollen, glistening. He turned to the table where Lena was still shuddering, Ketut’s fingers slowly withdrawing, slick and glistening. “On your hands and knees. All of you.”
The command was absolute. There was no hesitation. Lena scrambled to the center of the table, arching her back, presenting herself. Isabella, with a fierce look, took her place beside her. Briana followed, then Ketut, then, after a fleeting moment of uncertainty, Astrild. They formed a line along the massive oak, a row of exquisite, willing submission.
Bruce took himself in hand, stroking his length, which was now fully engorged, a monstrous thickness that pulsed with need. He started with Lena.
He pushed into her without ceremony, burying himself to the hilt in one relentless thrust. She screamed, a sound of pure, shattered pleasure, her back bowing. “Yes! Oh god, Bruce, fill me up!”
He fucked her with deep, punishing strokes, the table rocking with each impact. After a dozen thrusts, he pulled out, his cock gleaming with her wetness. He moved to Isabella.
He drove into her with the same force. She cried out, her fingers scrabbling against the wood grain. “Dios mio, yes! Like that!” He pounded into her, the sound of their bodies meeting a sharp, rhythmic slap in the cavernous room. Then he was out again, leaving her gasping.
He took Briana next, her green-blue eyes wide with want. Then Ketut, her dark eyes rolling back as he stretched her, her empathetic connection making her feel every fraction of his pleasure as her own. Finally, he stood before Astrild.
She looked back at him over her shoulder, her face a mask of awe and terror. “I… I have not…” she began.
“I know,” Bruce said, his voice gentler now, though his need was no less fierce. He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock pressing against her untouched entrance. “This is now. He is gone.” He pushed forward, slowly, giving her timeless body time to adjust, to open. Astrild whimpered, a sound of breaking ice, and then she was taking him, her inner depths cool and impossibly tight. When he was fully seated, she let out a shuddering sigh, a thousand years of loneliness exhaled in a single breath.
He began to move, a steady, deep rhythm that connected him to all of them, a living chain of possession and proof. He moved down the line again, and again, taking each in turn, a relentless cycle of claiming. The library filled with the symphony of their pleasure—sobs, screams, choked pleas, the wet, rhythmic sounds of penetration, the creak of the ancient table.
Sweat dripped from Bruce’s brow onto the pale skin of Briana’s back. Isabella was chanting in Portuguese. Lena was reduced to wordless shrieks. Ketut’s empathy had turned her into a quaking conduit of shared ecstasy. And Astrild, with each thrust, was weeping silent tears of release, the cold fear melting under this relentless, human heat.
Bruce felt his climax building, a tidal wave pulling from the very core where his Saiyan power slept. It was more than physical. It was an expulsion. He was driving out the ghost of the Dead King, filling the hollow spaces the monster had wanted to occupy with the living, pulsing reality of his family.
With a final, guttural roar that shook dust from the shelves, he emptied himself into Astrild, his release pumping into her in hot, endless waves. He collapsed forward, bracing himself on the table, his breath sawing in his lungs. The women beneath him were spent, trembling, marked.
For a long time, the only sound was their collective breathing slowing, syncing. The scent of sex and sweat and old books mingled into something strangely sacred.
Bruce pulled out slowly, helping Astrild, who seemed fragile as glass, to turn and sit on the edge of the table. He looked at each of them—their flushed skin, their well-used bodies, their eyes full of a weary, satiated love.
He picked up the opalescent book from where it had fallen to the floor. He held it in his hand, feeling its cold, alien malevolence. Then, with a thought, a small, controlled ember of Saiyan power ignited in his palm. The strange material blackened, curled, and dissolved into ash, which sifted through his fingers onto the library floor.
“No more ghosts,” he said, his voice quiet but final
The ash settled on the cracked marble like gray snow. For a moment, no one moved. The only sound was their breathing, slowly returning to normal, and the distant, eternal drip of water on stone deep in the library’s heart. The psychic stench of the Dead King’s journal was gone, replaced by the musky, intimate smell of their bodies.
Lena was the first to speak, her voice hoarse. “Well, that’s one way to file a book.”
A soft, startled laugh escaped Briana, which set off Isabella, then Ketut. It wasn’t hysterical, but a release of unbearable tension, a human sound that flushed the last of the chamber’s coldness from the air. Bruce leaned heavily on the table, a slow smile touching his lips as he watched them.
Astrild, still seated on the table’s edge, looked at the fine ash on the floor, then at her own hands. She flexed her fingers as if feeling them for the first time. “The chill is gone,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone. “The echo he left in that binding… it’s silent.”
