Blessed by Night-Chapter 370: Happy Birthday, Malachi Saint!

Cami vanished from Luna’s arms and returned with a homemade poster covered in glitter, macaroni, and glue.

She presented it to her father as if it were her proudest accomplishment since being potty-trained.

"Well since the little one has already ruined the surprise..." Luna sighed.

She waltzed up to Malachi’s stunned face and kissed his cheek. "Happy birthday, my darling."

Malachi slowly lost his furry coat, and his hair became notably less alive. "It’s not my birthday though... Is it?"

Celeste pulled out her phone and showed him the date.

"Shit, it is.." he realized.

Malachi hadn’t actually thought about his birthday in a long time. Not since his parents died at least.

Every year just kind of felt like another painful reminder of what he’d lost, so eventually he just stopped thinking about it altogether.

Usually it was Aubrey and Aisha who cared about his birthday more than he did.

And then when Aisha finally came into money, she started to really care… but of course, Malachi refused to accept any over the top gestures. No matter how pure the intent behind them.

What a fool he’d been…

"Gaba?"

Camille gestured to her masterpiece once again as if she were wondering why her father had yet to fall to his feet in front of it’s majesty.

He smiled at her as he dropped onto one knee and took her gift gingerly. "This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten, munchkin. Thank you so much."

Cami turned to Celeste and curled her lips in an egocentric smile. "Heh."

Celeste was still getting used to being able to understand Cami fully, but she didn’t need to ingest any kind of alien fluid to get the gist of that one.

"Well, I may not be able to compare to a gift from your daughter, but I did get you a couple of things that I wanted to leave you before work." She smiled.

Now, Malachi looked slightly embarrassed. "Love, you didn’t have to do-"

"Hush." Celeste grabbed him forcefully by the lips with her newly done nails.

"It’s my money, and I can do what I want with it so just be a good boy and accept it when nice things are given to you, yea?"

Malachi was suddenly overcome with the urge to show Celeste just how ’good’ he could be.

"Don’t look at me like that before I have to go to work." She kissed him on the cheek again. "Save it for after your dinner tonight."

"I’m having a dinner?" Malachi asked in surprise.

"Well it was something else that was supposed to be a surprise, but yes." Luna sighed as she pressed her elbow into Celeste’s ribs.

"Well, who’s coming over?"

"Just a few people."

Malachi felt like he heard Luna’s voice raise an octave higher than normal.

"Y-You girls really don’t have to do anything to-"

""Hush!""

Malachi hushed.

"You just go rest a bit more before you have to run out to class." Luna reminded.

Finally, Malachi remembered his latest and most dreadful commitment.

Attending school at the one and only Columbia University right in the heart of New York City.

While he would have preferred to go back to Alabama to finish his degree, both he and the girls couldn’t really justify all the moving around they had been doing. Especially not when they had accommodations that were more than adequate.

They probably wouldn’t move into a house until after they got married and Cami started attending school seriously.

Columbia was both prestigious and close to home, so it was a bit of a no brainer. Plus the dean had personally sent him a letter of recommendation.

It was quite the honor.

But the workload…

Malachi’s face darkened.

He clasped Luna by both her shoulders and stared into her eyes with all of the seriousness in the world.

"If I ever tell you that I want to do something stupid like triple major in school again… stab me in the forehead and kill me."

"I’ll think about it." Luna winked at him.

Honestly, Malachi had no idea why she was taking his very serious request as something lighter than air.

-

Part of the reason why Arias and Morgan had such high approval ratings was their focus on returning ordinary life back to people as soon as possible.

This chapt𝒆r is updated by frёewebηovel.cѳm.

But Arias didn’t just want to give people back the same old life with some of the same old problems. So he used his newfound position to improve things and make more things accessible wherever he could.

Like college for one. In his desire to increase access to higher education for all, he capped the price of tuition that a student could pay to the point where it was practically a new car note for a semester. As long as a student maintained a certain grade point average, the government picked up the remaining costs.

As a result, once college campuses started to open back up in America, they became really popular.

Those who couldn’t afford it before but always wanted to go now had a prime opportunity to do so. Find more adventures on novelbuddy

As a result, even Columbia, with it’s stringent requirements, was bustling on any given day.

Malachi was one of only four other Evolved on campus. Meaning at any given opportunity, he was prone to getting a lot of stares.

He didn’t know why, since his appearance wasn’t as ’flashy’ as some of the others. Anna had red wings coming out of her back and another guy literally had the head of a hawk.

Even with as much attention as he elicited from the others, it was rare for people to come up to him and speak.

So mostly, he just listened to the whispers.

GodBloods they called them. The latest name for the Evolved who were trying to move beyond their prior perceptions in the U.S.

Was it derogatory? That depended on who was saying it and why.

America was too big to be a monolithic country. Opinions on the Evolved were around 60-40 good to bad.

Most didn’t really think about them because they were such a small minority and their largest public faces had been mostly positive.

The widespread availability of cybernetic enhancements also helped to ease people’s fears. Approximately 70% of the human population had them now.

You were a lot less likely to be afraid of someone if you knew you had a sizable chance of taking them in a bar fight.

But a lot of people remember Alex Heller. Even more remember Arias.

People cannot help but be afraid that the next power-hungry divine descendent isn’t far out of sight. And he’ll rear his ugly head as soon as they step out of line.

Naturally, people were the most suspicious of him. He was the world’s most powerful Evolved.

And given the tensions America had before the N’Kai came along, some would be surprised if he turned out to be the one who’s switch just randomly flipped. They’d even expect it.

Sometimes, Malachi didn’t know if he had made the right choice in ducking his head and going back to school.

He thought that being quiet and letting time pass would help the situation for the better. Just keeping his head down and staying out of the picture.

But if he was learning anything here, it was that being quiet didn’t really make anything go away. Sometimes it even worsened it.

Maybe he should have just taken over for the Dark Angels after all. Perhaps it would have made his stances and beliefs more clear. But then again, perhaps people would have assumed it was all a lie anyway.

People were imperfect by nature. Perhaps that was the reason why the answer to reaching them was different for every one of them.

And there was no person who lived who had learned to satisfy all human desire and be unanimously liked.

Maybe Malachi still was not as grown up as he and everyone else around him thought. Because he was still naive enough to want to try in his own way.

Though that may not have necessarily been a bad thing at all. In fact, it was the kind of mentality that Arias, and many others, were not only hoping for, but desperately in need of.