My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 228 - 228: The New God Runs

Phei ran.

Not the cautious, measured lope of someone who’d ever bothered to learn what a warm-up was, nor the pathetic shuffle of a man who treated every outing like a negotiation with mortality. No. He tore forward in a flat-out sprint that should have ended in catastrophe five strides ago.

His legs blurred beneath him, hammering the pavement with the reckless enthusiasm usually seen in people who’ve just discovered free cocaine or realised the building behind them is on fire. Air knifed into his chest in great, greedy gulps, yet his lungs refused to stage their customary revolt.

No burning, no ragged desperation, no wet rattle of impending collapse.

His lungs felt fine. Better than fine. They felt like they’d been upgraded to some premium model that came with a lifetime warranty and a personal apology from universe for the previous seventeen years of substandard breathing equipment.

Seventeen years of watching fitter bastards glide past while he paused on landings, pretending to admire the view as his heart tried to punch its way out through his ribs.

Today that same treacherous organ beat steady and strong, almost bored, as if it had finally unionised and negotiated better working conditions while he wasn’t looking.

The street stretched ahead, lamps flickering like they were taking bets on when he’d finally eat dirt.

Phei waited for the hammer blow: the stitch that felt like a bayonet in the ribs, the sudden betrayal of a knee, the glorious, familiar moment when biology reasserted itself and reminded him he was a soft, breakable thing destined to die slowly of something undignified.

It didn’t come.

Distance vanished under his feet with insulting ease. Sweat prickled—more from social obligation than actual effort—and his breath stayed even, almost smug. He ran faster, half daring his body to punish the arrogance, half terrified it wouldn’t.

Three hours.

Three fucking hours at his absolute top speed through the winding streets of Paradise, and he wasn’t tired.

He was exhilarated.

The morning had started with him waking up on the bathroom floor at around 9 AM.

Naked. Covered in dried blood and something that looked disturbingly like shed skin—because apparently his body had decided to molt like a goddamn dragon having a midlife crisis and now shading its scales.

And then he’d looked in the mirror.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The thing staring back at him wasn’t quite the Phei Maxton he’d grown used to over the past three weeks. The body he’d built through Dragon Rise—already lean, already defined, already turning heads like a car crash you couldn’t look away from—had been upgraded.

Every muscle he’d earned through sweat and discipline now looked like it had been carved deeper, cut sharper, packed with a density that spoke of power beyond what any gym routine should produce.

Like someone had taken his old body, thrown it in a blender with Greek statues and pure spite, and hit “purée.”

His face—already handsome from his charm points and regular exercise had rebuilt him from the inside out—had refined itself further, cheekbones sitting higher, jawline cutting cleaner, every angle honed like a blade given one final pass on the whetstone by a sadist who really enjoyed his job.

And his eyes—those violet eyes that had already made women stumble and men look away—now burned so bright they almost glowed, the purple deepened to something otherworldly, less human quirk and more dragon staring back through the glass with a “try me” smirk.

He’d spent thirty minutes just… looking.

Turning. Flexing. Running his hands over new muscles that hadn’t existed yesterday—or had existed, but not like this. Not carved from marble by a sculptor who took the job personally and had a grudge against human mediocrity.

Then he’d hit the gym.

He’d done his entire Dragon Rise routine. Then done it again. Then added weight. Then added more and more and more.

It wasn’t enough.

His body wanted more. Craved it. Like a starving man finally seated at a feast, every muscle fiber screaming feed me, push me, use me—or I’ll start eating the furniture.

So, he’d gone for a run.

And somewhere around hour two, he’d lost his shirt.

He genuinely couldn’t remember where. Sovereign Tower to the Eastern Gardens to the Ashford Quarter, Business Region, to the artificial beaches to the downtown Financial District to wherever the fuck he was now—the geography had blurred into a smear of pristine streets and manicured perfection as his legs ate distance like it was nothing, like physics had looked at him and decided the normal rules simply didn’t apply anymore.

Paradise at seven in the morning was obscene in its beauty.

