My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 332: Pride

Pride.

Dravenna knew that card well. Had played it herself more times than she could count—against rivals, against enemies. But she’d never wielded it quite like this.

Phei had made sure to remind her: pride was the most important weapon she could use against the Heavenchilds.

Pride.

Because the Heavenchilds had so much of it. Generations of it. Centuries of being the most powerful family on the planet, of never bowing, never losing, never letting anyone forget that they sat at the top of every hierarchy that mattered.

That kind of pride was a fortress.

But it was also a cage.

Poke it right, and they’d do exactly what you wanted—not because you forced them, but because their own ego wouldn’t let them do anything else.

And Dravenna had poked perfectly.

But all of that was background noise compared to what the Academy was losing its collective mind over today.

Phei!

Again.

It was the cold.

Aura cold. A frost that radiated off him in invisible waves, making people shiver when he walked past even though the sun was blazing overhead. It clung to him like a second skin—this sense of winter, of distance, of something ancient and dangerous wearing a seventeen-year-old’s face.

Before, Phei had been magnetic. Charismatic. A presence that made you want to get closer, to bask in whatever heat he was giving off.

Now?

Now he was magnetic in a different way. A black hole way. You couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop watching, but something in your hindbrain screamed that getting too close might erase you entirely.

And gods, did it make him even hotter to them girls.

The fans—his growing army of admirers—were absolutely feral about it. The increased sharpness to his features. The leaner lines of his body, like he’d been carved from ice and then taught to breathe.

The way he moved now, all predatory grace and coiled stillness.

And his hair.

Those few icy black strands woven through. A reminder that he’d been something else before. That whatever he was now, he’d earned it through transformation.

The Academy couldn’t stop staring.

Phei couldn’t be bothered to notice.

He spent the whole day quiet.

Not his usual quiet—this was emptier. Colder. Like someone had hollowed out the space where his emotions used to live and filled it with winter fog.

He skipped classes entirely. Didn’t even pretend to care about attendance or teachers or any of the normal concerns that governed student life. Just... drifted through the campus like a ghost with better cheekbones.

His time went to preparation.

Landon and Brian got him first—final strategy sessions for the Challenge, last-minute adjustments to whatever plan they’d cobbled together for beating an entire basketball team solo.

The two boys had learned not to ask questions about his new appearance, his new aura, the way frost sometimes crackled across his knuckles when he wasn’t paying attention. They just... adapted. Rolled with it. Treated his sudden transformation into some kind of ice demon like it was a minor scheduling change.

Good lads, those two.

Then Emily and Delilah.

They walked him through everything they’d prepared—the ticketing, the streaming setup, the crowd management, the social media blitz that had turned a high school basketball game into a global event.

And that was when Delilah saw it.

A flicker.

Just for a moment—barely a heartbeat—something like happy emotion crossed Phei’s frozen features... recognition. Acknowledgment. The faintest crack in the ice to show that something still lived underneath.

She filed it away. Treasured it. Held onto it like a candle flame in a blizzard.

But it wasn’t the first crack she’d witnessed today.

Maya Scarlett had found him in the Academy gardens.

Or maybe he’d found her. Or maybe they’d just gravitated toward each other the way certain people did—two outsiders recognizing something familiar in each other’s damage.

Delilah had stumbled across them by accident. Had stopped dead in her tracks, hidden behind a hedge, and watched.

Phei sitting against a tree. Legs stretched out. Posture relaxed in a way she hadn’t seen all day—

And Maya was sitting between his legs.

Leaning back against his chest.

Her silver hair spilled across his shoulder while his fingers worked through it, braiding with a gentleness that seemed impossible from the ice prince he’d become. They were talking—quiet, easy, conversation that flowed without effort because both parties had stopped trying to perform.

And Phei was laughing.

Actually laughing.

Not the cold, sharp thing that passed for humor now. Real laughter. Warm. Human.

Maya said something—Delilah couldn’t hear what—and Phei’s head tipped back against the tree trunk, genuine amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes.

For just that moment, he looked like himself again.

The smug hidden empressr—had somehow found the key to the lock everyone else was scratching at uselessly.

Emily had appeared beside Delilah at some point. Watched the scene with soft eyes.

"Good," she murmured. "Someone can still make him look human."

Delilah could only stare in envy.

