My Taboo Harem!

Sierra’s room was exactly what you’d expect from a princess who had never been told no in her life.

Phei had had his fair share of the curves and secrets of enough Legacy daughters by now to recognize the pattern—obscene wealth always announced itself in the same predictable, almost laughable ways.

The canopy bed draped in silk that cost more per thread than most mortals earned in a week.

The vanity cluttered with perfumes and powders that promised eternal youth and delivered nothing but expensive placebo and quiet disappointment. The walk-in closet that was less closet and more a full-blown cathedral dedicated to the worship of fabric and designer labels.

He wasn’t surprised anymore. If anything, the sheer excess was starting to feel like a tired running joke.

Sierra moved through the room with the efficient urgency of a woman who had made a decision and intended to outrun her own second-guessing before it could catch up and ruin everything.

She grabbed an oversized plush bag—stuffed with her favorite pillows and the girlish treasures Legacy princesses pretended they’d outgrown but secretly clutched in the dark when the world pressed too hard.

Cute things. Soft things. The last artifacts of a childhood she was only now learning to leave behind on her own defiant terms.

The clothes were harder.

She stood before the walk-in closet—gods, how many sets hung in there? Hundreds, easily. Thousands of dollars’ worth of fabric she’d worn once, maybe twice, before Paradise’s unwritten rules declared them too old to touch again.

Everything in here was ancient history by princess standards. Last season’s corpses hanging in neat rows like a graveyard of trends that had died before they’d finished breathing.

She took a few sets. Just a few. Jeans. Sweaters. Things that actually felt like her instead of the performances she’d been costumed for her entire life.

A few purses. A few bags. A small case of jewelry—not the flashy statement pieces her mother selected for galas, but the quieter ones. The ones that actually meant something.

All of it went into a suitcase that had grown unreasonably, almost comically large by the time she finished.

Phei sighed, long and theatrical.

Both women looked at him. Looked at the suitcase. Looked back at him with expressions of absolute, shameless expectation.

“What?”

They shook their heads in perfect unison. Looked away. Pretended they hadn’t just been silently volunteering him for manual labor like he was some common pack mule instead of the walking apocalypse he actually was.

“Eira.”

The name fell from his lips like a command, and reality obeyed without question.

A portal of absolute black opened beneath the suitcase—Void-Ice tearing a hole in the fabric of space with the casual efficiency of a zipper being pulled. One moment the luggage was there; the next it had dropped into darkness and vanished, swallowed by the void between worlds.

Sierra yelped, jumping back like she’d been electrocuted.

“Warn me when you’re doing that!” She pressed a hand to her chest, where her heart was doing its best to escape through her ribs. “You do this every single time, you sadistic dragon! One of these days my soul is actually going to leave my body and I’m going to haunt your immortal ass forever.”

Phei shrugged, the picture of innocent nonchalance. “That’s what you get for expecting me to play pack mule like some errand boy. Next time just say please and maybe I’ll pretend to flex for you, princess. Or better yet, carry it yourself and see how long those delicate little arms last.”

“I didn’t know who else to ask!” She was pouting now—actually pouting, lower lip pushed out, eyes doing that dangerous thing that made him want to kiss the expression right off her face.

“You’re our man. You’re freaking strong. Are you mad at me, babe?” The pout intensified. Weaponized. “Are you mad that I expected my godly man to carry one small case like the big bad dragon he claims to be? Or are you just sulking because you didn’t get to show off more?”

He flicked her forehead, sharp enough to make her squeak.

She giggled—bright and genuine, the sound of a girl who had spent the last hour crying and screaming at her father and was finally remembering how to breathe again.

A knock sounded at the door.

Phei had already known who it was. Had felt the presence approaching through the halls, the particular frequency of suppressed emotion that preceded her like a herald announcing royalty with a side of barely-contained panic.

“Your mom.”

Sierra’s expression shifted. Sobered instantly.

“You remember what I told you? About her wanting to talk to you privately after dinner?”

He nodded.

“She came to me,” Sierra continued, voice dropping lower, conspiratorial. “After you attacked the Maxton Mansion. After what you did to Harold. Before my father even mentioned the dinner invitation—she came to my room. Asked about you. Asked… a lot of things. Like she was trying to figure out if you were going to burn the whole family tree down or just prune a few branches with that pretty smile of yours.”

