"What the hell do we do now? How did we manage to poke his damn competitive streak?"
"That bastard is desperate to turn the two of us into breeding machines, all to clear the path for his precious sweetheart. I refuse to die for that!"
I thought for a moment, then lifted my phone.
"There might actually be a way. I just talked to a friend. Women like us, who get pregnant easily, mostly have exceptionally strong uterine structure."
"Samuel probably has no idea how any of that works. If we find that beloved of his who can't conceive, I could donate my uterus to her. That should satisfy him, right?"
Rhian's eyes widened. She gave me several enthusiastic thumbs-ups.
"Damn, girl, that's genius. Take mine too. Let those two pop out babies like pigs, stop bothering me."
So under the pretense of 'team bonding,' I secretly arranged complete medical exams for the other mistresses.
However, when the test results came back, I was utterly stunned.
All sixteen of the other mistresses were infertile.
"Holy crap! Are you kidding me? This is way too much of a coincidence. We only have two uteruses between us. How are we supposed to split them?"
"We can't just pick someone at random, right?"
Of course not.
Unless the individual were Samuel's beloved, she would suffer the same tragic fate that Rhian and I endured in our previous lives.
Even I still had a baseline of morality.
If only I hadn't died so quickly last time, maybe I would've actually seen the woman's face.
As for Rhian, her situation was even worse. Rumor had it that Samuel's lover hated her for looking 'not quite male, not quite female,' saying she made her uncomfortable.
Rhian never even got the chance to meet that woman. Samuel had her disfigured, broken her limbs, and dumped her back up north.
We would have to get the answer directly from Samuel himself.
While Rhian was capable of lighthearted conversation with the other mistresses, she couldn't possibly outwit someone as shrewd as Samuel. So the next day, she volunteered herself, marching off with several bags of seeds and fruit, swearing she would interrogate all the mistresses one by one.
She was determined to figure out which woman Samuel's beloved was.
While she attacked the problem from that angle, I made my own move.
I checked the calendar and headed straight to the little diner near our old university.
When I arrived, Samuel was already there.