Chapter 264

Daphne

I open my eyes.

The first thing I see is Nima, curled on the floor next to the bed in her bunny form,a small, soft puff fur, her sides rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm of sleep.

The second thing I realize is the familiar, heavy weight of my own tail, the stretch of powerful limbs covered in short, dark fur. I’m in my panther form.

Instinct, older than thought, takes over. I lean my massive head down and drag my tongue roughly over the curve of her back in a slow, grooming stroke.

She trembles,a tiny, reflexive shiver but doesn’t startle awake. Her nose just twitches, and she sinks deeper into sleep, pressing subtly into the touch.

Not scared anymore?

With a conscious effort, I pull the panther shape back into myself. The world shifts perspective, shrinking slightly, the sharp scent-details of the room fading to human levels. I stretch, muscles protesting with a satisfying ache, and stand.

The room is dark, the only light a pale silver wash from the moon high outside the window. I look around.

It’s a disaster.

Claw marks score the wooden post of the bed.My gaze falls back on the bed itself, and a low groan escapes me. The sheets and blankets are a tangled, torn wreck, half-draped on the floor, half-twisted into impossible knots with suspicious looking wet patches everywhere.

Naked, I walk to the center of the room.

"System."

The world grinds to a halt. Color drains. In the monochrome stillness, the purple orb flickers into being.

I don’t bother with modesty. I pad to the ruined bed, grab a fistful of torn linen, and tug. It comes away with a sound like a sigh.

"What day is it?" I ask, my voice hoarse from disuse. My internal clock is shattered, lost in a feverish loop of need and satisfaction.

[Five days later.]

The robotic voice is inflectionless. Final.

The bedding slips from my suddenly numb fingers, pooling at my feet.

"What?" The word is flat, disbelieving.

[It has been five days since the onset of your mating cycle, Host.]

Five days.

A hundred and twenty hours lost to the heat.

I mean, I’m not complaining about having a healthy sex life. Far from it. But this? This borders on the... feral. The purely biological. Did we eat anything? Drink water? Actual water, I mean, not just... saliva, and other things.

A faint, involuntary smirk touches my lips despite myself. The memories flash, not as a coherent stream, but in visceral, overwhelming fragments—the scent of her skin, the sound of my name on her lips, the feeling of her claws scraping down my back.

We would stop, collapsing into a puddle of trembling limbs and shared breath, only for the heat to reignite, a low ember bursting back into a wildfire before we could even think. Again. And again.

Five days.

What are we, animals?

As if in response, my tail swings lazily behind me, brushing against my calf.

Right.

We are animals.

With a grunt, I go back to stripping the destroyed bedding, bundling the torn fabric into a heap. The practical task helps anchor me in the now, in the reality after the storm.

"Anything happen during the time?" I ask the air, my tone deliberately casual. A part of me expects the System to report on academy gossip, maybe a minor skirmish between noble cliques.

The response is immediate, projected in glowing violet text in the periphery of my vision.

[ HAREM BREAKDOWN PROGRESS: 74.79% ]

My hands freeze, tangled in shredded linen. The number hangs in the air, stark and monumental.

A jump like that doesn’t happen from passive drift. That’s structural collapse.

"What happened?" I ask, my voice low and utterly serious now, all traces of post-heat lethargy gone.

A screen flickers to life in the air before me, casting a pale glow on the wrecked room. I stand up straight, the ruined bedding forgotten at my feet.

"Just show me the useful parts," I command.

The system complies, splicing together key moments in a rapid, brutal montage. My mouth drops open as I watch.

Edith, had been busy. She’d sweet-talked, reasoned, and fear-mongered the other girls into a unified front against Lumiya.And Felix... Felix was still hesitating, even if his lovers said otherwise.

Does he even like her, or does he just like the idea of being fought over?

Then, the deadline. The foreign prince arrived—charming, eligible, immediate. The system showed them in the gardens, heads close together.

And our dear Male Lead finally felt the sting of scarcity. Jealousy, raw and possessive, overrode his indecision. He confronted her, asking for more time.

Her rejection was a work of art. She didn’t raise her voice. She simply looked at him with something colder than disappointmen and told him his time had run out. The meaning was clear, even if the words were prettier: Go fuck yourself.

In a stunningly dumb move, still reeling, he went to Lumiya. Seeking comfort, validation...the naked kind.

She refused him. Stood by her icy principles of no intimacy before marriage. In a fit of wounded pride and frustration, Felix snapped. He called it off. Right then and there.

For a second, I felt a flicker of respect for her. She stood her ground.Then, in a move of tragic, misguided desperation, she began to strip, saying she agreed.

But the moment had passed. The damage was done. He said it was too late, and walked out, leaving her half-undressed and utterly shattered in her doorway.

It was certainly prime TV, a soap opera.

And Felix, like a lost kitten, slunk back to Edith. Apologizing. Begging. And she, the strategist, forgave him. She took him in, offering the comfort Lumiya had denied.

"Skip. Absolutely no one wants to see that."

Wow.

The math is suddenly, beautifully simple.

Poppy: Out.

Lani: Out.

Lumiya: Effectively out.

That leaves two of the original five. The snake girl, Velesia? She’s recast herself as his sworn shield, not his lover. She doesn’t count.

Which means the active harem, the true harem that could produce those nineteen war-breeding heirs, has been reduced to one: Lira.

And Edith isn’t a harem member. This world is as good as cleared.She did my job. And she did it perfectly, if she’s anything like her past life I have just the congratulatory present for her.