My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 470: Face the Music

It doesn’t take much to ruin a perfectly good night.

One woman. One dress. One bracelet that hummed with the patience of something that had been binding souls since before the concept of freedom had a word.

That was all it took.

The laughter died first — sharp, mid-breath, like someone had cut the strings on every smile in the room.

The food went cold next; steam that had curled so invitingly from Melissa’s cinnamon-vanilla French toast simply stopped rising, as though the heat itself had decided this table no longer deserved warmth.

The easy, golden atmosphere that had filled the penthouse — the warmth of family, of people who’d chosen each other, of a table long enough for everyone and a boy who’d somehow filled every seat without trying — bled out through invisible cracks the moment Cassiopeia stepped inside.

Dinner ended.

Not with a fight. Not with a scene.

Just — ended.

The way a song ends when someone yanks the plug from the wall. One moment they were eating, forks moving, small sounds of appreciation.

The next, forks were down, plates untouched, and the silence between bites had grown teeth.

After dinner Landon and Brian went first.

They read the room the way athletes read a court — instinctively, without needing the play drawn on a whiteboard.

A quick glance at Phei. A nod — small, respectful, the kind that said we see it, we’re out of the way. Quiet goodnights to the table, voices low enough not to disturb whatever storm was brewing.

Gone.

They didn’t ask questions.

Didn’t need to.

They’d spent enough time orbiting Phei’s world to know when the air changed flavour, and tonight it tasted like metal and jasmine and the particular kind of trouble that didn’t involve them and wouldn’t benefit from their presence.

Ms.Bloom followed.

Patricia caught his eye as she stood — a look that lasted half a second and said everything. Be careful. I’m here if you need me. I don’t understand what’s happening but I trust you to handle it.

He gave her the smallest nod — almost imperceptible, but she saw it.

She left without a word. Graceful. Composed.

The teacher in her knowing exactly when to step back and let the lesson play out, even when she didn’t know what the lesson was.

Sierra next. Then Maddie.

Phei escorted each of his women personally from Patricia.

Not just to the door — to their cars. Down the private elevator, through the gleaming lobby where security nodded without meeting his eyes, out into the night where the city glowed and the air was warm and the Sovereign Tower’s underground parking was lit in cold, clinical white that made every shadow feel like it was watching.

After Patricia went he walked Sierra to her car with his hand on the small of her back — but stripped of everything except protection. He opened her door. Waited for her to slide in and buckle. Leaned down until their faces were close enough that he could smell her perfume and the faint trace of fear-sweat she was trying to hide.

"I’ll call you tonight," he said.

"You’d better." Her voice was steady but her eyes weren’t.

Worry sat in them like stones at the bottom of a clear lake — visible, heavy, impossible to remove by looking away.

He kissed her forehead — slow, deliberate, lingering just long enough to let her feel the promise in it. Closed the door.

Watched the car pull away until the taillights disappeared around the corner.

Then Maddie.

Same routine. Same care. She hugged him harder than usual — arms tight around his neck, face buried in his chest, holding on like she was memorising the shape of him in case the night decided to take it away.

"Don’t do anything stupid," she mumbled into his shirt.

"When have I ever done anything stupid?"

She pulled back just far enough to stare at him.

"Right," he said, mouth quirking. "Don’t answer that."

She laughed — small, wet, worried — and got in the car.

He watched until the taillights vanished.

But watching them drive away wasn’t enough.

Knowing they were in armoured SUVs with professional drivers wasn’t enough. Knowing the Sovereign Tower had state-of-the-art security, biometric locks, gated parking, cameras on every floor, panic rooms on every level — wasn’t enough.

Not tonight.

Not with Cassiopeia upstairs and a Celestial Grade Artifact on her wrist and the Maxton family’s shadow stretching longer and darker than he’d ever felt it before.

So he’d sent Eira.

"Protect them," he’d told her.

Direct order that didn’t need elaboration because the crystalline fairy who lived in his void-ice understood the weight of it without being told.

She’d gone without argument. Without flirtation.

Just a nod — crystalline, serious, the ancient thing behind the cute doll-face surfacing for one brief, glacial moment — and then she was gone.

Dispersed into the void like frost evaporating off glass.

Even now she was still out there. Shadowing them. Watching from whatever dimension she folded herself into when she didn’t want to be seen.

He didn’t know exactly how powerful she was — she’d always been cagey about specifics, the way old things are, giving him enough to trust but never enough to calculate.

But he trusted her.

Trusted her when she said she’d protect all his women as long as he gave the order.

He’d given the order.

That would have to be enough.

The vigilance wasn’t paranoia.

It was arithmetic.

Cassiopeia had arrived at his penthouse unannounced. Uninvited. Past every security protocol the Sovereign Tower had to offer — ninety-eight floors of the most exclusive residential building in Paradise, accessible only by private elevator, keyed only to residents and their approved list.

She’d walked through all of it like the barriers were suggestions rather than walls.

And on her wrist sat an artifact that could bind a soul.

And behind her stood the Maxton family — a family that had spent nine years beating a boy’s true name out of his mouth so a Dragon Heart Scale would forget its rightful heir.

A family that kept a Lesser God witch chained.

A family whose cruelty wasn’t impulsive but architectural — planned across decades, executed across generations, patient as geology and twice as merciless.

Something sinister was coming. Had been coming. Was already here, sitting in his penthouse in a midnight silk dress, smiling with all her teeth.

Phei wasn’t paranoid.

He was paying attention.

The harem was protected. Cars dispatched. Eira deployed. The women who needed to be far from this building were getting farther with every passing second.

Now came the dangerous part.

Sienna. Delilah. Victoria. Melissa.

Usually the arrangement was simple. Sienna and Victoria took the secondary unit on the fifty-second floor — the overflow apartment Melissa had secured faster than anyone expected.

Delilah and Melissa stayed here on ninety-eight.

Clean. Organised. Everyone accounted for.

But tonight that arrangement had become impossible.

Because Cassiopeia had smiled — that slow, sharp, devastating smile — and said:

"If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to stay over tonight."