Chapter 387: Begone, Thot.

She was the reason Phei had stopped trying to make the Maxtons love him.

Then the others came after her—Harold, Danton, Delilah.

Victoria

.

And now she was sitting next to him with her hand on his chest, her thick thigh pressed against his, her mouth close enough to his jaw that he could smell the rose-metal of her perfume mixed with the raw, wet scent of her cunt already soaking through the thong beneath that obscene skirt affected by his abilities already, and she was

flirting

with him.

He could overlook Delilah.

He could never overlook Victoria.

Victoria was the one girl Phei would rather die than be anything other than enemies with.

He hated her

guts

.

"You’re

shameless."

He said it out loud.

To

her

. Directly. Eyes forward, voice flat.

Victoria’s hand paused on his chest—fingers splayed, palm flat over his heartbeat, feeling it kick harder than it should have under her touch.

"What?"

"Shameless."

He repeated it slower. Let it sit. "You’re sitting here with your hand on me, with that voice, with that face you’re making—and you’re completely, utterly

shameless

about it."

Her dark eyes searched his. Looking for the joke. The flirtation. The playful pushback that boys always delivered when girls like her got too close too fast.

She didn’t find it.

"Phei—"

"Do you remember what you’ve fucking done to me for the past ten years?" His voice hadn’t risen. Hadn’t sharpened. It was conversational. Almost pleasant. "You did everything with that

exact smile

. The one you’re wearing right now."

Nastya’s hand had gone completely still on his knee. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. The green eyes beneath the hood had gone wide with the sudden understanding that she’d walked into something much older and much uglier than a flirtation.

"That was—" Victoria started. "Phei, I have done that the past two months ago—"

Something shifted in Victoria’s face. The seduction mask—the pretty smile, the bedroom eyes, the calculated warmth—cracked.

"Things have changed," she said. Her voice had lost its purr. Flatter now. Careful. "You’ve changed. Everything’s different now and I—"

"I’ve changed?"

For the first time, the temperature in his voice shifted—the

absolute zero

of a boy who’d heard this script before and recognised every beat of it.

"

No, Victoria.

I’ve changed. But

you

haven’t. You’re doing exactly what you’ve always done—finding whatever’s valuable in the room and deciding it’s yours. Except I used to be worthless to you. Garbage. Something you wiped off your shoe on the way to brunch."

He leaned in—close, closer than she’d been to him, close enough that she could see the flecks of violet in his irises and the frost forming at their edges. "

Now I’m worth something.

Now I’m the one everyone’s talking about.

So suddenly things have changed?

Suddenly you see me as

worthy

being in your space?"

Victoria’s hand was still on his chest. She hadn’t removed it. Hadn’t retreated. The Victoria stubbornness—that suicidal, magnificent, infuriating stubbornness that ran through every member of the Ryujin Tiamat family like rebar through concrete—kept her planted.

"You don’t know everything," she said quietly. "You don’t know why I—"

"I know enough."

"No, you don’t—"

"I know you’re one of the ones who made me want to kill myself."

Silence.

The words sat between them like a grenade with the pin pulled.

Just

fact

.

Delivered with the specific

emptiness

of someone who’d moved past the pain and arrived at the place on the other side where it was just...

information. Data.

Nastya’s hand left his knee entirely. She’d pulled it back like she’d touched something hot, pressing it against her own thigh, her face white beneath the hood.

Victoria didn’t move.

Her eyes stayed on his. But something behind them—something deep, something she’d been keeping in a locked room—

trembled.

"That was the old—"

"Don’t." His voice was quiet. Final. "Don’t you dare say the old me. Don’t you dare sit there with your hand on my heart and pretend the girl who once broke it is someone else. You are

exactly

who you were.

You’re just wearing a

shorter

skirt."

Victoria’s jaw tightened.

And she did the worst possible thing she could have done.

She didn’t leave.

Didn’t pull her hand back. Didn’t lower her eyes. Didn’t give him the satisfaction of retreat—because Victoria had never

retreated

from anything in her life and she wasn’t going to start now, not even when the boy she’d tortured was staring at her with eyes that were beginning to frost at the edges.

Instead, she leaned in.

Closer.

Her fingers pressed firmer against his chest.

Her chin tilted up. Defiant. Reckless.

That

maddening, beautiful, catastrophically

stupid courage that didn’t know when to bow.

"Then hate me,"

she whispered. "Hate me all you want. But I’m not leaving."

And that—

That was what broke it.

Not the memories. Not the old wounds. Not even the audacity of her being here, dressed like that, touching him like that.

