My Taboo Harem!

Phei looked at her.

For one second, he considered lying properly, then he softened his face just enough to keep her from worrying too quickly.

"Finish dressing, Mel," he said. "This handsome dragon god right here will do some thinking for the future while I watch you two. It is a beautiful sight."

Melissa’s eyes glittered. "That can’t be denied; me and my daughter are after all that breathtaking."

She heard nothing of what Eira had told him but she could see the wariness in his eyes.

Melissa had known him long enough to understand that silence around Phei was rarely empty. It was either filled with madness, invisible trouble, women with secrets, or all three wearing expensive perfume.

Delilah looked between them, still flushed but quieter now.

"What is it?"

"Nothing for you to worry about yet, love." Phei said.

"Yet?" Melissa repeated.

"Never." He smiled.

It did not convince her.

She let it go anyway, not because she believed him, but because she understood timing. Delilah was still gathering herself, and the room still carried too much intimacy for war to enter without wiping its boots.

Phei finally turned his eyes toward Eira.

His voice lowered. Not enough to be secret from the women, but enough for the real conversation to sit beneath the words.

"What’s going on, dear."

Eira hovered in front of him now, her small face unusually serious. Her little wings slowed.

"This is the day they act," she said. "On both fronts."

Phei’s gaze sharpened.

The softness of the morning loosened around him like silk slipping off a blade.

"Heavenchilds?"

"And the Maxtons at once," Eira said. "They are moving to eliminate Danny Maxton tonight. He is the only remaining uncomplicated key to what actually happened on the day of the accident."

The name struck him clean through the chest.

Danny.

For a moment, the bedroom disappeared.

The soft morning. Melissa’s warmth. Delilah’s shy flush. The steam still breathing faintly from the bathroom. All of it drew back, and memory opened its jaws.

Phei saw the road again, the monstrous speed of the car coming for them, Danny’s face behind the wheel.

That grin.

Huge.

Ugly...

...and triumphant.

A grin wide enough to split the day in half.

He remembered the impact before he remembered the sound. Metal folding. Glass bursting. The world turning sideways. Melissa screaming his name and his father. His mother’s body slamming against something hard enough to steal the air from her lungs before her neck snapped. Blood in his father’s mouth, smoke threading down Phei’s throat and fire beginning somewhere it should not have been.

His mother’s neck; that wrong angle:

The impossible stillness and his unresponsive mother.

His father trapped in the driver’s seat, a jagged length of metal punched through him and pinning him in place like the world had decided escape was too generous. For years, Phei had wondered about that one detail more than any other. If that thing had not trapped him, could his father have moved? Could he have survived? Could Phei have been able to pull him out after he reached him before Melissa pulled him away? Or could Melissa have pulled him too? If the fire had been just one minute slower?

Questions were cruel because they never had to answer for themselves.

They simply stayed, breathing and rotting; waiting for quiet moments to become knives:

If Melissa had not dragged Phei away before the car exploded, he would have died there too.

People called it survival but Phei had never found the word impressive.

’Survival is what remained when the world failed to kill everything.’

Eira watched him carefully and did not interrupt the memory, even she had limits, apparently. Tiny miracle. Someone tell the historians.

"Danny is the only remaining uncomplicated key that would tell us what really happened," Eira said at last. "The Maxtons know it. That is why they are moving to eliminate him; their own!"

Uncomplicated.

Yes.

That word mattered.

The other thread was Adrinch; the Goddess’s uncle.

And Phei had no current desire to swim murky in those waters unless some suicidal idiot forced his head under. Those waters were deep andnot merely family-deep, or merely political-deep, but old-divine-rot deep. Touching Adrinch meant touching the Goddess’s family, her hidden loyalties, her old wounds, and perhaps parts of her’s and Elena’s life that had been shaped long before Phei ever kissed her or her would all be undone; forcing that road open might snap the strings holding him together with the Goddess, with Elena — and maybe Dravenna too.

Though Dravenna was difficult to place.

That jade-eyed woman had wrapped herself close enough around his family to feel involved, but not so close that he could name what she wanted without wanting to bite something.

Seeing how deep she already sat in his family’s affairs, he doubted she would be that easily shaken. She had stood in Sienna’s room, calm as a blade under moonlight, silenced him, dismissed him, and left him burning with questions and other problems she had absolutely noticed and chosen to ignore:

Left him blue-balled, to name the crime properly before she handed Sienna to him, then she had shooed him out hours after.

Shooed him.

’Phei Ryujin Tiamat; out of Sienna’s room; my woman’s room’

He didn’t know if he was so petty that it still hurts him even now.

But he’d been treated like a troublesome boy with too much heat in his blood and not enough permission to use it.

His mouth curved faintly, cold at the edges.

One day, he would get her.

And when that day came, there would be no door for Dravenna to dismiss him through. No escape at all.

"Phei."

Melissa’s voice pulled him back.

He looked at her; she had taken one step closer, concern clear in her eyes now. Delilah stood beside her, no longer joking, no longer flushed from embarrassment alone. They could not hear Eira. They could not see the past ripping itself open inside him but they could see him.

And that was enough.

Phei let the smile return.

"Someone is about to make a bad decision," he said.

Melissa’s expression tightened. "Who?"

He glanced at her, then at Delilah, then looked back toward Eira.

"Maxtons but I will handle it don’t you worry, Delilah, Aunt Mel."

Delilah’s face changed at once.

Melissa’s eyes darkened.

Neither needed more explanation.

Phei exhaled slowly and buckled his pants, the small metallic click sounding sharper than it should have in the quiet room.

"What about the other front?" he asked. "What is the plan?"

Eira opened her mouth.

Before she could answer, the system snapped awake.

Blue light burned across Phei’s vision with brutal clarity.

[Ding! Emergency Mission received!

Mission: Unforgettable Plunder!

Description: Plunder the Legacy Families Coffer off the hands of Maxtons and Heavenchilds. The Coffer is what holds the Legacy Families together and the ultimate plan for Maxtons and Heavenchilds to control other families as it holds their treasures, artifacts, resources for nurturing themselves after awakening and their heirlooms.

Note: Host should then anonymously expose what Maxtons and Heavenchilds had done and theft of the Coffer by the two families, to the rest of the Legacy Families.

Mission 2: Keeper of Truth: Save and hide Danny Maxton tonight.

Rewards: ???, 1st half Nirvana’s Core (the other half is in the Coffer)]

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