Phei woke to the afternoon sun knifing through the curtains, thin blades of gold slicing the dim room into sharp, contrasting halves.
For a long moment he lay still, suspended in the cottony aftermath of sleep so deep it felt like dying and being born again. His mind floated in a pleasant haze, blank and weightless—until memory struck, fist-first, to the sternum.
The library. Melissa. Five hours of raw, merciless intensity. The system sparking inside his skull. Dragon's Rod. Blue screens. Numbers. Power.
Holy Christ. It had actually happened.
He braced for ruin—muscles shredded, joints ground to sand, the price of a body untrained for such violence.
Instead, he felt… rested. Not invincible—not yet—but undeniably, quietly better than any man had a right to feel after zero sleep and a marathon of destruction in bed.
Strength 65. Endurance 65. Small numbers on paper, but a low, steady current of them hummed beneath his skin.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stopped dead in the closet mirror.
The change was subtle, almost cruel in its understatement. No Hollywood glow-up, no chiseled jawline etched overnight. Yet the hollow in his cheeks had filled just enough to erase years of starvation. The bruise-colored rings beneath his eyes had faded to faint smudges. His skin carried warmth instead of pallor. Shoulders that once folded inward like broken wings now sat square, as if an invisible hand had coaxed his spine upright while he slept.
And his eyes.
He leaned closer, inspecting them like a man discovering a loaded gun in his own hand. There was weight there now, something older, harder, edged with patience and hunger alike. Predator's calm.
Charisma 60. From invisible to merely forgettable—a gulf crossed in the span of a night.
He peeled off yesterday's shirt, stiff with dried sweat and her scent. His torso was still narrow, still underfed, but the lines of muscle had sharpened overnight, as if a patient sculptor had traced careful passes while he dreamed. Shoulders fractionally broader. Chest no longer sinking between the ribs. Not strong. Simply… no longer frail.
"Huh," he muttered, voice rough. "So that's five points."
The phone on the nightstand glowed 2:17 p.m. in stark, cold numerals.
Seventeen missed calls. Thirty-two texts.
Melissa (7:43 a.m.): You're sick today. I called the school. Stay in your room.
Melissa (11:26 a.m.): Harold asked after you. Stomach bug, I said. He bought it.
Melissa (1:54 p.m.): Awake yet?
Nothing from Harold. Nothing from the kids. Ashford Elite kept them caged until four. Across town, Danton and his sisters were doubtless sharpening their claws on someone else's life.
Harold—poor, blind Harold—was at the office, earning the coin that kept a roof over the head of the wife who'd spent half the night impaled on his nephew's cock.
Phei's smile had no warmth in it.
He walked to the bathroom, rolling the ache from his shoulders like kneading a stubborn knot from stone.
"System," he said, voice bouncing off the cracked tile, low and measured. "No reward for cucking my uncle? That feels like the kind of milestone that ought to come with a prize."
He twisted the shower faucet. Water thundered, the first hiss of steam snaking up the mirror like a living thing.
[ANALYZING REQUEST…]
[CUCKOLDUS MAXIMUS ACHIEVEMENT RECOGNIZED.]
[HOWEVER: Cucking rewards remain locked until the MARKING RITUAL is performed.]
[Young Dragon, your first branded female cements the foundation of your harem. Only after that cornerstone is laid do the spoils of stolen beds begin to flow.]
[REQUIREMENT: Fully tame and Mark a woman; body, mind, soul. Permanent submission required.]
Phei spat mint foam into the sink and watched it spiral and fade, the swirl a small, inconsequential surrender to the mundane.
So. A brand first, then the bonuses.
It didn't have to be Melissa. Any woman would do.
But Melissa was already broken open, trembling and panting for more. She carried the memory of him in every bruised inch of her body. Why hunt when the prey had already stumbled into the trap and begged to stay?
Only one problem.
This was Melissa.
The architect of his childhood misery. The woman who had looked through him for ten years as though he were furniture that occasionally bled. The aunt who had perfected the art of casual cruelty long before her children had learned to wield it.
Did he want her bound to him forever? A living trophy, wearing his mark until death?
