"Okay, family, this is Caitlin. Please treat her well," Daniel said, gesturing to the frosty woman beside him.
Evelyn, Elizabeth, Diana, Sylvia, Mera, Tamara, and Harleen were all gathered in the living room — Tamara had just gotten back from Atlantis, making it a full house. The collective glare from the couches was colder than the sub-zero mist drifting off Caitlin's shoulders.
Daniel sighed, reading the room immediately. "Yeah, I can see you don't trust me. But this isn't what it looks like. She's here for treatment."
Harleen raised her hand slowly, popping a bubble of gum. "But you aren't a doctor."
Daniel rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. "How long are you going to stick to that, Harleen?"
"I'm just saying," she smirked, kicking her boots up onto the coffee table.
From the hallway, two heads peeked around the doorframe.
"Wow," Ron whispered, holding a half-eaten sandwich. "Boss is really a big man. He brought another woman to the house."
"Shut up, Ron," Art muttered, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him back into the kitchen. "If the temperature in that room drops any lower, they're going to use us for target practice."
Daniel ignored the peanut gallery. He pointed a finger at Caitlin, grey cosmic energy flaring just enough to keep her ice from spreading across the hardwood floor.
"She has a condition," he explained, keeping his hand against Caitlin's forehead to hold her back. "She needs to absorb massive amounts of heat energy to survive. If she tries to take it from a normal human—"
"They die," Caitlin finished, leaning into his hand with a predatory smirk. "Which is why darling's little proposal made me agree to come here. With all that energy of his, I can just have him all to myself."
She tried to reach around his arm for a hug. Daniel locked his elbow, pushing her face away.
The temperature in the room dropped, and it had nothing to do with Caitlin's ice.
"Have him for yourself?" Diana repeated, voice dangerously calm. She reached beneath the sofa cushions and drew a polished, razor-sharp sword.
Mera didn't pull a weapon, but her posture shifted into a combat stance, eyes narrowing. "Get in line."
"Yeah, bitch, we were here first," Harleen laughed, kicking her boots off the table. She pulled a heavy silver handgun from behind her back and racked the slide with a sharp clack.
Daniel finally looked away from Caitlin, staring at the weapon. "Harleen. Where did you get a gun?"
"Ignore the small details," she said, waving the barrel through the air.
"No, I'm not going to ignore it. That is not a small detail. That is a loaded gun."
Before Harleen could point it at anyone, Evelyn stepped forward, hands raised. "Okay, please, everyone calm down." She paused, shooting Daniel a dry look. "Although, I admit, right now I very much want to beat him too."
Daniel threw his free hand up, the other still planted against Caitlin's forehead. "Wait, what did I do? Didn't you listen? It's not like that!"
Elizabeth leaned against the armrest, arms crossed, looking him dead in the eye. "Yeah? And how exactly did our relationships start?"
Daniel opened his mouth, then shut it.
He wasn't a scumbag — he was genuinely just trying to keep Caitlin from freezing a city block — but Elizabeth had a point.
Given his track record of accidentally accumulating lethal women after chaotic, violent encounters, he didn't have a leg to stand on. He sighed, rubbing his temples.
Evelyn turned to the frosty metahuman, unbothered by the cold mist rolling off her skin. "Caitlin, is it? I don't know your exact circumstances, but welcome to the family. Just so we're clear — in this house, we do not try to kill each other."
She stepped directly into Caitlin's personal space, her tone shifting from diplomatic to authoritative.
As Daniel's first wife, she was the anchor of this chaotic household, and every woman in the room — from the Amazon princess to the Atlantean queen — knew the cardinal rule: you don't disrespect Evelyn. Anyone who crossed that line dealt with Daniel, and he didn't take it lightly.
She calmly laid out the boundaries: no freezing the furniture, no lethal force in the living room, and if Caitlin needed to absorb his energy to survive, she'd do it without turning the house into a frozen war zone. Caitlin scowled, but the icy mist rolling off her shoulders noticeably eased.
With the crisis defused, Daniel let out a long breath, dropped his hand from Caitlin's forehead, and turned to the other side of the room, changing the subject as if Harleen hadn't just pulled a loaded gun.
"So, Tamara," he said, leaning against the wall. "Did you enjoy Atlantis?"
Tamara lounged on the far end of the sofa, inspecting her nails. "I kinda enjoyed it. The architecture's gorgeous. But there's no good food down there. It's all just raw fish and soggy kelp."
Daniel shook his head slightly. "You know, sometimes, looking at your beautiful face, I completely forget you used to be a man-eating mermaid."
Tamara didn't miss a beat, flashing a perfectly innocent, razor-sharp smile. "Well, I used to eat men. But looking around this room, it's pretty obvious you're still a predator of women."
*****
A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of the Webnovel release schedule, you can join my Patreon!
The Patreon version is 30 chapters ahead.
👉 patreon.com/Universal_Peace