Phei’s voice was low, but everyone heard it.

"You have been mine since the night I took your first kisses," he said. "Since the morning after, when I knew I would not let you drift away from me. Stop standing outside a door that has been open for you for a long time."

Catrina stared at him.

Valentina smiled first, warm and proud. Sierra followed, eyes soft. Patricia lifted her glass slightly in quiet acknowledgment. Maddie leaned forward with a grin finally returning.

"Welcome to the disaster, Catrina."

Noor smiled gently. "It is very loud here."

Maddie added, dryly, "And apparently emotionally violent."

Valentina reached across and squeezed Catrina’s hand. "But you will not be alone in it."

The table’s warmth shifted.

A welcoming gesture had not been planned formally but Phei’s women did not need a script.

One by one, through glances, teasing, touch, smiles and small words, they welcomed Catrina, Noor and Soraya into the family’s strange and dangerous center.

Maya, because she was Maya, took it a little too seriously.

"We should perhaps create a proper welcoming tradition," she said. "Not something too formal, because then it might become uncomfortable, but not something too casual either, because casual things sometimes fail to communicate sincerity, and sincerity is important when entering a shared emotional structure, especially one with many women and one man who seems to require careful management or he might forget to eat, sleep, or avoid political disasters—"

Maddie placed a piece of fruit against Maya’s lips.

Maya blinked.

"Eat," Maddie said. "Tradition later."

Maya accepted the fruit with wounded dignity.

The table laughed.

Victoria looked down during that warmth.

Her glass sat near her hand, untouched. Her expression remained elegant, controlled, almost cold, but inside her something had twisted. She was part of this family. She knew that. Blood tied her to Phei. History tied her to him. Pain tied her to him.

She looked at the bottle wine she had given him that sat on the shelf where he had placed it, visible from where she sat, its presence both promise and accusation. He had not thrown it away but kept it there, as if he could not yet drink it and could not yet decide what to do with what remained between them.

For a while, Victoria had feared that meant rejection.

Now she was no longer so sure.

Nastya’s hand formed a fist beneath the table.

Her time was coming soon too. She knew it. Victoria knew it:

Their plan depended on Nastya moving first, opening the path, softening what Victoria herself had frozen too deeply to approach. Nastya’s success meant more than a date.

It meant the first true movement toward their ultimate plan.

And Victoria, for all her pride, could be patient when patience held the shape of a promising future.

Lunch eventually loosened into noise.

Then, immediately after the plates were cleared, Sierra’s hunger for Phei became impossible to ignore.

It was not crude. Sierra was rarely crude. It was worse than that.

She simply looked at him with that soft, luminous intensity that made the air around them feel too warm, and Phei, being as hungry as he was understood; she had basically saved him too.

Maddie saw it and laughed. Valentina shook her head while Patricia muttered something about poor scheduling.

Sienna, who had honored lunch with her presence and sat through the entire emotional circus like a goddess trapped at a family function, closed her eyes in helpless disdain.

"Teenage bullshit," she murmured.

Maddie coughed into her napkin.

Phei took Sierra’s hand and let her pull him away toward the bedroom while the room filled with laughter, teasing and several shameless comments from women who had all apparently decided privacy was an optional theory. The door closed behind them, mercifully ending the public portion of the matter.

What happened beyond it remained private, warm, tender and entirely their own, because even narration deserves to know when to stop staring like a gossip aunt in expensive shoes.

Sierra’s soft body pressed against him with quiet, deliberate hunger, her full breasts warm against his chest, her lips parting for deeper, slower kisses that carried the same soft, luminous intensity she had given him at the table. Phei’s hands moved over her with unhurried hungry care — tracing the curve of her waist, the soft swell of her hips, the warm weight of her breasts — teaching her body again how thoroughly it belonged to him while the rest of the house continued laughing beyond the walls.

When Phei returned later, his hair was slightly messier and Sierra looked satisfied enough to make Maddie whistle.

Sienna shook her head once, slow and judgmental.

Patricia lasted only a few minutes before catching him by the wrist.

"My turn for goodbye," she said.

"I have not left yet."

"Exactly. This is efficient."

Phei blinked. "You people plan emotionally like military commanders."

He wasn’t really complaining; he was barely satisfied with Sierra alone.

Patricia smiled. "I teach chemistry. We respect reactions."

That earned her laughter, but she still drew him away for her own quiet moment.

By the time he came back into the living room, afternoon had deepened.

The cool afternoon had become a richer light, sliding across the glass walls and warming the room in amber strips. The table had been cleared. Some of the women had drifted into smaller conversations. Others lounged on couches, their voices softer now, the earlier lunch energy settling into something lazier but no less alive.

That was when Yuki returned from her parents.

She entered quietly, but Phei saw her at once.

His face softened, and he crossed the room before she could even finish greeting the others.

Yuki barely had time to lift her gaze before he gathered her into a hug.

She stiffened for only a breath, then folded into him, her fingers gripping the back of his shirt. Whatever had happened with her parents remained behind her eyes, but Phei did not ask in front of everyone.

He simply held her long enough that her shoulders lowered.

"You are back," he murmured.

"Yes," Yuki said softly.

"Good."

Her eyes warmed.

He kissed her forehead, then let her go only because he had to; she shivered feeling his lips soft against her skin, his hands resting lightly at the gentle curve of her waist.

After that, he began saying goodbye to his women.

Not hurriedly.

Phei had learned, through pain and repeated ambushes, that leaving without proper attention was how men invited tragedy, sulking, vengeance and Maddie-level innovations in punishment.

So he moved through them carefully, kissing Sierra first, then Maddie, who caught the back of his neck and made the goodbye last longer than necessary because of course she did. Valentina received a deep, warm kiss and a warning not to overtrain anyone while he was gone.

Patricia got a final kiss that made her smile into his mouth.

Maya held his hand for a second longer before letting him go.

Noor and Soraya received softer kisses, both still slightly shy despite the welcome lunch. Catrina flushed beautifully when he kissed her again, this time without ceremony, as if to make sure the message had settled properly.

Each goodbye carried its own quiet weight.

Maddie’s kiss was hungry and playful, her full breasts pressing against him as she held him longer than necessary, her soft tongue brushing his with deliberate, teasing heat. Valentina’s was slower, more mature, her warm, full body leaning into his with the quiet confidence of a woman who already knew exactly how thoroughly he could ruin her.

Catrina’s second kiss was softer still, but the way her soft body melted against him, the quiet, needy sound she made when his tongue brushed hers, told him the earlier doubt had finally begun to crack. L

Nastya watched.

Victoria watched harder.

Phei felt both gazes, his eyes met Nastya’s for a single, charged second. The quiet heat in her gaze, the soft, deliberate way her lips parted, the faint flush along her neck — all of it promised that her time was coming soon, and that when it did, the soft, careful restraint she currently wore would not last.

Victoria’s colder, more complicated stare carried its own darker weight.

The history between them still lived in the air and the quiet knowledge that one day he would finally take what remained unfinished between them settled low and patient in his chest.

The afternoon light continued to slide across the glass walls, painting the room in warm amber.

The women moved around him in soft conversation and quieter glances, their bodies, their smiles, their lingering touches all carrying the same quiet, dangerous truth: every one of them was already his in ways the rest of the world would never fully understand.

And Phei, standing at the center of that soft complicated circle, felt the familiar, dark satisfaction of a man who had already claimed far more than he had ever intended... and intended to claim still more.