The kind of beauty that made you angry, actually, because no place had any right to look like this. The streets of downtown gleamed like they’d been polished by angels with obsessive-compulsive disorder—pale marble and rose-gold accents, lined with trees whose leaves seemed to shimmer silver in the early light.

Boutiques and cafes with facades so pristine they looked like architectural renderings, not real buildings. Fountains that caught the sunrise and shattered it into a million dancing fragments.

Above it all, the sky stretched in gradients of peach and lavender, wispy clouds painted in strokes of cotton-candy pink. The air smelled clean—impossibly clean, like someone had filtered out every impure molecule and replaced them with hints of jasmine and fresh rain and money. So much money.

It looked like heaven.

Or what heaven would look like if God had hired a team of luxury real estate developers and given them an unlimited budget and a severe allergy to anything less than perfection.

(Art attached for a view of Paradise’s Downtown view)

Phei ran through it like a perfect haired meteor.

His feet struck the marble in a rhythm that had become meditation, each impact sending a shockwave up through legs that felt like they could carry him forever. His hair—darker now, somehow, the brown-black strands whipping in the wind he created—streamed behind him like a banner, like a challenge, like a declaration of war against everything he used to be.

Faster.

He pushed harder. His body responded instantly, eagerly, the new muscles flexing and contracting with an efficiency that bordered on supernatural. Calves carved like they’d been chiseled by Michelangelo tensed with each stride, the definition so sharp you could trace the individual fibers—and probably cut yourself doing it.

Thighs firm with power pistoned beneath him, quad muscles rippling under sweat-slicked skin with every explosive push forward.

The sweat had started around hour two—not from exhaustion, but from sheer exertion, his body finally acknowledging that yes, this counted as actual exercise.

It sheened his skin now, turning pale flesh luminous under the morning light, catching in the valleys between his abs—eight distinct ridges that flexed and tightened with each breath, each twist of his torso—and trailing down the sharp V-cut that disappeared into his waistband like an arrow pointing toward sin.

His chest heaved with controlled power, pectorals broad and defined, rising and falling in a rhythm that was almost hypnotic.

Shoulders like carved stone rolled with each pump of his arms, deltoids catching light and shadow in equal measure. His biceps flexed with every swing, veins tracing rivers over the muscle—thick, prominent, pulsing with heat and life and something that looked almost inhuman in its vitality.

Those arms.

Built to pin. To hold. To wrap around someone and not let go until they’d forgotten their own name, their own history, everything except the weight of him pressing them into whatever surface he’d chosen for their undoing.

And his face—

(Art attached for Phei)

A woman stepped out of a boutique directly into his path.

She froze.

Mouth open. Eyes wide. Bag slipping from her fingers to clatter on the marble.

Poor thing.

She’d probably need therapy.

Or a cold shower.

Or both.

The new god ran.

Phei sidestepped without breaking stride—a fluid, impossible movement that was half instinct, half the kind of grace that belonged to predators who’d never learned to fear anything.

He caught her expression as he passed: eyes going wide, mouth dropping open, coffee cup frozen halfway to lips that had forgotten how to close—like her brain had blue-screened at the sight of him and was desperately trying to reboot.

He was gone before she could blink.

But the afterimage lingered: high cheekbones gleaming with sweat, jawline sharp enough to cut the morning air, lips slightly parted with exertion, and those eyes. Those impossible violet eyes that seemed to burn brighter now, the color deepened to something almost ultraviolet, catching light and refusing to give it back.

Beautiful the way a storm is beautiful.

Mesmerizing, inevitable, and just a little bit terrifying—the kind of terrifying that made women press their thighs together and pretend it was just the chill.

The reactions had been happening all morning.

Women stopped mid-stride to stare—like their bodies had decided walking was optional when he was around.

Joggers actually tripped trying to track his passage, one poor beauty face-planting into a hedge with all the grace of a drunk swan.

A yoga class on one of the rooftop terraces had collectively frozen in downward dog to watch him sprint past three stories below, and Phei had heard the instructor’s voice crack mid-instruction

—”And breathe into your—oh my god”—before the entire class devolved into muffled chaos.

He should probably feel something about that. Embarrassment, maybe. Self-consciousness.