The sex had been revelation. The dominance even better. Turning the whip hand that once flayed him into a hand that clawed at her back, begging for more; there was poetry in that, subtle and cruel, perfect in its symmetry.
But forever was a very long time.
Steam filled the tiny room, curling and folding over itself, fogging the glass until his reflection vanished. Phei stepped under the scalding water and let it hammer at him, burning the question from his mind, at least for now.
He let the water cascade over him, pounding his shoulders, hot enough to sting, precise enough to focus every nerve into alertness.
The system had been explicit: the Mark required mutual consent. No coercion, no trickery; both hearts had to reach for the brand at the same moment. He could not carve it into her skin against her will, and she could not snatch it from him.
Which meant he could tame her thoroughly—bind her body, her pleasure, her very breath to the Dragon—without ever locking her into the harem.
A loophole wide enough to keep the future unwritten.
Yes. That felt sane.
He washed with quick, brutal efficiency: soap dragged across skin like sandpaper, shampoo raked through hair with meticulous violence, fingers scrubbing the salt crust of her from his groin and thighs.
Steam rolled off him in thick, furious coils, as if the bathroom itself exhaled in awe. He wiped a clear streak across the fogged mirror—and froze.
His cock hung between his legs like a weapon forged for gods and monsters, even soft a thing of quiet terror.
It wasn't just big anymore. It was architecture.
Heavy, even at rest, it rested against his thigh like a sleeping war-dragon: thick, ridged, the skin burnished bronze shot through with darker, angry veins that forked and braided like lightning frozen mid-strike.
The weight of it pulled at his groin with every heartbeat, a slow, deliberate pendulum reminding him what he carried now.
The head flared wide and brutal, hooded still by a sleeve of silken foreskin that clung like it knew its privilege could be revoked at any moment. Beneath, his balls had drawn up full and high, two swollen, hairless stones packed tight with days of withheld seed, aching with a pressure that felt almost sacred.
When he shifted his weight, the whole mass swayed with lazy menace, brushing the inside of the robe and leaving a cool streak of precome on the silk. Another bead welled at the slit fat, perfect, trembling then broke free, sliding down the underside in a single silver thread that caught the light like molten metal.
He watched it fall, transfixed.
The thing looked carved for conquest: obscene in its calm, patient as a predator that already knew the outcome. Every pulse beneath the skin was a promise. Every subtle throb said, I have ruined queens and will ruin more. I have split open marriages and will split open worlds.
And still it grew, unhurried, thickening against his thigh as if it had all millennium to finish waking. The foreskin peeled itself back another fraction of an inch, baring more of that murderous plum crown, glossy now, flushed so dark it bordered on black at the rim. A second bead formed, larger, heavier, trembling on the edge of release.
Phei exhaled through his teeth, a slow hiss that tasted of smoke and restraint.
Easy, he told it again, voice rough.
The dragon only listened when it felt like it.
"I daresay," he whispered, half-laughing in reverence, "I now possess the single most beautiful, terrifying prick on earth."
It stirred at the praise, thickening with lazy arrogance. Foreskin glided back to bare a fat, violet head that gleamed like wet amethyst. Heat flared low in his belly, sudden, greedy, claiming every nerve.
Easy, Phei told it—and himself. First, the hunt.
He dried with methodical roughness, shrugged into the dark-blue robe—the only luxury he owned—and left it hanging open, belt tied just enough to hint at propriety without denying appetite. Damp hair fell across his brow. The mirror returned a stranger: collarbones sharp beneath bronze skin, eyes older than his years, the robe tented by a half-hard monster that seemed poised to burst its seams.
For the first time in his life, Phei Maxton looked like trouble worth having.
"Not bad," he said to the glass, and meant it.
He left the steamy bathroom behind, crossing the small bedroom that had never truly been his, and descended the broad staircase into the mansion's expectant hush.
Afternoon sunlight poured through towering windows, thick and molten, turning drifting dust motes into lazy constellations. Somewhere, far off, the air-conditioning exhaled like a dozing monster disturbed mid-nap. The house felt hollowed, patient, waiting for him to wake it.
Only Melissa would be here.