Phei flat-out refused.
Sa as always. Sa as every other ti the universe tried to drop a grand piano made of cosmic horror onto his shoulders and expected him to catch it while grinning like an idiot.
He simply... declined the invitation to panic.
Phei walked out of that restaurant with calm, deliberate strides, as though he had decided the apocalypse could kindly fuck off until after dessert.
Eira floated beside him in perfect silence. Wings folded, with none of her usual chirps or sarcastic comntary—none of her ancient wisdom delivered in that deceptively sweet voice that always had razor blades hidden underneath.
She knew this quiet. Ten years she had watched him, and in the ti she had spent actually speaking with him, she had learned the signs.
When Phei went silent like this, it wasn’t emptiness.
It was pressure.
The slow, subterranean buildup of a volcano deciding exactly where and how violently it was going to erupt. And when it finally did, the blast would be surgical, devastating, and utterly non-negotiable.
This particular silence mattered.
He knew what was coming. The Destined Day. The enslavent mission. The Legacy boys who had spent years torturing him now suddenly needing to be collared like feral dogs before they tore his throat out.
The main Legacy families probably didn’t know yet—they couldn’t read the strings of fate, didn’t have anyone who could.
If they did, they would already be sharpening knives and drafting wills... make sure he accidentally killed one of them or more!
And that was the part that made Phei’s stomach twist into cold knots. Because in this world, nobody passed up an advantage they could see. Nobody hesitated. The Maxtons hadn’t hesitated to plot against his father. Before that, they hadn’t hesitated to murder an infant—a helpless baby who couldn’t even crawl—simply to awaken the first Jörmungandr Prince and hijack dragon power for themselves.
If they ever learned about the Destined Day rule—if the Heavenchilds, the Prices, or any of those bloodlines discovered that killing their own sons at Phei’s hands would trigger Supre Immortal resurrection—they wouldn’t blink. Not a pause, a dramatic gasp, not even a token "are we the villains?" mont.
They’d sacrifice their children like pawns on a chessboard, except with worse parenting reviews.
Feed them to him like sacrificial lambs with a complintary side of generational trauma.
Let their heirs die screaming, because the version that ca back would be a dragon-killing weapon pointed straight at the boy who’d dared crawl out of the gutter and not stay there like he was supposed to.
They’d kill their own for the head start. Then enslave or erase Phei before he could return the favor—because nothing says "elite legacy family" quite like committing atrocities first and asking moral questions never.
It would cost them—sa way it had cost the Maxtons when they sent Cassiopeia in blind—but they’d pay it.
Of course they would.
These families had been spending children like pocket change for centuries. One more wouldn’t even make them flinch.
Honestly, at this point, if they did hesitate, it’d be out of character.
Phei wasn’t stupid.
He knew how lucky he was to have this information first.
Knew the difference between knowing and not knowing was literally the difference between breathing and being buried—between walking away and being zipped into a very expensive coffin not many would cry over for long.
He also had zero illusions about himself—about how cruel and hollow he beca when survival was on the line, how fast the warmth in him could freeze into sothing that didn’t negotiate, didn’t hesitate, didn’t feel.
A version of him that would absolutely ruin soone’s bloodline and sleep just fine afterward.
He’d act first. Always. Never let them get close the way Cassiopeia almost had.
But today?
Today he was allowing himself silence.
And a little fun.
Because the universe deciding to serve him existential dread on a silver platter didn’t an the newly rich young dragon had to stop living.
He’d spent ten years poor, powerless, and miserable—basically the universe’s favorite punching bag. He’d had powers for one week. One. Seven days.
Barely enough ti to enjoy it before fate ca knocking with a bill.
He was going to enjoy the week, thank you very much, and the cosmic horror could wait its damn turn behind the dinner reservations like everyone else.
Speaking of fun—
Tonight he had the Montgory dinner. With lissa and Sierra’s parents. The conversation that would decide whether the girl he loved got torn in half between him and her family—or sohow walked away with both won which honestly felt like trying to win a war and a peace treaty at the sa ti.
But soone was calling dibs.
His phone buzzed.
Maddie.
