My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 280: Heaven’s Bastard: Selene’s Fate
A/N: This Chapter is old, do not read!
Then Ashworth laughed again.
Louder this time. More genuine. The laugh of a man who’d just been handed the most entertaining spectacle of his career—and who was already placing bets on the outcome.
"Wonderful," he breathed, almost to himself. Then, louder: "Then it’s decided! Tomorrow afternoon—Phei Maxton, Landon Hayes, and Brian Thompson versus the starting five!"
He turned to Phei.
Extended his hand.
Phei took it. Shook it. Felt the old man’s grip—surprisingly strong, surprisingly warm—like a man who’d buried more scandals than most people had breakfasts and was looking forward to one more.
"Don’t disappoint me, Mr. Maxton," Ashworth murmured, too quiet for the microphone to catch. "This is the most fun I’ve had in decades."
"I have been waiting."
Phei didn’t know what that last part meant. And not like he could ask or care for that matter at all.
Then he released Phei’s hand, turned, and walked off the stage.
The crowd erupted.
Cheers, shouts, the thunder of feet stomping against the floor. Students turning to each other with wild eyes, already spreading the news to anyone who hadn’t been there to witness it firsthand.
A challenge.
Tomorrow.
The charity case versus the golden boys.
The auditorium held its breath.
Two thousand students sat frozen in their seats, phones forgotten, whispers dead on their tongues. No one moved. No one dared. The air itself seemed to thicken, pressing down on everyone present like a physical weight—
On the stage, two figures faced each other.
Marcus Heavenchild.
Even the name was a fucking joke.
Heavenchild. Like someone had reached into a bag of clichéd protagonist surnames and pulled out the most on-the-nose option available.
Heaven’s chosen. Heaven’s blessed.
Heavenchild. Christ. They might as well have called him Chosen McProtagonist or Divine-Boner von Destiny.
Heaven’s golden fucking boy, wrapped in a pretty package and presented to Paradise like a gift from the divine—complete with a bow and a note that read "sorry about the inferiority complex".
Phei wanted to vomit every time he heard it—or laugh, depending on his mood.
Marcus stood with his hands clasped behind his back, posture perfect, silver eyes betraying nothing. The Student Council President. The boy every Legacy family held up as the standard.
The untouchable prince of Ashford Elite Academy—the golden standard against which all other boys were measured and found wanting.
"Act and behave like Heavenchild and stop putting shame to our name, will you?!"
That was the phrase. The proverb. The verbal lash that Legacy parents used on their sons whenever they stepped out of line. Be like Marcus. Dress like Marcus. Speak like Marcus. Excel like Marcus.
Why can’t you be more like the Heavenchild boy?
Every Main Legacy heir had heard it. Danton. Brett. Anderson. Kyle. All of them, compared constantly to this silver-eyed saint, found wanting every single time—and they hated him for it.
Oh, they hid it well. Smiled in his presence. Laughed at his jokes. Deferred to his authority with the practiced ease of boys who’d learned young that some battles weren’t worth fighting—because losing to Marcus wasn’t just losing; it was being reminded you were born to lose.
But underneath?
Underneath, they despised Marcus Heavenchild more than they’d ever despised Phei.
At least Phei had served a purpose. When the pressure got too heavy, when the comparisons cut too deep, when they needed someone to make them feel powerful in an environment where Marcus’s heavenly halo made them feel small
—there was always the charity case. Always the punching bag. Always someone lower on the ladder to kick—someone whose pain made their own inadequacy bearable.
Phei had been their pressure valve.
Marcus was the pressure itself.
But the rest of the academy?
The rest of the academy adored him.
Boys wanted to be him. Girls wanted to be with him. Teachers praised his academic excellence. Coaches marveled at his athletic ability. Even the regular students—the ones who should have resented his privilege—looked at Marcus Heavenchild with something approaching worship.
Smart. Talented. Good at literally everything he touched.
And handsome.
Gods, the bastard was handsome.