She didn’t know what had happened yesterday. Sierra and Maddie were tight-lipped about it—frustrated themselves, hurt by Phei’s coldness, unwilling or unable to explain what they’d witnessed.

So Delilah was left with fragments. Hints. The understanding that something massive had shifted and she’d missed it entirely.

She swallowed the frustration.

Endured it.

What else could she do?

The Academy went insane again around midday.

Articles. Plural.

Renee—that beautiful chaos agent with her camera and her blog and her complete lack of fear—had finally released her payload.

Brett Castellano and Anderson Price.

Their little romance, first of all. The secret they’d been hiding for months, thinking no one had noticed, thinking their midnight meetings and lingering glances had gone unobserved. Photos. Timestamps. Evidence that couldn’t be denied or explained away.

That alone would have been enough to dominate the news cycle.

But Renee wasn’t done.

More came out. Other nightly activities. Other crimes. Other scandals. The things they’d done thinking the world wasn’t watching—the parties, the payoffs, the casual cruelties that rich boys inflicted on people they considered beneath them.

Nothing prison-worthy.

Renee was too smart for that. She’d curated the revelations carefully, choosing scandals big enough to cripple reputations but not severe enough to trigger legal consequences.

Because legal consequences would take them out of Phei’s reach.

And Phei wanted them within reach.

The romance angle was just icing—embarrassing, humiliating, forcing them to confront something they’d been hiding from themselves and everyone else. But the real damage came from everything else. The bullying. The harassment. The covered-up incidents that suddenly had names and dates and witnesses willing to go on record.

Paradise was asking questions now.

Was this what Legacy kids were really about? Was this the behavior the Academy was protecting? Were these the young men representing their athletics program, their institution, their community’s values?

The Academy did nothing. Of course they did nothing—Brett and Anderson were Legacies too, and Legacies protected their own. But the students?

The students started treating them like they had something contagious.

Cold shoulders everywhere. Invitations withdrawn. Social circles suddenly discovering they had no room for two boys whose dirty laundry was now public property.

Reputation destroyed.

Social standing gutted.

Isolation achieved.

Exactly as Phei had designed it.

He wasn’t going to let anything take those two to prison.

Not until he was done with them personally. They were his to deal with. His to break. His to hand over only when he’d extracted every ounce of satisfaction their suffering could provide.

Then—and only then—would he let the system have what was left.

But there was one more thing.

One article that dropped right after the Brett and Anderson revelations. Almost like an afterthought.

Almost like Renee was just... wondering aloud.

"If this really how legacies behave in shadows... Was the death of Darius O’Neil really as it was reported to be?"

Simple question.

"If it was as the police claimed, then was what happened to his family afterward—as soon as they started investigating—really necessary?"

She didn’t answer. Didn’t accuse. Just... left the question hanging there. For Paradise to chew on. For the Academy to whisper about. For one student in particular to lose his fucking mind over.

Kyle.

Suddenly very, very restless.

And then, like a knight in shining armor descending to save the day, Marcus Heavenchild made his announcement.

The news about Brett and Anderson? Overshadowed.

The questions about Darius O’Neil? Buried.

Because Marcus—the Prince of Earth, the golden boy, the heir to the most powerful family in the world—had declared that he was rejoining the basketball team.

Not just supporting them.

Playing.

Personally.

The Challenge news exploded.

Before, Phei had been challenging Marcus’s influence. His little kingdom. The social order he’d built at this Academy through sheer presence and Legacy weight.

That alone had attracted global attention—the audacity of a charity case declaring war on a royalty.

But now?

Now Marcus was stepping onto the court himself.

Marcus, who’d quit basketball a year ago because he was simply too good. Because there was nothing left to learn, no competition that could challenge him, no opponent who could make the game interesting anymore.

He’d walked away out of boredom, leaving the Ashford Elite team to dominate without him.

And now he was coming back.

To cripple the charity case’s wings personally.

To put Phei in his place before the entire world.

Pride.

Phei almost smiled when he heard the news.

This was exactly his plan.

He’d known the Heavenchilds wouldn’t be able to resist. Known their pride would demand direct intervention once the stakes got high enough. Known that poking the right buttons would make Marcus step out of retirement and onto the court.

Cripple the charity case before the whole world.

Remind everyone why Heavenchilds ruled.

Crush this upstart so thoroughly that no one would ever dare challenge them again.

That was their plan.

Phei’s plan was different.

We shall see, The Ice Prince declared.