She wanted him to et soone. Of course she did. Because clearly his schedule wasn’t already trying to kill him. But since today was already shaping up to be a full-contact marathon, she’d postponed it for tomorrow. A rare mont of rcy. He’d take it.
Phei thumbed a quick reply: Tomorrow I want all of you to clear your schedules for a few days. I have a surprise.
Sent.
Then he copy-pasted the sa ssage into the harem group chat—because efficiency mattered, and also because chaos was more fun in bulk.
The replies detonated like fireworks:
Maya:a string of incomprehensible emojis followed by three question marks and a screaming face—translation unclear, but energy unmistakable.
Sierra: typing... deleting... typing again... clearly overthinking it... finally just a single ?!—which sohow conveyed an entire emotional crisis.
lissa: Noted. sohow managing to make two syllables sound like a royal decree and a boardroom decision at the sa ti.
Delilah: already flooding the chat with planning s, calendar screenshots, and heart-eyes emojis like she’d been waiting her whole life for this exact mont.
Phei pocketed the phone.
The car was waiting. lissa behind the wheel, Sienna in shotgun scrolling like her life depended on it—Victoria and Delilah in the back already whispering like conspirators who absolutely could not be trusted.
**
"lissa—the shoot schedule?" Phei asked a few minutes in the drive.
"Starts two day from now in evening."
He nodded. "Good. Tell the others about the surprise. Don’t tell them what it is. And if anyone’s not in the group yet, loop them in."
Delilah’s thumbs were already a blur with speed and fangirl enthusiasm levels, which was honestly a terrifying combination.
"Drop at the Tanaka Estate," Phei said. "You lot go prep for tomorrow. Like, actual ti-away prep. Not ’I packed vibes and forgot everything else’ prep."
lissa glanced at him in the rearview. "What are you doing at the Tanakas? Thanking them? Congratulating them for buying Maxton Tech?"
He laughed—short, sharp, genuine. "No. I’m eting a certain princess. Overdue. Haven’t properly thanked her for helping and the Simps on ga day."
Victoria scoffed from the back seat. "A eting that’ll probably end with Paradise losing another princess to you."
Phei shrugged, completely unbothered, like this was just another Tuesday in his increasingly ridiculous life. "What can I say? The universe has beco suspiciously generous lately. Also—how does one resist a princess’s desires? Feels rude, honestly."
Victoria opened her mouth—then closed it. Swallowed whatever retort had been loaded and filed it neatly in the ntal drawer labeled Later. She rembered the last ti she’d pushed him. Rembered how close she’d co to dying for it.
She wanted to say he’d refused her.
So lessons didn’t need repeating.
And so people didn’t need a second warning.
Sienna didn’t even look up from her phone.
"While you’re at it," she said, her voice flat as a flatline, "buy a fucking car. We can’t keep chauffeuring your ass around and waiting for you to finish your little royal audiences like we’re your personal Uber Black fleet. You have millions. Stop being stingy as fuck."
lissa glanced at Sienna. Then at the rest of the girls. A silent ripple passed between them—shared understanding, shared suffering, shared finally soone said it.
Then they laughed—loud, bright, genuine and it carried just a little bit of long-overdue vindication.
Phei leaned toward Sienna. Close. Then closer than necessary, like he was deliberately testing the boundaries of both space and patience. His presence pressed in, warm and deliberate, his mouth near her ear.
"Seems like my money hurts you more than the others," he whispered, voice low and teasing, threaded with amusent that bordered on reckless. "The robot has feelings for money, huh?"
Sienna closed her phone.
Slowly. Calmly like she was closing a book right before deciding violence might be a reasonable next Chapter.
"If you whisper in my ear that close again," she said quietly, her tone controlled with surgical precision, "I will retaliate."
There was no rise in her voice. No dramatics. Just a statent, clean and absolute, like a contract waiting to be signed in blood.
Phei opened his mouth, curiosity already sharpening into mischief, ready to test exactly how serious she was—because of course he would. Self-preservation had always been more of a suggestion than a rule with him.
"We’ve arrived at the Tanaka residence," lissa announced, her voice perfectly neutral, cutting through the mont like a blade through silk.
The car stopped.
The retaliation would have to wait.
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