My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 237 - 237: The Public Declarations
The black Maybach rolled to a stop in front of Ashford Elite Academy.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the driver’s side door opened, and the chauffeur—a middle-aged man who had seen enough of Paradise’s elite to be professionally unshockable—stepped out and moved to open the rear passenger door.
He’d done this a thousand times.
This time, his hand trembled on the handle—like even the hired help knew the rules had changed and the new king was about to step out.
Phei stepped out first.
The morning sun caught him like a spotlight operator who’d been waiting their whole career for this exact moment—bathing him in golden light that turned his pale skin luminous, that made the sharp planes of his face look carved from marble and moonlight, that set those impossible violet eyes blazing like twin amethysts lit from within.
He was wearing the Ashford uniform.
Technically.
The white dress shirt fitted across shoulders that hadn’t existed a week ago—broad, powerful, the fabric pulled taut over muscle that moved beneath like a predator stretching after a long sleep.
The blazer hung open, tailored but somehow still insufficient for the body it was trying to contain.
His slacks fit like they’d been painted on by someone with a religious devotion to thigh definition, and his tie was loosened just enough to expose the strong column of his throat, the sharp edge of his collarbone.
He looked like a god who’d decided to cosplay as a high school student and hadn’t quite gotten the memo about being subtle.
His hair—darker now, almost black in certain lights—fell across his forehead in artful disarray, still slightly damp from the shower he’d taken after destroying Maddie in the kitchen. His jawline could have cut the tension in the air.
His cheekbones caught shadows like they’d been specifically engineered to make women forget their own names.
And his poise—
Christ, his poise had changed.
Something that owned every inch of ground it covered. Something that moved with the liquid, unhurried confidence of a creature who knew—knew, bone-deep and blood-certain—that it was the most dangerous thing in any room it entered.
The students of Ashford Elite Academy had never seen anything like it.
The courtyard went silent.
Conversations died mid-sentence. Laughter choked off into strangled gasps. Phones that had been scrolling through social media froze as their owners forgot how fingers worked.
A girl near the fountain dropped her iced coffee. It shattered on the cobblestones. She didn’t notice—too busy wondering if spontaneous human combustion was real and if she was about to be patient zero.
A group of senior boys who’d been lounging on the steps scrambled to their feet and moved—parting like the Red Sea, pressing themselves against the railings, suddenly very interested in being anywhere that wasn’t directly in his path.
Phei didn’t acknowledge them.
Didn’t even glance.
That devastating half-smirk playing at his lips, those violet eyes sweeping the courtyard like a king surveying his kingdom—and finding it wanting.
Behind him, Sierra stepped out of the car.
Then Maddie.
And the collective intake of breath from the assembled student body was audible.
Sierra looked immaculate, as always.
Dark hair pulled back in that sleek ponytail, uniform pressed and perfect, chin lifted at an angle that said she knew exactly how untouchable she was and dared anyone to test it. The Hell Bitch Queen in her natural habitat, radiating an aura of cold superiority that made lesser beings want to apologize for existing in her general vicinity.
She moved to Phei’s left side and wrapped both arms around his bicep, pressing herself against him with a possessiveness that was almost territorial. Her smile was sharp. Satisfied.
The smile of a woman who had exactly what she wanted and knew everyone was watching her have it.
Maddie was… different.
She was trying to maintain her usual composure—that effortless, golden-girl polish that had made her Paradise royalty since birth—but something was off. Her steps were careful. Measured. Each one placed with the deliberate concentration of someone whose legs weren’t quite cooperating with her brain’s commands.
She was limping.
Not dramatically. Not obviously. But enough that anyone paying attention—and everyone was paying attention—could see the way she leaned into Phei’s right side like he was the only thing keeping her vertical.
The way her arm wrapped around his waist instead of his bicep, fingers gripping the fabric of his blazer like a lifeline.
The way her thighs pressed together when she walked, a tiny wince flickering across her features with every other step.
Her uniform was fresh—she’d had to change after the kitchen incident, after Phei had railed her against the counter and then bent her over the island until she’d screamed herself hoarse and squirted so hard the cleaning robot had needed fifteen minutes to mop up the puddle, Sierra’s too—but her hair was slightly disheveled, her lipstick freshly reapplied but not quite covering the swollen, bitten quality of her lips.
She looked wrecked.
She looked satisfied.
She looked like a woman who had finally, finally gotten exactly what she’d been begging for, and the aftershocks were still rolling through her body in waves—waves that made walking a negotiation with gravity.
Maddie caught a group of girls staring—mouths open, eyes wide, judgment and envy warring on their faces—and she smiled.
Slow. Lazy. Feline.
That’s right, that smile said. He fucked me until I forgot my own name. Until I couldn’t walk straight. Until my voice gave out from screaming. And I loved every. Single. Second.
The girls looked away first.
The three of them moved through the courtyard like a formation—Phei in the center, Sierra on his left arm, Maddie draped against his right—and the student body parted before them like water before a ship’s prow.
Whispers erupted in their wake.
“Holy shit, he got even hotter?”
“How is that even possible? He was already—”
“Look at his shoulders. They weren’t like that yesterday.”
“His skin though… it’s literally glowing. I don’t have skin like that and I spend three hundred a month on facials.”
“Forget Marcus. Sorry but forget him. That’s the most beautiful man in Paradise now.”
“Was he always that tall or am I losing my mind?”
“His eyes are brighter. Like, actually brighter. Is that contacts?”
“Those aren’t contacts, Becca. We’ve been over this.”
“Maddie’s limping—”
“Oh my GOD she’s limping.”
“Looks like he broke her. He actually broke Maddie Whitmore.”
“I want to be broken like that.”
“Same. Add me to the list.”
“There’s a list?”
“There’s always been a list, sweetie. It’s very long now.”
They were halfway to the front building—a towering ten-story glass structure that caught the morning sun and threw it back in blinding fragments—when a figure appeared at the corner of the pathway.
Phei stopped.
Sierra and Maddie stopped with him.
And there, frozen at the junction where the side path met the main thoroughfare, stood Delilah Maxton.
She was a wreck.
A beautiful wreck, but a wreck nonetheless—the kind of beautiful that made you want to ruin her further, just to see how pretty the pieces would look scattered on silk sheets.
Her uniform was perfect—of course it was, she was still a Maxton, still had standards to maintain even while her world imploded—but everything else screamed barely-contained chaos.
Her chestnut hair was loose around her shoulders instead of styled, waves falling like she’d run her hands through it one too many times while contemplating the absolute disaster her hormones had become.
Her makeup was minimal, like she’d started applying it and given up halfway through—probably because her brain had short-circuited at the thought of facing him.
Her cognac-gold eyes were wide, vulnerable, shimmering with something that looked dangerously close to tears—tears that came from wanting something so badly it hurt, and fearing you’d never be allowed to have it.
