My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 261: Prophecy Under the Oak

Dravenna stood at the window, the academy below her a glittering mockery of stars that had never learned how to shine honestly—cheap knockoffs, really, like the trust funds of half the families in Paradise.

The office was silent now. Empty. The boy—her boy, though he still carried his ignorance like a designer blindfold—had left minutes ago, walking out with that confident stride that sliced through the air like a blade his father once carried, back when Seiryū still believed the world could be cut into pieces worth keeping instead of pieces worth selling.

She touched her lips. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Still tingling. Still warm.

And then she licked them.

Slowly. Deliberately.

Savoring the taste that lingered there—something far sweeter than the lips of a seventeen-year-old boy should have been. Something deeper than skin, deeper than saliva, deeper than any kiss had any right to be.

Dragon blood.

She could taste it when she bit him.

Could feel it humming against her tongue like bottled lightning, like a promise finally being kept after nearly two decades of waiting in the shadows, pretending to be patient while her hunger quietly devoured her from the inside like a particularly patient tapeworm.

Her smile spread slowly across her face.

Not the polished smile she wore for the academy board. Not the cold mask she presented to the Heavenchilds when they came sniffing for favors like dogs around a trash bin.

This was something older. Hungrier. The smile of a woman who’d just watched the first domino fall in a game she’d been setting up since before the boy could walk, since before his father ever looked at her with anything but polite distance and the occasional "your turn to host the gala."

"See, Seiryū?" The words fell into the empty room like stones into still water—plop, plop, no ripple because even the silence was too polite to react.

"I told you."

She remembered the afternoon she’d said it.

Fourteen years ago. Phei’s third birthday.

The estate had been transformed into a wonderland of balloons and streamers, the gardens overflowing with children from Paradise’s elite families and the adults who pretended to supervise them while drinking champagne and gossiping about stock portfolios like it was a competitive sport.

Dravenna had been sprawled on a blanket under the old oak tree, shoes kicked off, dress hiked up past her knees in a way that would have scandalized her mother and delighted every man who’d ever dared look twice (and some who dared three times).

Seiryū sat beside her, back against the trunk, arms folded, watching the chaos with that quiet amusement he reserved for things he could not control—like his wife, his in-laws, and the general state of the universe.

Mei-Lin was braiding Melissa’s hair while Melissa complained that she was pulling too hard, as if anyone had ever pulled hard enough to make Melissa stop talking.

They’d been friends for years by then.

Real friends. Not the performative alliances that passed for friendship in Paradise—the careful calculations of who could benefit whom, the smiles that never reached the eyes, the hugs that were really just opportunities to check for knives.

This was different.

This was lazy afternoons and stupid jokes and the kind of comfort that came from knowing someone’s worst secrets and loving them anyway—mostly because those secrets were funnier than the ones you kept about yourself.

"He’s going to break hearts," Mei-Lin said, nodding toward the children’s play area.

They all looked.

Little Phei—three years old, chubby-cheeked, already showing hints of his father’s bone structure—was toddling after a girl who couldn’t have been more than four. She had hair like a waterfall at midnight, deep blue-black that caught the sunlight and shimmered.

And his eyes, when he turned to laugh at something the girl did, were violet. Pure violet, like crushed flowers, like twilight skies.

Phei grabbed her hand.

She didn’t pull away.

They stood there, two tiny figures in the afternoon light, holding hands like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Oh my god," Melissa cooed. "That’s adorable. Who is she?"

"The Kozuki girl," Seiryū said. "Aiko’s daughter. They’ve been inseparable since the Easter party."

"Arranged marriage material," Dravenna drawled, plucking a grape from the fruit platter. "Lock it down now before some other family swoops in with better lawyers and a bigger trust fund."

"He’s three," Mei-Lin laughed, tugging on Melissa’s braid. "Can we let him be three for five minutes before we start planning his wedding?"

"In Paradise? Please." Dravenna popped the grape into her mouth. "Half these kids have betrothal contracts older than they are. Wait and see what these families gonna do when they realize what your family really is and what you’re supposed to be beyond just being Harold’s friend and business partner."

She was right.