It was the

refusal

.

The absolute, unrepentant refusal to

acknowledge

what she’d done. The dismissal of his pain as something that had happened to a different version of both of them. The way she could stand in the wreckage she’d built and decide—

decide

, like it was her choice, like his feelings were secondary to her pursuit—

that she wasn’t leaving.

She hadn’t changed.

She was still taking what she wanted and calling it courage.

"Begone, thot."

The words came out cold.

Not loud or explosive.

Cold—dark, absolute, pressure-crushing.

Victoria froze.

Her hand on his chest went rigid. Fingers splayed, unmoving, like she’d touched a live wire and couldn’t let go.

Nastya froze too.

The temperature in the immediate vicinity dropped by several degrees that had nothing to do with the club’s overworked air conditioning.

Frost kissed

the edges of nearby champagne flutes; condensation on glasses suddenly crystallized into delicate, spiderweb patterns.

The crimson light seemed to

dim

around them, as though the room itself recoiled from what had just been said.

And beyond them—close enough to hear, close enough that his raised voice had sliced through the bass like a blade through wet paper—his people had gone still.

Sierra. Maddie. Delilah. Maya. Emily. Amber.

All of them were staring.

The dance floor had become a frozen tableau: bodies mid-motion, hips locked, hands suspended, eyes wide and locked on the couch where the eldest Maxton daughter had just been told—calmly, factually, without heat or volume—to

begone, thot

.

Before Victoria could react—before her mouth could form the words already assembling behind those dark, calculating eyes—

Phei was standing.

Victoria’s hand slid from his chest as he rose. He didn’t look at either of them—and walked away.

[Ding!]

[New Mission!]

[Tame: Tame and Conquer Victoria Ma—]

Fuck you, System.

He killed the notification before it finished forming. The blue text shattered into pixels and dissolved like cheap fireworks, and Phei kept walking—jaw clenched, hands at his sides, the Cucklord Stole around his neck pulsing in agitation.

The crimson patterns shifted faster now, draconic designs writhing like living things, feeding on the fury radiating from their host in thick, invisible waves.

Five steps.

Six.

A hand caught his wrist.

Small. Firm. Holding on with a grip that didn’t match the delicate fingers delivering it.

Phei stopped.

Turned.

Slowly.

Victoria Maxton stood behind him—she’d moved fast, faster, launching from the couch the moment his back was turned. Her hood had fallen back, dark violet-black hair spilling free around her face like spilled ink. Her eyes were wide now. Too wide.

She

smiled.

It was a

good

smile. The Victoria special—sweet, disarming, the one she used when she wanted something and was deploying femininity like a loaded gun.

She tilted her head—

cute,

practiced—hair sliding over one shoulder, exposing the long line of her throat.

"I just wanted to tell you something." Her voice had shifted. Lighter. Softer. The aggression from the couch filed away and replaced with something

approaching vulnerability

. "And to thank you, actually. For the money I won tonight. I bet on you, and—"

"Let go of my hand.

Bitch

. Right. Now."

The crowd had thickened around them—people had migrated toward the confrontation the way moths migrate toward flame and the animal instinct that something was happening, something worth witnessing.

Twenty, thirty people now forming a loose ring of witnesses, phones already out, red recording lights blinking like tiny, hungry eyes.

Victoria didn’t let go.

Her fingers tightened on his wrist instead—the grip that said

I’m not done yet

and

you don’t get to dismiss me

and

do you know who I am

all compressed into

five slim

digits and a set of manicured nails digging in just enough to sting.

Sierra, Delilah, Maddie, Maya, Emily, Amber

—all of them were staring. Six girls who ran the gamut from ice queen to chaos demon to shadow operative, and not one of them knew what to do. Their eyes bounced between Phei and Victoria like spectators at a match where the rules had been thrown out and the referee had left the building.

Delilah was the most conflicted.

She could see it happening and it was

splitting

her down the centre—

two halves

of her pulling in opposite directions until the seam between them screamed.

Because the treatment Victoria was getting right now—the cold fury, the venom, the

bitch

thrown like a knife—

That was exactly what

Delilah had expected

when she’d called Phei to the fire pit lounge just a few days ago.

She’d called him carrying the weight of years of cruelty—all the things the Maxton family had done to him, all the ways she’d been complicit, all the silence that was its own violence. She’d expected

this.

Expected the

rage.

The

rejection.

The

begone

that would send her crawling back to the life she’d always known with nothing but the memory of what she’d been stupid enough to hope for.