Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem - Chapter 1653 Cruel Math

“It’s time we visit your father.”

Lucille’s eyes went bright.

The exhaustion of a rite that had just put her through extreme agony left her body in a single breath, and what replaced it was a smile that had been waiting a very long time. Her back straightened and her chin lifted, and the caramel-haired woman asked one word with her whole chest behind it.

“Really?”

Quinlan’s silence was all the answer she received, but that was all the confirmation she needed for her heart to begin beating a thousand times a second.

On the moss behind them, heads lifted through the agony.

“You’re LEAVING?!” Kitsara’s voice cracked off the greenery at a pitch that should not have been achievable from a woman mid-restructuring. Her three tails were rigid with indignation. “While we’re DYING here?!”

“Taking the first girl who finished on a date,” Sera complained from beneath her mother.

“Hmph!! Hmph!!!” A certain Hexwitch refused to even put her complaints into proper words.

Lucille turned toward the chorus of suffering and complaints with the sweetest smile her face had ever produced, raised two fingers in a cute V at the line of writhing women, and… “I wish you the absolute best of luck with the remainder of your beautiful evening, girls! Lucille, out!”

Then, while being cursed out of this very life through multiple delicate lips, she latched onto Quinlan’s armored bicep with both hands, pressed her cheek against the dark metal, and let her man lead.

Quinlan’s free hand rose, and the air ahead of them split along a vertical seam.

[Warp Gate] opened and Jasmine stepped through it.

She looked like she had been in the middle of something. Ink at her fingertips, a pen tucked behind one ear, her brunette ponytail pulled into the working knot she wore during twenty-four-hour administrative days. A ledger was tucked under one arm, and she transferred it to the other the moment she cleared the seam, because the arm closest to Quinlan had a more important job.

She latched onto his free side in a single practiced motion, rose onto her toes, and kissed him.

It was brief and firm and warm. Her blue eyes found his when she settled back down, studied the black armor across his chest and the cold in his gaze, and accepted both without a blink.

“I’m sorry.”

She said it simply, without preamble.

“I should’ve been here with the girls…” Her fingers tightened on his arm. “But if I’m unconscious for weeks or months, the settlements stall at best. At worst… That’s why I asked you to let me sit this one out.”

Quinlan’s arm tightened around her. He offered no words and no reassurance, just the pressure of his bicep drawing her half a step closer, her hip settling against his side.

It was enough.

The cruel math behind that silence was simple: his women were extraordinary fighters who had walked through fires most veterans twice their strength would have broken under. Loyal, fearless, and each capable of holding a line alone. But none of them were decisive variables in what was coming.

Quinlan’s soul army numbered in the hundreds. An experienced Rank 5 Elite Soul alone outstripped most of the women currently grinding through the rite, and such souls were one among many. The fight that was approaching required power at a scale his women could not yet reach.

That was why they had all agreed. The risk was real: weeks, potentially months, unable to fight while the restructuring carved the Bloodfather’s mark through their bodies. But the math was honest. In their current form, they were trusted and beloved by Quinlan, but they could not tip the balance. The ritual offered the chance to actually matter, and every woman on that moss had chosen the gamble with her eyes open, knowing the war would not wait for them.

For Jasmine, the equation ran opposite. Her value was not on the battlefield. Her value was in the budding little nation that needed running while the war happened, and losing her to months of unconsciousness or crippling agony – they had no clue how long the ritual might take her out of commission – would cost more than any power the rite could grant. The settlements needed their governor. And it wasn’t like she was sidelined forever; he could bring her into the midst when the time was right.

Same was true for Felicity. And Black Fang… If she was still breathing.

Jasmine’s chin was still tilted up toward him when her expression shifted.

She had been in girlfriend mode. The tiptoe kiss, the warm press of her hip against his armor, the apology she delivered so smoothly it barely qualified as one. But the man whose arm she was holding had not spoken a word since she arrived. The air around him carried an intent she could feel against her skin, cold and enormous, and the eyes looking down at her held nothing playful in them.

Her lover was going to war.

The chirp left her voice. Her blue eyes steadied, and the Tyrant of Commerce looked up at the Primordial Villain she had chosen to build an empire for.

“Whatever you need of me,” Jasmine whispered, “I’ll see it done, my love.”

Quinlan’s gaze held hers for a beat.

Then his free hand rose.

The air ahead of the three of them split along a new seam, and [Warp Gate] bloomed wide enough for all of them abreast.

Quinlan Elysiar, flanked by two women he loved, stepped through.

…

Alastair Thalion Greenvale was unbuckling his chest plate when he said it.

“Any day now.”

His wife’s reflection appeared in the standing mirror across their chamber, and even through polished glass, her skepticism hit like a physical thing. Ophira stood at her vanity with her back to him, pulling pins from her hair one at a time with the methodical patience she brought to everything she touched.

“You’ve been saying that for three months now, husband.”

“Because it’s been true for three months.” The buckle came loose and the plate followed. Alastair set it on the armor stand beside the bed, rolled both shoulders, groaned at the relief, and continued with absolute confidence. “The Consortium rats are cornered. Their supply lines are collapsing. Their morale is in the gutter. I have them exactly where I want them, and when the last of their little tunnels caves in, we’ll hear the screaming from here.”

Ophira pulled the last pin free. Her dark hair fell across her shoulders in a wave she did not bother arranging.

“Then why aren’t they dead yet?”

Alastair’s teeth ground once. He sat on the edge of the bed and began unlacing his boots, each tug sharper than the last.

“Setbacks,” he said. “That weird fucker and his little entourage have been throwing wrenches into my plans. And the rats themselves prepared much better than I gave them credit for.” The first boot hit the floor. “But it’ll be over soon. Trust me.”

Ophira did not turn from the mirror. Her brush found her hair and began its nightly descent, long and unhurried.

“It better be.”

The brush paused at the bottom of a stroke.

“We cannot afford to let that slit-eyed cunt take our ancestral lands. I will not have it, Alastair.”

Alastair’s second boot hit the floor harder than the first, and the Duke of Greenvale straightened with the kind of righteous conviction that had served his bloodline for eleven generations.

“Never,” he said. “Not while I breathe.”

The lamp at the bedside went dark. The chamber fell into the blue-silver wash of moonlight through tall windows. Ophira settled beneath the sheets on her side with her back to him. Alastair dropped onto his pillow with a long boneless sigh.

Silence filled the chamber.

Then a knock came at the door.

Ophira’s eyes, which had been drifting closed, snapped open in the dark.

“Not again!” she breathed. The irritation in her voice was specific and bone-deep.

Alastair was already propping himself up on one elbow. His mouth softened and his brow eased. The Duke was already gone before the door opened.

“Come in!” he called toward the door, warm and immediate.

The handle turned. Two guards appeared in the crack, professional and brief.

“My Lord. The young ladies wish to speak with you.”

Alastair waved them off before the sentence finished landing, and the door opened wider to let his girls through.