Chapter 552: Secrets of His Family? Rune Natsuki

Phei walked into the restaurant wondering why the hell she had to come this far.

The place sat practically inside the airport—one of those

ultra-exclusive

private booth restaurants built for people too important to eat at terminals and too busy to eat anywhere else.

Had Rune Natsuki chosen it because when she was finished with her business and wanted to depart immediately? Fine, okay.

But she could have met him right after the Maxton meeting. In the car. In a parking lot. On the side of the road.

Anywhere that didn’t require a

thirty-minute

drive across Paradise.

Women and being dramatic. Name a more iconic duo.

Still, she was so goddamn hot and beautiful that he let the minor inconvenience slide. Plus, it was a private booth. Privacy meant

opportunity.

Whatever scheme he’d cooked up for cucking his grandmother could definitely use a quiet room with no witnesses and—

"Little Phei!"

Okay, what the fuck.

He cursed inside so hard his brain rattled

. Where did she go? The bad girl he’d just met.

The powerful one. The intimidating dark-suited woman who had made Harold nearly piss his pants and the grandfather bow like a scolded schoolboy.

Where the fuck did that woman disappear to and who the hell was this smiling, warm-faced,

eyes-lit-up

creature

beaming at me

from the booth like I am a puppy she hasn’t seen in years?

Little Phei?

Is she like her mother too now?

The Natsuki matriarch was theone who called him that and bullied him with cheek-pinching.

Is this genetic? Was there a Natsuki

bloodline trait

that turned terrifying women into

cooing

aunties the moment they see my face?

Phei finished his internal meltdown as he reached the booth and stared at her with naked confusion, his carefully planned evil scheme crumbling in real time.

Just a second. Let’s figure out this mystery first before we

cuck

Grandma, alright mate?

he told his cock, which was already excited at her smile and had clearly not received the memo that the vibe had shifted from

"seduction target"

to

"big sister reunion."

His cock didn’t care about vibes. His cock cared about the halter neck, the arterial lips, and the way the booth light caught her jawline. His cock was an

idiot.

But honest!

He sat opposite her.

"Well,"

he said, leaning back, "I didn’t expect some sweet powerful beauty to be all heads over heels for me like I’m her

little brother

she missed. Where’d the terrifying woman from an hour ago go? The one who made a grown man cough blood? Did you leave her in the car?"

While he ranted—in a single breath, no pauses, the verbal equivalent of a man trying to process several conflicting realities at once—she propped her elbows on the table, rested her face in her palms, and watched him with pure amusement.

Just watched.

Smiling.

It was disturbing. Not the smile of a woman attracted to a boy whose

beauty

could put

gods

to shame. He knew that smile. He’d been getting so many smiles for weeks from every direction and could identify it at a hundred meters in the dark.

This was

different.

This was the disturbing

adoration

of

a big sister

. Warm. Familiar. Protective. The look that said

I changed your nappies once and I will never let you forget it.

He knew the difference very well.

"Okay, this is creepy," he said.

"What the fuck."

She laughed—pearl laughter, bright and full, filling the private booth like music from an instrument he didn’t know he’d been missing.

She reached across the table to pinch his cheeks.

Phei moved fast and

slapped

her hands away.

"While your

mother

can treat me like that,"

he said,

"you don’t have the ticket yet. Or ever."

She chuckled, retracting her hands. "I see. You really don’t

remember

me at all."

He shrugged. "Forgive the memory but I’ve never seen you before. Maybe I did when I was little in Japan, but I’ve got nothing from back then. Also—" he pointed at her "—you’re ruining my

Evil-Harem-God

scheme with this

big-sister

sweetness.

Spill what’s going on, will ya?"

"Evil-Harem-God

scheme?"

she repeated. The chuckle deepened. "I see you’re following

Mother’s

path."

Phei’s face went wide and immediately chocked. "Sorry—mother?"

She shrugged casually. "Wait. You don’t know that your Grandma is

my mom

?"

He stood up. Abruptly. Chair scraping.

"Okay.

Explain what the fuck is going on

. According to Melissa, you’re

Auntie Natsuki’s

daughter and also

Chaos’s

woman. Isn’t that right?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Are you a retarded? Why would my

mother

be my lover too?"

Phei rolled his eyes. "Well,

my aunt

and

cousin

are my women. Hello?

Incest

runs in the family, alright? And I’ve never heard of Chaos having another child besides Melissa, her last."

He had to admit though—this cleared a lot. It had been bugging him how Chaos would let her woman fuck a man to give birth to

Rune.

She would

never.

That possessive old dragoness would sooner burn the man alive and use his ashes as fertiliser than share one of her women with a cock that wasn’t—well, Chaos didn’t have a cock, but the principle stood.

Rune shook her head. "No. While I’m not in the direct Ryujin Tiamat bloodline family tree, Madam is indeed my mother. Second mother. You probably don’t remember, but women of the

Ryujin Tiamat

family don’t exactly need men to give birth."

She let that one sit for a second.

"Anyway—as for the rumour Melissa gave you, Madam must’ve lied. You could say I am your

aunt

." She smiled. "Also, for the record, I carried you around for a full year. That’s how I know you so well."

Phei nodded slowly, the motion mechanical, almost detached.

None of what he’d just heard was new. It was simply another cheerful reminder of how gloriously,

catastrophically

fucked his family tree had always been.

A grandmother who ran a harem of twenty-something women like it was a full-time corporate position, a bloodline where the women apparently didn’t need men to produce heirs, and an aunt he’d never met who had spent an entire year carrying him around like a designer handbag before vanishing from his memory along with everything else that came before the fire.

Normal Tuesday shit, really.

"Then

I can have you

, right?"

Rune laughed so hard the booth shook. Full-body. Head back. The kind of laugh that came from deep in the chest and took its time leaving.

Rune laughed so hard the booth shook. Full-body. Head thrown back, it started deep in her chest and took its sweet time leaving, rich and unfiltered, like she’d been holding it in for years.

"Yes,"