My Taboo Harem!

Phei drew another sigh, the sound ragged and bone-deep, as if the very air in his lungs had turned to lead.

He sat in the back of the car with Sierra curled against his chest, her black hair spilling across his shirt like ink on parchment, her breathing slow and even with the exhausted peace of a girl who had screamed at her father, run away from home, and finally collapsed into the arms of the only person who made her feel safe.

She didn’t know.

She had no idea what her mother had just told him… no idea that her father had already signed her death warrant in exchange for the privilege of hosting an ancient devil in his flesh at maximum potency.

No idea that she was sleeping in the arms of a boy who was now carrying the weight of her survival on shoulders that had already been bearing too much.

One wrong move, one moment of hesitation would end with Sierra die screaming on some Maxton altar for awakening First Devil.

Melissa drove in silence, her eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every few moments. She could tell Roxanne had shared something with Phei—something vast and terrible and old. The look on his face said everything. The way his arms wrapped around Sierra with protective desperation instead of casual affection.

The way those amethyst eyes stared at nothing, processing horrors that most seventeen-year-olds would never encounter in a hundred lifetimes.

Melissa knew exactly what Roxanne had told him.

Because Madam had given her the same burden years ago. Had explained, in that quiet voice that carried the weight of centuries, the truths that Phei would only need to know when he was ready. When he turned eighteen.

When he had grown enough to bear secrets that could shatter minds unprepared for their enormity.

But the world wasn’t going to let him come of age before it buried him in its secrets.

The world never did.

Phei sighed again.

Some families actually called Sierra cursed child.

The thought of that—the sheer fucking audacity of it—made him want to reach through time and space and slap sense into every patriarch who had ever used that word. Cursed. As though being born female was a cosmic punishment.

As though her existence was an inconvenience to forces that had been planning their return for millennias.

The last generation children were supposed to be reincarnations of the first progenitors. Vessels carefully cultivated across countless generations, their bloodlines refined and concentrated until they could contain consciousnesses that had existed since before creation had a name.

When the Destined Day arrived, these children would awaken into their real selves—would become the very beings whose blood they carried, reborn in flesh that had been prepared specifically for this purpose.

But what happened when a girl was born instead of a boy?

What happened when the vessel’s architecture didn’t match the progenitor’s nature?

That girl—that family—was called Cursed.

In Sierra’s place, she was supposed to have been born a boy.

What fucked up logic is that?

So twisted, so absolutely deranged, that Jonathan and fathers like him had entered into conspiracies with Maxtons—had agreed to sacrifice their own daughters just like he’d scarified the twin so that progenitors could reincarnate successfully in properly prepared male bodies.

Was Phei going to let them kill yet another child, actually, more?

And how the fuck the Maxtons even going to make that happen?

What unholy process could transform a family’s curse into a progenitor’s blessing, as long as they were willing to murder their daughters on the altar of ancient prophecy?

But then again…We’re talking about a very family had birthed Danton out of nowhere, hadn’t they?

Phei was no longer asking how they had obtained a perfect infant to replace the real twin. He knew a piece of it now. Understood that somewhere in the Maxton machinery, there existed capabilities that could produce vessels on demand—children shaped to specification, bloodlines engineered to order.

He had asked Cassiopeia once. She hadn’t known either. They had simply given her a role to play—without explaining where the pieces came from or how the game was truly played.

“It’s very possible, Master,” Eira whispered. “For the Maxtons to deliver what these families want. As long as they have a Witch Lesser God level. Which they do as Cassiopeia told you.”

A Lesser God level witch.

Hidden somewhere in the Maxton holdings. Weaving reality into shapes that served Harold’s purposes and the ancient prophecies that the Legacy families had been preparing for since their exile from the World of Powers.

But was Phei going to let them?

Was he going to stand by while his women were sacrificed for this shit? While Sierra was butchered so that some First Devil could awaken at maximum potency?

No.

Not Sierra. Not ever.

But what about the other girls?

Maddie. Natasha. Jade. Clara. Yuki. Priya.

Juliette. Paige and Brielle.