Before Phei’s transformation, Marcus had been the undisputed king of Ashford’s beauty rankings. That perfect face. Those silver eyes. The aristocratic bone structure that belonged on coins and statues. Even Victoria —Danton’s older sister, college-aged, only returned to Paradise occasionally—had been rumored to carry a torch for him and other princesses too. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂
The Legacy princesses all had liked him before. Sierra had liked him, once. Half the female population of Paradise would have dropped everything for a single night with Marcus Heavenchild.
If the bastard had a spine, if he’d actually wanted it, he could have built a harem that made emperors jealous. And Paradise would have praised him for it. Called it his birthright. Celebrated his conquests like victories.
Heaven’s chosen, taking what heaven’s chosen deserves.
But Marcus didn’t.
Marcus kept himself pristine. Untouched. Above such base desires.
Or so everyone thought.1
Phei knew better.
And the knowledge burned in his chest like acid, corroding everything it touched, feeding a hatred so deep and so personal that it made his vendetta against the other Legacies look like a schoolyard squabble.
Maya had asked him once, at the fire pit, if there was someone special to him.
He’d paused. Considered lying. Considered deflecting with humor or changing the subject entirely.
"There was one," he’d finally admitted.
Maya had waited, patient as always, but he hadn’t elaborated. Couldn’t elaborate. Some wounds were too deep to expose, even to the girl who’d become his closest confidante.
Selene.
Her name echoed through his mind now, standing on this stage, facing the monster who’d destroyed her.
Soft brown eyes. Gentle smile. The way she’d laugh at his terrible jokes, genuinely laugh, like he was actually funny instead of just pathetic.
The only person who used to lend him a shoulder, hug him while he cried like baby after the bullying, when things got too hard to bear. She’d loved the nothing he was.
His first love.
His only love, before the system, before everything changed.
She’d loved him back. Actually, truly loved him—the charity case, the nobody, the boy everyone else overlooked. She’d seen something in him worth caring about. Something worth protecting.
And Marcus Heavenchild had destroyed her.
It wasn’t a seduction. Wasn’t a romance gone wrong. Wasn’t any of the sanitized narratives that powerful families used to explain away their sons’ indiscretions—because some indiscretions were too ugly for spin.
Marcus had raped her.
Raped her, and then watched as his family made it all disappear.
The Dean herself—whatever power she held over Ashford Elite—had been helpless when the Heavenchilds spoke. Phei had seen the truth in the whispers, in the gaps between official stories, in the way even authority figures went pale at the mention of that name. The Dean hadn’t wanted to cover it up.
But when the Heavenchild family decided something would disappear, it disappeared. No exceptions. No resistance.
Not even from the woman who supposedly ran this academy.
Evidence vanished. Witnesses fell silent. The official story became something vague and forgettable—a troubled girl, mental health issues, nothing to see here—the same story told every time a powerful boy decided a girl was disposable.
And Selene?
Selene had killed herself.
Phei remembered finding out way too late. Two days of not being able to reach her. Two days of unanswered calls, unread messages, growing dread that something was wrong. He’d gone through his Tuesday routine—checking his cameras, his devices, the recordings he kept as insurance against a world that had never been kind to him.
That’s how he’d found out what had happened to her.
That same evening, while Phei was still curled on a too-stiff infirmary cot trying to breathe through the panic attack that had folded him in half like cheap origami, they found her body.
Selene had chosen the old music building roof. Clean drop. No note. Just the thought of the obscene geometry of a girl who’d once laughed at his stupid puns, arranged wrong against concrete, a small red halo fanning out beneath her skull like someone had knocked over a glass of cheap merlot at the world’s worst dinner party, made Phei so mad he felt the urge to punch the bastard right here.
Her family tried. God, did they try.
They demanded answers. They cornered administrators in hallways. They hired private investigators who lasted exactly three days before politely returning the retainer with trembling hands and the whispered advice to "let it go."
They screamed at school board meetings until security escorted them out. They begged. They wept. They refused to let their daughter become a polite euphemism.
So the Heavenchilds did what Heavenchilds do when inconvenient noise threatens the family portrait.
They didn’t bother with anything as vulgar as direct violence. No. That would’ve been too honest.
Curious why Phei hated Marcus more than anyone?
