My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 406: Instinctual Protectiveness
Chapter 406: Instinctual Protectiveness
The sentence hung there — for a while — as if either of them believed it would be temporary. As if the Montgomery and Whitmore patriarchs finding out their daughters were involved with the boy who’d just walked on air and possibly maimed three Legacy heirs in a nightclub was something that blew over.
Before Phei could speak, Maddie moved first.
She stepped close — close enough that Emily’s body pressed between them — and rose on her toes.
Her hands cupped his face and pulled him down into a fierce, desperate kiss. Deep, hungry, tasting of fear and relief and something fiercer. She kissed him like she might never see him again.
Like she was trying to leave something behind in his mouth — a promise, a claim, proof that she’d been here and chosen this and would choose it again even knowing what was coming.
She tasted like fear of missing him for the next few days.
Sierra came next — smaller, softer, but no less urgent. She pressed her lips to his the moment Maddie pulled away, fingers curling into his shirt, body trembling against his. Her kiss was different from Maddie’s — less hunger, more grief.
The kiss of a girl saying goodbye to something she wasn’t sure she’d get back.
Then they both stepped back.
No words.
They turned and walked off — heels clicking fast down the corridor, disappearing into the violet-lit dark.
The sound echoed after them — click click click click — getting smaller, getting farther, until it was gone and Phei was standing in an empty hallway holding a sleeping girl and two goodbye kisses still wet on his mouth.
Eira watched them go.
Her tiny crystalline face tilted, eyes tracking the retreating silhouettes. Something shifted in her ancient expression — not pity, not fondness. Recognition. She’d watched creatures love her Master before, in other forms, in other ages.
The desperation was always the same. The running was always the same.
They’ll come back, she thought. They always come back to this dragon.
Whether the dragon wanted them to or not.
And this one treated them like his anchors.
Then footsteps — hurried, uneven — approached from the main entrance.
David staggered into view first — bloodied, bandaged roughly with what looked like a torn dress shirt wrapped around his head, supported by Landon and Brian.
His one functional eye found Phei immediately, then moved to Emily in his arms.
The sound he made was small. Broken. Not a word — just a wet exhale that carried the weight of guilt he’d probably never put down.
Behind them rushed the rest of the PheiCrush Simps — Lydia at the front, eyes wide and wet, the rest fanning out behind her like a flock that had lost its shepherd and found it again.
They saw Emily.
The reaction rippled through them like a current. Hands flew to mouths. Eyes spilled over. One girl at the back — couldn’t have been older than sixteen (Catrina)— turned away and pressed her forehead against the wall, shoulders shaking in relief (David had told them but they could see now Emily was okay).
Their president. Their organiser. The girl who’d held them together, who’d built the infrastructure, who’d stayed up texting logistics at midnight and showed up first to every event. She was lying in Phei’s arms with a face that was calm like her soul was unaware what she’d gone through.
Lydia lunged forward instinctively, arms out to take Emily.
Brian caught her wrist — gentle but firm.
“Wait,” he said quietly.
Lydia froze.
She looked up at Phei.
His amethyst eyes were calm, but the look in them was unmistakable: no one was touching Emily right now.
Not even them.
Brian met Phei’s gaze for half a second, then nodded. The big man’s jaw was set in a way that had nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with the fact that he’d carried David’s broken body from the two boy’s who’d delivered him to them and was now looking at Emily and was doing the math on exactly how inadequate he’d once felt about both.
Landon stood rigid beside David. His eyes hadn’t left Emily. He was doing that thing — that specific, terrible thing — where a person looks at invisible damage and mentally reconstructs what had to happen to cause it.
Each one a sentence in a story he could read and wished he couldn’t.
His hands were shaking.
Not with fear. With the specific, useless fury of a boy who’d grown up next door to the girl in Phei’s arms, who’d known her since they were six years old, whose families ate dinner together on Sundays — and who hadn’t been there.
“Her place,” Phei said, voice low. “Do you know where she lives?”
Landon stepped forward immediately. “Yeah. Of course. Our families are close — tight. We grew up like siblings. Follow me?”
His voice cracked on siblings. He swallowed it. Kept moving.
Brian glanced at the others, then back to Phei.
“Let’s go.”
The group moved as one — silent, urgent — toward the lower floors and the private entrance. The PheiCrush Simps fell in around them without being told, forming a loose perimeter that had nothing to do with fan club protocol and everything to do with the primitive instinct to protect the wounded.
David limped at the rear, Landon half-carrying him, refusing to slow down despite the blood still seeping through his bandage.
His one open eye stayed locked on Emily’s sleeping form the entire time.
He’d told Phei to save her.
Phei had saved her.
The debt of that — the enormity of what it meant that David had been kneeling in his own blood on that marble table and his only words had been save Emily, please — would reshape something between them that neither of them had words for yet.
Phei carried Emily through the violet-lit halls, her breathing soft against his chest, his hand still resting protectively on the back of her head.
He wasn’t done.
Not with the three legacies.
Not with their families.
Not with anyone who thought they could take what was his.
The night was far from over.