“Good.” Bruce pushed himself upright, his body feeling both spent and thrumming with new energy. He looked at the line of them, their skin flushed, marked by his hands and mouth, their postures languid and satisfied. A fierce, protective warmth bloomed behind his sternum. “You’re all a mess.”
“You’re one to talk,” Isabella said, nodding at his disheveled clothes. She slid off the table, wincing slightly but with a pleased glow on her face. She began gathering discarded garments from the floor.
They dressed in a comfortable, shuffling quiet, helping each other with zippers and clasps, sharing soft touches that spoke of belonging, not just desire. Briana used the edge of her sleeve to gently wipe a smudge from the corner of Lena’s mouth. Ketut knelt to guide Astrild’s feet into her delicate shoes, her touch patient.
Bruce watched it all, the simple domesticity of it grounding him more than any cosmic revelation ever could. This was his soul-structure. Not a fighting spirit, but this quiet, mutual care after the storm.
“So,” Lena said, pulling her shirt over her head. “The dead fuck wanted to wear you like a skinsuit. That’s… profoundly creepy.”
“It explains the ferocity of his attack,” Briana mused, finger-combing her ink-black hair. “It wasn’t just conquest. It was obsession. A need to consume what he couldn’t create.”
“And we burned his diary after fucking on top of it,” Lena concluded with a sharp grin. “I’d call that a pretty solid ‘fuck you.’” She bumped her hip against Bruce’s. “Feel better, big guy?”
Bruce pulled her into a one-armed hug, kissing the top of her head. “Yeah, sombra. I do.” He looked around the library, at the scattered tomes. “But the fact remains—he was studying Saiyans. He saw something in them worth stealing. That’s a thread. A nasty one.”
Isabella, now looking every bit the composed doctor despite her swollen lips, nodded. “A thread we can follow with clearer eyes. Now we know the enemy’s fascination. We’re not chasing a ghost. We’re understanding a blueprint.” She walked over to a different shelf, running a finger along the spines. “His research had to have sources. Even corrupted, he didn’t pull that genetic data from the ether.”
The group’s mood shifted, the post-coital ease sharpening into focused intent. The horror was metabolized, converted into purpose. They spent the next hour not as lovers, but as scholars, working with a new, grim direction. Astrild, her voice gaining strength, directed them to sections on archaic biomancy and cosmic eugenics. Ketut, her empathy tuned to the emotional residue on objects, gently handled scrolls to sense their intent.
Bruce stood back, letting them work. He observed the synergy—Isabella’s clinical logic, Briana’s historical intuition, Lena’s tech-savvy cross-referencing, Ketut’s empathetic filtering, Astrild’s ancient contextual knowledge. They were a perfect machine. His machine.
He was pulled from his thoughts by Briana’s soft exclamation. “Here. This isn’t a record of the Dead King. It’s older. It’s a… a lament.”
She had a large, plain codex open on a lectern. The script was flowing, beautiful, and utterly alien. But as they gathered around, the psychic impressions, fainter than the journal’s, began to surface.
“It’s a song,” Briana whispered, her eyes distant as she translated the impressions. “From a Traveler. A being who passed through the Vegeta system shortly after… after the event. It speaks of the silence. Not just of life, but of song. It says the Saiyans’ battle-cries were a form of music that harmonized with the gravitational spin of their world. Their planet didn’t just house them. It sang with them.”
The words painted a heartbreaking picture. A world of fierce, resonant life, extinguished into absolute quiet.
“It says the stars around Vegeta grieved,” Briana continued, her voice tight. “Their light dimmed for a cycle. The Traveler collected what it called ‘echo-shards’—residual psychic impressions caught in the stellar dust. Fragments of final thoughts, of lullabies, of the last war-chant.”
Bruce’s throat constricted. He saw it, just for a flash: not a clinical pod launching, but a parent’s hand, trembling, inputting coordinates as a world screamed its end around them. A lullaby hummed against an infant’s forehead.
“Where are these shards?” Lena asked, all business, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“The Traveler didn’t keep them,” Briana said, tracing the text. “It considered them sacred remains. It seeded them into the fabric of stable, life-bearing worlds. To give them a chance to… resonate again. To grow into something new, somewhere safe.”
The implication hung in the air, immense and delicate.
“Earth,” Bruce said, the word leaving him like a breath he’d been holding.
“It’s likely,” Briana nodded. “A stable, vibrant world, spiritually ‘vacant’ on the cosmic scale, as the Dead King’s log said. The perfect sanctuary for an echo.”
Bruce wasn’t a relic. He wasn’t a hybrid. He was an echo-shard. A fragment of a world’s song, planted and grown to completion in foreign soil. The realization didn’t feel heavy. It felt like a key turning in a lock deep inside him. His volatility, his power, his relentless drive to protect—it wasn’t just biology. It was a inheritance of song. A ghost note from a planet that had loved its children fiercely enough to send their souls screaming into the dark.
