My Taboo Harem!

Dravenna returned to the living room alone.

That, naturally, destroyed everyone’s brave little attempt at civilization.

The penthouse reception had softened into its late-night shape by then. Music played lower. Glasses had been refilled too many times... conversations too had loosened from birthday courtesy into the more honest territories of gossip, hunger, speculation, and people pretending their eyes were not doing investigative work.

The living room still held its obscene luxury with calm arrogance. Glass walls opened to Hell’s Paradise Island below, where the city glittered like someone had spilled diamonds over a graveyard and called it urban planning.

And Dravenna Ashford had walked in with no Phei behind her stepping into the room with that lazy, dangerous smile of his and no obvious evidence of a woman who had gone into a library with a dragon and come out needing three minutes, holy water, and a chair.

Just Dravenna who felt the attention shift before she crossed halfway into the living room and walked through all of it with insulting calm.

Questions moved through their minds like rats in silk gloves.

Where was Phei?

Why had she returned alone?

Had something happened?

Had nothing happened?

Was nothing happening actually worse?

Had the Dean been claimed?

Had she refused?

Had she won?

Had Phei won?

Had both of them lost in the most interesting way possible?

Was the infamous Dragoness of Paradise now another woman in the Young Dragon’s orbit, or had she merely wandered close enough to get burned and decided to pretend the smoke was perfume?

’Filthy creatures... all of them.’

"Nasty, nasty people," Dravenna whispered under her breath.

No one heard...

...Or rather, the few who could hear chose not to react.

From Phei’s women, the conclusion had been obvious the moment Dravenna left with him.

That should have been it.

End over and the Dean herself added to the harem.

Another impossible beauty dragged into Phei Ryujin Tiamat’s already overcrowded disaster of a romantic life.

That would have made three Ashfords in Phei’s harem.

Elena.

The Goddess.

Dravenna.

’A respectable number; concerning number maybe.’

Frankly, an infrastructure problem.

The Ashfords would have become the second most dominant family in the harem one day, and not only because of beauty. Beauty around Phei had become common enough to be offensive.

No....

The Ashfords carried something else:

Old power... hidden violence... elegant wrongness.

That aristocratic sharpness that made even their smiles feel like knives dipped in honey.

One day, existence itself would shiver at the mention of Phei’s women. Not merely because of the dragon they belonged to. They would be feared because of what they themselves represented.

Dravenna knew that.

She also knew she had sacrificed her slot tonight for the Nether Goddess.

The thought almost made her laugh.

Almost.

Really, who else could force Dravenna Ashford to step away from her Mate like that after finally cornering him properly with just them two?

Only Sienna.

That troublesome catastrophe in a birthday gown.

The girl was difficult even by divine standards, which was impressive considering gods already behaved like overfunded children with murder privileges.

The timing, however, had made the room suspicious.

Phei’s women knew him.

They knew his hunger, his stamina, his tendency to turn private moments into prolonged campaigns involving teasing, surrender, resistance, exhausted dignity, and whatever remained of common sense being found dead under the bed by morning.

If Dravenna had truly been taken by him tonight, then the library would not have returned her in less than an hour.

Two hours, perhaps...

...At least.

And likely more, knowing Phei.

The Young Dragon’s restraint had the lifespan of a snowflake in hell once he stopped pretending to be polite.

Instead, Dravenna had returned after almost forty-five minutes.

Shy of it, actually and too short to satisfy the room’s assumptions.

As for the others, their disappointment was even easier to read.

They had come for Sienna’s birthday, yes. Officially. Publicly. Politely with gifts, gowns, kisses on cheeks, glasses raised, and all those polished phrases.

But it was no secret that many of them had come for Phei.

Mostly the princesses.

Even if they had not admitted it to themselves yet.

Maddie’s Paradise Princesses Rebellion was pulling them one by one into the Young Dragon’s gravity, and the poor girls still thought they were attending events. Some thought they were observing. Some thought they were merely curious about the rising Ryujin Tiamat heir with impossible beauty, obscene wealth, and the kind of presence that made women reassess their standards and men check their posture.

Adorable.

They were already orbiting.

Dravenna saw that clearly.

She also saw the other women.

Adriana, for example:

’Hungry vulture, much.’

That woman was practically a lioness in a dark red dress, drinking wine as if the glass could hide the fact that her body seemed to remember Phei every time he breathed in her direction. The gown loved her too much, clinging around her mature curves, holding her full chest so round and firm despite the heaviness and generous hips with the kind of loyal fabric that deserved either praise or legal charges.

