My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 471: Alone with Cassiopeia

It wasn’t a question.

It was phrased like one. Had the polite little uptick at the end. The if it’s not too much trouble qualifier that existed purely to give the illusion of choice.

But the mind behind those dark eyes wasn’t asking. She was informing them she was here to stay. Until whatever reason had brought her was finished.

Until the bracelet on her wrist had done what it came to do.

Until one of them belonged to the other.

And Phei — standing in the hallway outside the elevator with four women who shared his blood, his bed, and his growing empire of chaos — knew with cold, absolute certainty that the Sovereign Tower was no longer safe for them.

Not the penthouse. Not the fifty-second floor.

If Cassiopeia could show up at his door unannounced and unstoppable, who said she couldn’t do the same to Sienna and Victoria’s unit at four in the morning? Who said the wards, the security, the locked doors meant anything to a woman carrying a Celestial Grade Artifact and backed by a family that had been outmanoeuvring gods for generations?

And given how cruel the Maxtons were—given the depth and breadth and sheer creative savagery of their malice—who said Phei was the only purpose of her visit?

Victoria. Delilah. Sienna. Three daughters who had broken ties with the family. Three women who had chosen Phei over Harold. Three betrayals that a man like Harold Maxton would file away and sharpen into weapons when the time was right.

The four girls didn’t need Phei to tell them that Cassiopeia’s presence was bad news.

They knew.

They’d grown up in that family. They’d eaten at Harold’s table. They’d watched the way power moved through Maxton blood—not like water, but like poison: slow and deliberate, always finding the lowest point, always settling in the place that would cause the most damage when it finally broke through.

Cassiopeia was their aunt and they knew—the way you know the sound of a door that’s about to slam, the way you know the particular silence that comes before a Maxton punishment—that she was every bit as cruel as their father.

Maybe more.

Harold’s cruelty was blunt.

Efficient.

A hammer that broke things quickly and moved on. Cassiopeia’s cruelty—from what the cracks in their composure suggested, from the way even Melissa’s knuckles had gone white—was something else entirely.

Something slower.

Something that enjoyed the process.

Phei didn’t know where to keep them.

Yes, Eira was watchful. Yes, she could protect them. But Eira herself had said it—there might be someone powerful behind the Maxtons.

Someone capable of concealing Cassiopeia’s approach until she was standing in their living room, past every sensor, every ward, supernatural sense.

If that was true—if the same force that had shielded the ritual at the Maxton Mansion could shield Cassiopeia’s movements—then distance was the only real protection.

Distance and unpredictability.

Putting the four women somewhere Cassiopeia couldn’t anticipate. Somewhere that wasn’t on any Maxton map.

Somewhere that had its own teeth.

It doesn’t hurt to protect from afar. It hurts a lot more when you don’t.

Maya read through it all.

She didn’t ask. Didn’t need to be briefed. Didn’t require Phei to pull her aside and explain the gream situation in whispered sentences while the others pretended not to listen.

She just—knew.

The way Maya always knew.

The way her brain operated on a frequency that picked up the things other people missed, the undercurrents beneath the conversation, the shape of the danger before the danger had finished forming.

"I’ve got this," she’d said. Quiet. Steady with no rambling, tangents or any of Maya’s chaos.

Just four words delivered with the calm certainty of a woman who had already made fifteen phone calls in her head and was just waiting for her mouth to catch up.

A limousine arrived within minutes.

Black. Long. The kind of car that didn’t have license plates that meant anything and windows that didn’t let light in or information out.

It pulled up to the Sovereign Tower’s entrance and idled there with the patience of a predator that had been fed recently and could afford to wait.

The three girls got in. Victoria first, then Delilah, then Sienna—who paused at the door and looked back at Phei with an expression he couldn’t read.

Something between be careful and don’t trust her and I know things I haven’t told you yet.

Then she was inside.

Melissa was last. She stood in front of him for a long moment. Her composure was back—fully rebuilt, seamless, the armour of a woman who had survived Harold Maxton for decades and would survive whatever came next.

But her eyes said something different. Her eyes said come back to me.

"I’ll handle it," Phei said.

She didn’t argue. Didn’t question. Just pressed her palm flat against his chest—over his heart, feeling it beat—and held it there for three seconds.

Then she got in the car.

Emily went with them. Laptop bag over her shoulder, phone in hand, already coordinating something with someone in rapid-fire texts.

Even in crisis, the girl was working. Some people coped with fear by freezing.

Emily coped by optimising.

Valentina too. Quiet. Watchful. Adding her own particular gravity to the convoy—the gravity of a woman who’d grown up in a world that didn’t operate by Paradise rules and brought her own survival instincts to the table.

The limo pulled away.

Phei watched it go. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Maya stood beside him after Valentina went to rest too.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t fill the silence with words. Just reached down and took his hand—slid her fingers between his, palm to palm, and held on.

Her hand was warm.

Small. Steady.

And something in Phei’s chest—something that had been coiled tight since Cassiopeia walked through the door, something wound like a spring and loaded like a gun—loosened.

Just a fraction. Just enough to let him breathe.

He felt it.

The thing Maya did to him that he’d never been able to name. Not comfort exactly. Not safety.

Something stranger.

Like a second layer of armour had wrapped itself around him—invisible, weightless, woven from the particular frequency of a girl who rambled about nothing and understood everything and had never once, in all the time he’d known her, let him face something alone when she could stand beside him instead.

He trusted Maya.

More than he wanted to admit. More than made sense. More than his system-enhanced, void-ice-infused, dragon-blooded paranoia should have allowed.

Eira had said it herself—the girl is strange, Master. Trust her more than you do.

And he hadn’t needed his fairy to tell him that.

He’d known it. Had known it since before the awakening, before any of this. Maya Scarlett was the kind of person whose loyalty wasn’t a decision but a condition.

She didn’t choose to protect him. She simply couldn’t do otherwise.

And her staying—choosing to remain in the penthouse with him and a woman who carried a soul-binding artifact and a smile full of knives—was yet another proof.

They stood there for a moment. Her hand in his. The limo’s taillights already gone.

The night stretching ahead of them like a dark hallway with something waiting at the end.

"Ready?" she asked.

"No," he said.

She smiled. Squeezed his hand.

"Good. Neither am I."

They walked back to the elevator. Stepped inside. The doors closed.

Ninety-eight floors between them and the music.

They went up to face it.

The penthouse was quiet when they stepped back inside.

Too quiet.

The dining table had been cleared. The dishes were gone. The long, beautiful mess of a family dinner—plates and glasses and napkins and crumbs and the particular evidence of a room that had been full of people who loved each other—had been erased.

Wiped clean.

The table gleamed dark and empty, reflecting the city lights beyond the glass like a mirror made of obsidian.

Cassiopeia stood at the window. Back to them.

Her silhouette cut sharp against the glittering skyline—the midnight silk dress, the impossible hourglass, the hair that fell like liquid shadow past her waist.

The Hell River moved far, very far below, indifferent, eternal.

She didn’t turn around.

"Just the three of us now," she said, voice carrying across the empty room like smoke. "How cosy."

Deadly, wasn’t it?