He walked to the archway leading out of the library, needing air. The others followed, a silent procession. They emerged onto a high terrace overlooking the training grounds, where the last of the afternoon sun gilded the sand. The normal sounds of their home—distant laughter from the kitchens, the crack of Susannah’s practice shots, the hum of the temple—washed over him.
He felt Ketut’s hand slip into his, her empathy a warm stream beside his turbulent thoughts. “It’s not a curse,” she said softly. “It’s a heritage. You’re not wearing a skin. You’re finishing a song.”
He turned to face them all, their features golden in the dying light. The vulnerability from the library was gone, replaced by a solid, unshakeable certainty. “Okay,” he said, the single word carrying the weight of acceptance.
“Okay?” Isabella asked, a gentle smile playing on her lips.
“Okay,” he confirmed. He pulled Ketut to him, then reached for Briana, drawing them both into his arms. “We know what I am. We know what he wanted. That’s enough looking backward.” He looked over their heads at Lena, Astrild, and Isabella. “The song isn’t about the past. It’s about now.”
Lena’s grin returned, wicked and understanding. “So we’re done researching for the day.”
“We’re done researching,” Bruce agreed, his hands already moving down the backs of Ketut and Briana, his touch now promising not catharsis, but celebration.
They didn’t go to a bedroom. They stayed on the terrace, letting the sunset paint them in fierce oranges and purples. This time, it was slow. Deliberate. Bruce laid Briana down on a wide, sun-warmed lounger, lowering his mouth between her thighs. He licked her with a focused, savoring slowness that had her arching off the cushion within minutes, her fingers tangled in his hair.
“Don’t stop, please, don’t stop,” she chanted, her hips rolling against his mouth.
He didn’t. He worked her with his tongue and lips until she came with a sharp cry, her body taut as a bowstring. While she shuddered, Isabella, watching with dark, desirous eyes, came to kneel beside Bruce. She kissed him deeply, tasting Briana on his lips. “My turn,” she breathed, her hand wrapping around his rigid cock, pumping him slowly.
He took Isabella there on the tiles, her back against the warm stone parapet. He entered her with a smooth, deep push, setting a rhythm that was relentless but measured. He watched her face, watched her beauty break apart with each thrust. “You are my healer,” he growled into her neck, pounding into her wet, clutching heat.
“You are my heart,” she gasped back, her legs locked around his waist, taking every inch.
When he felt her climax begin to ripple through her, he pulled out, his cock glistening. He turned to Astrild, who was watching, enraptured. He guided her to kneel on the lounger where Briana still lay boneless. He entered Astrild from behind, one hand tangling in her hair of ink and stars, the other gripping her hip. He fucked her with a deep, penetrating cadence that was less about force and more about claiming every fraction of her depth.
“You are not alone,” he said, each word a thrust. “You are home.”
Astrild wept again, but these were quiet tears of joy, her celestial body accepting this earthly, passionate belonging. He spilled into her with a long, shuddering groan, but he wasn’t spent. The power within him, the echo of a world-song, was awake and singing.
He turned to Lena last. She met his gaze, her chin raised, a challenge in her eyes. She walked to him, pushed him firmly into a deep terrace chair, and straddled him. She sank down onto his still-hard, slick cock with a triumphant sigh, taking all of him in a single, smooth descent.
“You,” she said, riding him with a rolling, insistent rhythm, “are mine. We are yours. That dead motherfucker can rot.” She leaned forward, her breasts pressed against his chest, her mouth at his ear. “Now fuck me back, Lord of the Universe. Make me feel that song.”
Bruce took over, his hips pistoning up into her, driving her down onto him with a force that stole her breath. The lounger creaked in protest. He fucked up into her dripping cunt, the sounds raw and wet, his hands on her ass spreading her, urging her to take him deeper. Lena’s cries were unabashed, loud, profane praises that echoed in the twilight.
“Yes! Right there! Oh god, that’s the spot, fuck me, Bruce, fuck your sombra!”
He felt his climax coiling again, a supernova building in his core. As he erupted inside her, he saw not the Dead King’s hunger, but the image from the lament: a world’s song, shattered, now finding its resonance in the joined rhythms of their bodies, in Lena’s convulsing tightness around him, in the chorus of their shared breaths under the first emerging stars.
They collapsed together in the chair, a tangled, sweaty heap. The research was done. The ghosts were silent. All that remained was the living, beating truth of their circle, and the unwritten verse of their future, waiting to be sung.