My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 848: Monster’s Growth

Like darkness staring at a shadow and convincing itself it alone understood what it meant to be endless and absolute, far above — far, far above the countless floors where Lucienne stood watching Phei disappear into the waiting Rolls-Royce — Yuzuki watched Lucienne in return.

With the stillness of something born to hunt.

The winds around her screamed without pause, cold and razor-thin violent enough to strip ordinary flesh open in seconds to peel skin from muscle and muscle from bone and scatter whatever remained into the upper atmosphere like crimson confetti at a funeral nobody had the decency to cancel.

Yet those same murderous gusts tore through her dark hair and whipped through the loose sleeves of her cropped jacket with playful affection, invisible currents twisting around her lithe limbs like living blades circling their beloved master — touching everything, cutting nothing, because the wind had long since learned that it was not permitted to harm a single silken strand of the girl who commanded it. freёweɓnovel.com

Far below, the city glowed like a fragile heaven begging to be broken, its lights reflecting off a vast, moon-kissed lake that stretched like a silver mirror of forgotten gods — serene on the surface, yet deep enough to swallow empires and keep their secrets.

The lake’s waters shimmered with poetic melancholy, rippling gently as if whispering lullabies to the young girl who watched beyond and above it, while the sky above hung dark enough to swallow prayers whole and still hunger for more.

And somewhere between both, legs dangling carelessly over the edge of a structure that towered above Paradise itself, sat Yuzuki — sinfully, devastatingly hot in her effortless nonchalance.

Her short leather skirt fluttered teasingly against smooth, bare thighs that could end worlds with a thought, cropped jacket barely containing the generous, perfect curve of her chest, dark hair dancing wildly in the killing winds as if the storm itself was flirting shamelessly with her.

Her posture was lazy to the point of mockery, weight back on her palms, head tilted with that carefree smile — the kind of innocent, almost childlike pout mixed with a wink that made the apocalypse look like a minor inconvenience she might deal with later if she felt like it, perhaps after finishing her strawberry milk and a nap.

Watching.

Always watching. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

She had watched Phei too, naturally. Everyone did. Men admired to be like him while women desired him. Monsters circled him and even the oldest bloodlines in existence had begun shifting toward him the way dying stars collapsed toward a gravity they no longer possessed the strength to resist.

The Cosmic Dragon’s pull was a force of nature now, not a rumour.

But unlike the others, Yuzuki’s attention had never truly belonged to him.

It belonged to Lucienne.

That had been the assignment from the very beginning. The moment word of Lucienne’s arrival reached the Ryujin Tiamat bloodline’s ears — the Melissa had confirmed that the woman had not even only merely appeared in Paradise but had purchased permanent residency on Phei’s own floor at Sovereign Tower and had settled into Unit 98C with the unhurried patience of a predator building a nest beside a watering hole — Melissa had informed her elder sister almost immediately.

The eldest Tiamat princess never came personally.

She simply sent Yuzuki.

At first, merely to observe. To sit at the periphery of the Monster’s awareness and catalogue her movements, her patterns, her habits — the granular intelligence-gathering that Yuzuki had been trained for since she was young and the princess had looked at her across a training hall and said, with the calm flat certainty oas if issuing a permanent assignment: this one is mine.

Now?

Now Yuzuki was no longer certain whether she had been sent to observe the woman or survive her.

Because Lucienne — gods.

Yuzuki nearly laughed every time she remembered the woman pretending disinterest. That immaculate performance in Sovereign Tower’s hallways, in the gym, in every carefully curated encounter with Phei — the detached glances, the controlled tone, the calculated absence after he’d asked her out, the entire elaborate architecture like she wanted the world to believe she was unmoved; at that time, Yuzuki had just started observing Lucienne.

Yuzuki’s lips curved into a lazy beautiful smile as another lethal gust howled past her, ruffling her hair like a lover’s fingers. The winds screamed their dark lullaby.

The moonlit lake below shimmered with poetic indifference. And the carefree girl perched on the edge of the world kept watching — nonchalant, devastating, and more terrifying than the storm she commanded, hummed a childish tune under her breath as if the void itself was just another playground swing.

’Who exactly is she trying to deceive with that?’

Certainly not monsters.

And Lucienne was surrounded by monsters.

It was all too deliberate. Too polished. Too perfectly calibrated; a woman holding a starving beast by the throat and calling the trembling in her hands composure.

Lucienne was not detached from Phei, she had never been detached from Phei.

She had been circling him since before he knew her name — since he was born, if the Tiamat bloodline’s intelligence was accurate, and it always was — and the distance she maintained was not indifference but patience:

The slow, controlled orbit; Lucienne was a predator who preferred her prey to walk willingly into her grasp rather than be chased into it.

That was what made her terrifying.

Back then — years ago, before Phei had become what he was becoming, before the Legacy world had turned its collective attention toward a boy who shouldn’t have mattered — Lucienne’s obsession had made her reckless.

Reckless enough to kidnap a boy prodigy she could not let go of; To take him and have him as her own...

...And act on the hunger with the raw, uncontrolled ferocity of something ancient that had seen what it wanted and simply reached out and grabbed it.

Now?

’It feels as if she has matured in her methods?’

And maturity, Yuzuki realized with something that sat halfway between professional admiration and genuine dread, had only sharpened Lucienne’s insanity into something elegantly lethal.

’Patience, subtlety and control.’

Lucienne no longer lunged for what she wanted; she instead arranged the world around it until the thing she wanted came to her on its own feet, believing it had made the choice freely.