They watched the children play. Phei had found a stick somewhere and was waving it around like a sword while the blue-haired girl clapped and cheered. He tripped over his own feet, went down hard, and immediately started crying.

The girl knelt beside him.

Patted his head.

Said something none of them could hear.

Phei stopped crying. Sniffled. Smiled.

"Okay," Melissa admitted. "That is pretty cute."

"He’s going to be trouble," Seiryū said, but his voice was warm. Proud. The voice of a father watching his son and seeing endless possibility. "I can already tell."

"Of course he is. He’s your son, also a Ryujin Tiamat bloodline spawn." Dravenna stretched, arms above her head, back arching in a way that was half-lazy, half-provocative. "All that Tiamat dragon blood. Poor cuties never had a chance at being normal."

"Like you’re one to talk about normal."

"I never claimed to be normal. I claimed to be exceptional. There’s a difference."

Mei-Lin snorted. "Exceptionally dramatic, maybe."

"Exceptionally right, thank you very much."

They fell into comfortable silence.

The kind that only existed between people who’d known each other long enough that words became optional. Melissa had given up fighting the braid and was half-dozing in the grass. Seiryū was watching his son with that soft expression he only wore when he thought no one was looking.

Dravenna watched too.

But she wasn’t looking at Phei.

She was looking at Seiryū.

At the man she’d turned down years ago—before Mei-Lin, before the wedding, before the child—when he’d asked her, nervous and stammering in a way so unlike his usual effortless confidence, if she’d consider being more than friends.

She’d laughed.

Not cruelly. Not kindly either. Just... laughed. Told him she wasn’t the marrying type. Told him he deserved someone softer, someone who could give him the peaceful life he so clearly craved. Someone who wouldn’t burn down the house just to see what the flames looked like up close.

"You deserve soft," she’d told him. "Someone who won’t torch the curtains to see if the smoke smells like regret."

Mei-Lin had been that soft. Mei-Lin had been perfect. Mei-Lin had fucked him into producing a walking, talking upgrade: tiny Phei, currently attempting to scale a blue-haired toddler like she was a climbing wall and he was a trust-fund Sherpa with zero fear of gravity or consent.

Mei-Lin was perfect for him. Gentle where Dravenna was sharp. Warm where Dravenna burned.

They fit together like puzzle pieces carved from the same tree, and their son was living proof that some things were simply meant to be—while others were meant to be watched from a safe distance with a glass of something strong and a wry smile.

Dravenna didn’t regret her choice.

Not really.

Regret was for people who believed in refunds.

She did delayed gratification, generational upgrade shopping, and the kind of long-game possession that made therapists rich and restraining orders thicker.

But sometimes—in moments like this, watching him smile at his child, watching the quiet, ordinary family he’d built without her—she felt a hot spike of something she refused to name. Something that made her want to do something completely crazy, something off-script, something that would make the neat little life he’d constructed look like the boring cage it secretly was.

Something that—

"You know what?" she announced after making up her mind, voice slicing through the golden afternoon like a razor through silk.

Seiryū glanced over, already bracing. "What?"

"I’ve reached peak executive decision."

"Oh no," Mei-Lin muttered, Melissa had slept from the comfort, eyes closed, sunbathing like she was trying to tan the common sense out of herself. "Here we go." Mei-Lin knew whatever Dravenna had in mind wasn’t any good.

"Shut up, take care of your napping in-law."

"She’s resting her brain from your bullshit. There’s a difference. And I know that tone. That’s your ’I’m about to ruin someone’s life for sport’ tone."

Dravenna ignored her like she ignored red flags.

She sat up. Brushed grass off her thigh like it had personally offended her couture. Fixed Seiryū with a stare that was fifty percent serious, fifty percent I will fuck your entire bloodline just to prove a point, and made the summer air feel suddenly thinner, hotter, more flammable.

"Your son," she declared, gesturing grandly toward the play area where little Phei was now triumphantly astride the blue-haired girl’s shoulders like a conquering toddler emperor claiming new territory, "when he’s legal, emotionally shattered, and old enough to know better but young enough to still make terrible choices... is going to be mine."