She sat with Roxanne and Melissa, composed on the outside, burning underneath, trying to drown blushes in champagne and dignity.

Dravenna could admire that in a purely academic way. Desire wrapped in restraint was always more interesting than shameless hunger. Shameless hunger was easy. Restraint sweating under expensive silk? That was literature.

Unfortunately for Adriana, she was hunting a dragon.

That rarely ended well.

Or perhaps it ended very well, depending on whether survival was the goal.

And this particular dragon was not merely handsome, lustful, powerful, and dangerously attentive. He was worth the attention of things older than kingdoms. Worth Dravenna’s attention. Worth Sienna’s, the Empress’s arrangements, Ashworth’s scrutiny and worth every old current now gathering beneath this ridiculous birthday night with wine, silk, and poor decision-making.

So there they were.

The living room full of beauties, heirs, friends, mothers, dangerous teachers, jealous almost-lovers, curious princesses.

Phei was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was the birthday girl.

Everyone assumed Sienna was still outside somewhere, racing her new midnight PcLaren through the island night with no respect for traffic laws, emotional closure, or Melissa’s blood pressure.

What they did not know was that Sienna, whom they imagined gripping a steering wheel and terrorizing asphalt, was about to be raced by Phei in a very different sense.

Dravenna’s smirk deepened.

’Ah~ How chaotic.’

"I love it."

"You did not."

The voice came from beside her.

The Vice Principal stood near one of the tall bookshelves framing the side of the living room, glass in hand, old eyes half-lidded and far too sharp. He had the air of an elderly man enjoying wine and watching children misbehave.

Harmless, almost.

Dravenna knew better.

Ashworth saw too much. Always had. Even when he smiled like an academic who had misplaced his lecture notes, there were ancient things behind his eyes taking inventory.

Dravenna turned slightly. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me."

"I often hear nonsense from old men. I do not always acknowledge it."

Ashworth’s mouth curved. "You did not love it."

Dravenna’s smirk remained.

But he knew her too well.

Worse, he knew the Empress, Sienna and the old shape of this family behind its current pretty faces, emotional vandalism, and weaponized birthday parties.

He could see behind the facade.

Or perhaps it was not a facade?

Dravenna herself was not entirely sure.

Had she given up her own night purely because it had to be Sienna?

Or because some part of her wanted to see whether Phei would choose correctly when desire and destiny crossed paths?

Or because, beneath the smirk, beneath the jade eyes, beneath the Dragoness of Paradise, she was not quite as untouched by that boy as she intended to appear?

Disgusting thought.

Truly vile.

She smiled in reassurance.

Ashworth did not look reassured.

Rude man.

"You are meddling," he said.

"I am assisting."

"The language of meddlers."

"The cowardice of observers."

He chuckled. "Touche."

Dravenna looked toward the hallway that led away from the reception, though Phei and Sienna were nowhere visible. "It is done."

"No," Ashworth said softly. "It has begun."

That silenced her for half a breath.

Only half; she would not be generous.

Ashworth’s gaze shifted across the room. Over Melissa, warm and watchful. Over Phei’s women, too beautiful and too dangerous to ever be mistaken for ornaments, the princesses pretending they were not being pulled toward a throne none of them could see yet. Over the boys and their women, the guests, the glasses, the laughter, the whispering, the soft penthouse lights hiding too many sharp edges.

"What a chaotic family," he murmured.

Dravenna laughed once. "You are only realizing that now?"

"I have spent many years knowing it. Tonight merely provided decorations."

His eyes grew distant.

He should leave soon.

His time with Phei was coming too, and he had to prepare. There was knowledge the boy would need. Real and old knowledge.

Ashworth’s fingers tightened faintly around his glass.

Too bad he had never gotten to teach Seiryū.

Too bad he and Seiryū would never get the chance to teach Phei together as they had once planned...

...the ache of that thought moved through him quietly.

A small fracture in an otherwise immaculate smile.

No one saw it but Dravenna.

For once, she did not make a joke.

Ashworth lowered his glass.

Somewhere deeper in the penthouse, beyond walls, distance, wine, curiosity, and the polite ignorance of the living room, good ol’ Fate moved another step forward.

And in the reception, beneath soft light and far too many interested eyes, Dravenna Ashford kept smiling.

A/N: Finally guys our 1100 Chapter!