My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 849: Monster in the Glass

The Monster, as the Ryujin Tiamat bloodline called her, had always revolved around Phei in one form or another. Even when oceans separated them. Even when years passed without contact or even when fucking reason should have killed whatever twisted, breathing, hungry thing lived inside her long ago. It remained. Quiet. Breathing. Hungry.

The eldest Tiamat princess — the strongest of her generation, a woman whose power had once held the entire Ryujin Tiamat household together by force of will alone — had fought this creature for two full days, unleashing everything she possessed.

And she had made Lucienne take one step backward. One. Because the Ryujin Tiamat Matriarch was coming, and even the Monster understood what that arrival meant.

One step. After two days. Against the second strongest Ryujin Tiamat alive.

And Phei’s power, measured against Lucienne’s, was a pond staring into an endless, lightless ocean.

And the worst part?

Phei genuinely believed she was not interested in him... which meant, given how Phei was, he was going to pursue her endlessly:

Yuzuki almost pitied him for that. Almost. Poor oblivious dragon, surrounded by girls who wanted to ride him and monsters who wanted to own him.

The winds shrieked louder around her, in denial or agreement, tearing through her hair, fluttering the lace beneath her jacket against her chest like a lover’s impatient fingers...

...Far below, Lucienne remained standing before the massive glass windows of the presidential suite, her figure illuminated by the fractured glow of Paradise beneath her feet. From this height she looked calm. Elegant. Untouchable;

A woman born above temptation itself, standing in her expensive glass cage with her palms pressed flat against the window and her breath fogging a small circle on the surface. fгeewebnovёl.com

Beautiful...

But Yuzuki knew better.

That woman down there was not a beautiful person hiding monstrous tendencies. She was a monster that had simply mastered the art of looking beautiful. The way a deep-sea predator masters bioluminescence — not to attract mates, but to lure prey close enough that escape becomes a mathematical impossibility.

A deeply unpleasant thought settled further into Yuzuki’s bones, cold and heavy and resistant to dismissal:

Lucienne had no idea she was being watched.

’Or perhaps—’

Yuzuki’s eyes narrowed, her carefree smile never faltering even as the wind howled like it was personally offended. freēwēbηovel.c૦m

’Perhaps she has known from the very beginning.’

After all, Yuzuki herself was a Sky Sovereign: A being powerful enough to reduce entire city block into history if ordered to do so. She could slice this hotel despite its staggering height in two strokes of her sword and bring the whole glittering obscenity down in a cascade of glass and screaming steel.

That was not an exaggeration; it was an insult to the comparison — measuring a being of her magnitude against architecture was beneath the exercise.

But Lucienne?

What exactly was Lucienne?

Because if even Yuzuki’s master — the eldest princess of the Tiamat bloodline herself, the strongest of her generation, the woman who had trained Yuzuki from when she was this young and who did not send her people into situations she believed they could not survive — could not defeat that woman...

Then what exactly was Yuzuki accomplishing here besides placing herself directly beneath the gaze of something ancient that chewed gods for breakfast and used their thrones as furniture?

’For the love of fuck.’

There was a very real possibility that she was playing hunter while standing in front of a creature that consumed hunters for amusement.

That the observation post she had chosen — this rooftop, this vantage, the carefully selected surveillance position at the summit of the tallest building on the island — was not a tactical advantage at all but simply a more scenic location from which to be eaten.

The realization should have terrified her.

Instead, it only made the night feel sharper and alive in a way danger always was.

The cold bit harder as the winds screamed louder. Yuzuki’s fingers itched toward her sword and she let them, curling loosely around the dark scabbard beside her hip, the tsukamaki rough against her palm, while she hummed a childish little tune about butterflies and bloodshed.

Then — suddenly —

Lucienne smiled.

Not broadly. Not enough for ordinary people to notice:

Just a small movement at the corner of her lips, visible only to eyes that should not, by any mortal standard, have been capable of reading a facial expression from this distance.

Yet the instant it appeared, something primal tightened violently inside Yuzuki’s chest like a cold fist closing around her sternum, her heartbeat slamming once and then going very still, her entire body locking into the specific frozen alertness of a predator that has just realized it is not the largest thing in the room.

Because that smile did not look accidental.

It looked knowing.

And somehow — somehow — that was worse than anything else. Worse than the power differential, and worse than the lightless ocean. Because a woman who smiled like that — a smile aimed at nothing, at no one, at the glass in front of her or at the sky above her or at the girl sitting on the rooftop who was supposed to be invisible — was a woman who had already accounted for every variable in the room and found the total amusing.

Far below, Lucienne stepped away from the towering glass window and disappeared deeper into the presidential suite to change clothes, moving with the unhurried grace like she was already certain the night ahead belonged to her.

As though she could already hear fate crawling toward her footsteps.

And perhaps she could.

Yuzuki sat on the edge of the world, legs dangling, wind screaming, sword at her hip, and watched the space where the Monster had been standing — the fading ghost of breath-fog on the glass the only evidence she had ever been there at all.

Her fingers stayed curled around the scabbard.

The night was young. The Monster was changing. And somewhere far below, a Cosmic Dragon was riding away in a two-million-dollar Rolls-Royce, surrounded by girls who adored him and oblivious — utterly, perfectly, almost sweetly oblivious — to the fact that something ancient and starving had already chosen him and was simply waiting, with the elegant sharpened patience of a predator who had learned, across centuries of practice, that the prey always came to her in the end.

Yuzuki exhaled, popping a piece of strawberry candy into her mouth as the winds howled their approval.

She was going to need a bigger sword.