She turned to Melissa, who understood immediately and shrugged with the eloquent resignation of a woman who had learned long ago that some conversations weren’t meant for audiences.

They moved toward the door.

Roxanne stood in the hallway.

She had changed from the midnight blue gown into something softer—a silk robe the color of champagne that clung to her voluptuous frame like morning mist on still water.

The fabric whispered against her curves with every breath, doing nothing to conceal the lush swell of her breasts or the generous flare of hips that had birthed a daughter and lost none of their sinful promise. Her dark honey hair had been released from its elegant twist, cascading over bare shoulders in waves that caught the hallway light like spun gold.

Composed. Smiling. The picture of a Legacy matriarch who had simply come to bid her daughter goodnight—nothing unusual, nothing worth remarking upon, certainly nothing that explained the way Sierra’s overnight bag had vanished into a void portal thirty seconds ago.

She smiled at her daughter. Kissed her forehead with maternal tenderness.

“Be well, my darling. And try not to let your father’s little tantrum ruin what’s left of this evening. Some men just can’t handle it when their perfect little world starts cracking at the seams—and trust me, darling, the seams are already fraying.”

Then she turned to Melissa.

And nodded.

That single, polite dip of the head was all it took.

Melissa’s instincts—honed across thousand elegant little betrayals that great wealth made not only possible but practically mandatory—snapped to razor-sharp attention.

Roxanne Montgomery was holding her breath.

The same woman who had sneered at her across the dinner table barely an hour ago, the same woman who had called her a whore with every elegant tilt of her chin and every carefully chosen silence, the same woman who hadn’t offered her a shred of respect since their spectacular falling-out—

Was now nodding to her. Politely. Almost deferentially.

Something is very, very wrong. Melissa studied her with the cool fascination of a predator scenting wounded prey.

Her gaze traced the elegant column of Roxanne’s throat—that smooth alabaster expanse of perfumed skin where a pulse fluttered far too fast, far too desperate, betraying the terror her composed face refused to admit.

The delicate tension in her jaw. The way her full lips pressed together just a fraction too tightly.

The faint, almost imperceptible tremble of the silk robe with every shallow breath that made her heavy breasts rise and fall in perfect rhythm with her fear.

And there—a single treacherous bead of perspiration slipped from behind her ear, tracing the graceful curve of her neck like a lover’s lazy tongue. It slid lower, disappearing into the shadowed valley of her cleavage where the robe gaped just enough to reveal the glistening inner swell of flesh.

Fear.

Roxanne Montgomery was absolutely terrified.

Not of Phei. No, this was something else. Something vast and ancient and hungry that had reduced one of Paradise’s most formidable matriarchs to a woman performing composure for an audience she couldn’t even see—but knew was circling, waiting, savoring the moment she finally cracked.

What the hell are you so afraid of, Roxanne?

Roxanne walked past them into the room, the silk of her robe whispering treasonous little secrets against her thighs. Her scent followed with the sharper, darker musk of barely suppressed panic—trailing behind her like an unwilling confession.

Sierra turned to her mother, gave one quick nod—some silent, private communication passing between them that Melissa couldn’t quite decipher—then stepped out into the hallway with Melissa close behind.

The door clicked shut.

Inside the room, Phei had already seen far more than Melissa had noticed. He had catalogued every tiny tremor, every suppressed flinch, every microscopic tell that Roxanne’s lush body was screaming even while her face wore its flawless porcelain mask.

The way her nipples had stiffened against the thin silk—not from cold, not from arousal, but from the raw, electric tension of a nervous system flooding her with signals she couldn’t process fast enough to hide.

Eira—

Eira had already sealed the room before he finished the comand.

The air shimmered once, barely visible, as barriers of Void-Ice settled silently into place around them like the walls of a velvet-lined tomb. No sound would escape. No presence would intrude. Whatever was about to happen in this princess bedroom draped in silk and moonlight, whatever secrets this trembling, terrified, devastatingly beautiful woman had come here to spill—

They would stay between the three of them.