My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 264: "Is He Like Us" 2 & The Dormants

How long could they keep pretending that Phei’s transformation was just... what? Good skincare? A late growth spurt? The power of positive thinking and daddy issues so deep they could mine them for coal?

How long before they stopped lying to themselves about how wet it made them when his eyes went dark and his voice dropped and he looked at them like prey that had finally stopped running—and started begging?

"Maybe he’s like us?"

Delilah’s voice was barely a whisper.

But in the silence of the fire pit, it landed like a bomb.

Maddie’s head snapped toward her.

"Are you insane?"

"Delilah." Sierra’s voice was sharp. Controlled. But something flickered in her eyes—something that looked almost like fear. Or recognition. Or the sick thrill of finally naming the thing that had been fucking them in the dark. "That’s not possible."

"There’s no way." Maddie was shaking her head, curls bouncing. "There’s literally no way. He’s Phei, sure, but he’s not—he can’t be—"

"I know." Delilah’s hands were twisted in her lap, knuckles white. "I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I know. But—" She looked up, met their eyes. "What other explanation is there?"

Neither of them answered.

"Look at him," Delilah pressed. "Just—look. A month ago he was invisible. A ghost. The charity case everyone ignored. And now?" Her voice cracked. "He’s a literal little god. Not metaphorically. Not ’oh he’s gotten handsome.’ He’s literally, physically, impossibly beautiful in a way that doesn’t make sense unless—"

"Unless nothing," Maddie cut in. "It doesn’t make sense period. Humans don’t just—transform like that. Overnight. It’s not—"

"Exactly."

The word hung in the air.

Humans don’t.

Sierra hadn’t spoken.

Her jaw was tight. Her posture rigid. The calculating machine behind her eyes was running at full speed, processing, analyzing, looking for the flaw in the logic that would let her dismiss this entire conversation as hysteria.

Because if she could kill the idea now, she could keep pretending the way his gaze pinned her wasn’t turning her insides liquid with something darker than fear. Something that made her thighs clench under the log bench even as she hated herself for it.

She found it.

"Let’s just say you’re right."

Delilah blinked. "What?"

"Let’s say Phei is like us." Sierra’s voice was ice. Precise. "Let’s entertain that insane theory for exactly thirty seconds. If he was—" She leaned forward. "—then explain what’s happening right now."

Maddie frowned. "What do you mean?"

"If Phei was like us," Sierra continued, each word deliberate, "he would be waiting. Like all of us are doing. Like everyone in every Legacy family has been doing for generations."

Delilah’s eyes widened.

So did Maddie’s.

"Oh shit," Maddie breathed. "She’s right."

"The Awakening hasn’t happened." Sierra sat back, arms crossed. "Our grandparents are waiting. Our parents are waiting. The entire old generation—people who’ve been like us for fifty, sixty, seventy years—they’re all still waiting for IT to begin. Nothing has changed. Nothing has started."

Her eyes locked onto Delilah’s.

"So even if Phei was somehow, impossibly, one of us... it wouldn’t matter. He’d be a Dormant like us. Waiting. Just like everyone else. Whatever’s happening to him—" She shook her head. "It can’t be that. It doesn’t fit."

Silence.

Maddie slumped back on her log bench, the manic energy draining out of her like someone had pulled the plug. "So, we’re back to square one."

"We’re back to not having answers," Sierra corrected.

"Same thing."

"Not even close."

Delilah was staring at the cold fire pit.

At the ashes of old flames. At the stones that had witnessed so many secrets, so many confessions, so many moments that mattered.

"Then what is he?" she asked quietly.

Neither of them answered.

Because that was the question, wasn’t it?

The one they’d been circling around in their own minds for weeks. The one that kept them up at night and made them watch him with new eyes every time he walked into a room—eyes that lingered too long on the line of his jaw, the way his shirt pulled across shoulders that hadn’t been that broad last month, the way his smile now carried teeth even when his mouth stayed soft.

What was Phei becoming?

And what did it mean for all of them when he finished?

Because the ugly truth was already settling in their guts like bad wine: whatever he was turning into wasn’t waiting politely for permission.

It was taking.

And they were still sitting here—three Legacy girls raised on power, privilege, and the quiet certainty that the world bent for them—feeling their own spines straighten involuntarily when he was near. Feeling the old hierarchies crack.

Feeling the slow, delicious rot of realizing the broken charity case they’d once pitied might one day look down at them the way they’d always looked down at everyone else.

Maddie let out a short, bitter laugh that tasted like blood in the back of her throat.

"Gods, our families are so sooo sooooo fucked."

Sierra didn’t disagree.

She just stared at the ashes and thought about how wet she’d gotten the time he’d cornered her and dominated her in the hallway—casual, incidental, nothing—and how she’d hated herself for it before she let him ruin her and her pussy the next day in the old music room.

Delilah whispered, almost to herself:

"He’s not waiting for the Awakening."

"He’s already awake."

And in the golden slant of dying light, with the cold fire pit between them and the admin building looming like a guillotine in the distance, none of them could pretend that wasn’t the hottest, most terrifying thing they’d ever heard.

Maddie nodded, the motion so small it barely disturbed the air between them.

The reality crawled up her throat like cheap whiskey—hot, bitter, and impossible to swallow without grimacing. Delilah lobbed the theory out there like she was fucking Archimedes in the bath, shouting "Eureka!" only to realize halfway through that she’d forgotten to fill the goddamn tub first.

Stupid. Capital-S.

"But the Awakening hasn’t happened," Sierra said, voice flat and surgical, the tone she used when she was about to dissect someone’s entire worldview and leave the entrails neatly arranged for later inspection. "It’s not supposed to happen until the Destined Day. Every Legacy family has this tattooed on the inside of their eyelids."