All of them daughters of families that had been “cursed” with female heirs. All of them potential sacrifices on altars that had been prepared centuries before their births.

At least for Elena, according to Roxanne, Damien Ashford didn’t give a single fuck about progenitor reincarnation if it meant sacrificing his daughters.

When the Maxtons had approached him with their proposition and solution—had offered to solve his “curse” the same way they had solved so many others—he had told them to get out of his face and go fuck themselves.

Phei smiled despite everything.

What a man!

At least one patriarch among these monsters had a heart. At least one father loved his daughter more than he loved the promise of hosting some dragon deity at peak power. Damien Ashford had looked at the ancient prophecies and the careful breeding and the weight of millennia of preparation, and he had chosen Elena.

No wonder so many women in Main Paradise respected him more than any other patriarch. No wonder Dravenna—even broken, even puppeted by the Heavenchilds—still carried her cousin with the particular respect for him as someone like him who that valued its daughters.

But what about Maddie and the others, Eira? What about the princesses whose fathers hadn’t possessed Damien’s spine? Are they going to die too, Eira, explain… What about—

“Master.” Eira’s voice cut through his spiraling thoughts with crystalline precision.”Not all of those girls are going to be sacrificed.”

He stilled. Sierra murmured against his chest, sensing the change in his breathing, but didn’t wake.

“Explain.”

“Unlike what Roxanne believes, not all Legacy Families Progenitors were male. Wherever she got that information, it was incomplete.”

Hope—dangerous, fragile, desperate hope—flickered in his chest.

“Some families carry bloodlines from Female Progenitors. The Parks, for instance. Their bloodline descends from the Nine-Tailed Fox—a being that was always, invariably, female. Jade Park isn’t cursed. She’s actually a perfect reincarnation of that progenitor…. she just hasn’t awakned!”

One saved.

“The Moreaus are High Elf royalty. Another unawakned reincarnation of a female progenitor. Clara Moreau will survive the Destined Day without sacrifice or transformation.”

Two saved.

“And then there’s the Whitmores.”

Eira paused. Phei could sense something like awe in her voice.

“The Whitmores carry perhaps the most powerful bloodline of all the Legacy families. Primordial Night itself. The darkness that existed before light was spoken into being. The void from which creation emerged.”

Phei’s breath caught.

“Maddie Whitmore is the unawakened first progenitor of that race. And the first Primordial Night—was female.”

Three saved.

Maddie. Clara. Jade.

Three princesses who wouldn’t need to die. Three, one was his woman he was getting his soul ready to go Scorched-Earth to save (Maddie)— and the other two were potential members of his harem, if the universe had any sense of poetry—who had been born into bloodlines that matched their gender perfectly.

But that still left so many others.

Sierra. Natasha. Yuki. Priya. Juliette. Paige. Brielle.

Girls whose progenitors demanded male vessels. Girls whose families were even now conspiring with the Maxtons to ensure successful reincarnations at the cost of daughters they should have protected.

Phei closed his eyes.

Everything he was hearing—the progenitors, the reincarnations, the prophecies, the sacrifices—it was too much. Too vast. Too ancient. Things you only read about in novels, myths too wild for any movie or anime, legends that shouldn’t have been real but were now sitting on his chest like mountains made of truth.

And the clock was ticking faster than anyone realized; the Maxtons weren’t just preparing—they were accelerating the Destined Day.

“Phei.” Melissa’s voice, soft from the driver’s seat. “Rest.”

He opened his eyes. Met hers in the rearview mirror. Saw the gentle knowing in her gaze—the understanding of a woman who had carried these same secrets and knew exactly how heavy they were.

“The world isn’t ending today,” she said. “Or this week.”

Her smile was tender. Patient. The smile of someone who was silently telling him that there was so much more he didn’t know, so many more revelations waiting in the wings, and rushing to devour them all at once would only make his head explode.

“Give yourself time, that smile said. Rest. Have a life. Love the girl in your arms and the women waiting for you at home. The apocalypse will still be there tomorrow.”

Phei nodded.

Closed his eyes.

And let the darkness—not Primordial, just ordinary, blessed ordinary—take him for a while.