Chapter 1275: Phei’s Unfathomable and Encompassing Changes

When Phei and Melissa returned to the elevator, it was waiting exactly where they had left it on the same floor; it had remained frozen upon the number Phei had halted before taking Melissa through the portal.

He stepped back into the cabin with her hand in his, released whatever had been holding the elevator in place, and the doors closed before the ascent toward the penthouse resumed as though its passengers had never disappeared halfway through the journey.

Melissa leaned lightly against his arm and watched him from the corner of her eye.

She had been doing that rather often since yesterday.

Two nights ago, Phei had frightened her because she had felt enough of what happened around him to understand that something had changed on a scale his cultivation alone could never explain.

She had known Phei was growing stronger for a long time. Everyone around him knew it:

His growth had stopped behaving politely months ago, and the distance between what his cultivation claimed he should be and what he could actually do had become wide enough that trying to measure him by ordinary stages felt increasingly pointless.

Yet this was different.

Everything about his powers had become smoother.

That was the only word Melissa could find for it, although even smooth felt embarrassingly small.

Before, Phei used an ability and reality answered him. She had seen his portals unfold, watched Void-Ice rise beneath his hands, witnessed strange powers reveal themselves around him with enough ease to make most cultivators question whether training had somehow become optional for Dragons.

Now there was scarcely any separation between Phei and what obeyed him.

His portal earlier had opened in little more than a heartbeat. Darkness had gathered, the Void had parted and his bedroom had simply waited beyond it before Melissa properly registered that he had decided to take them somewhere else.

Even the hollow chamber he created for Eira had possessed none of the strain Melissa expected from something that absurd. He had shaped darkness into sanctuary, winter into blankets and the Void itself into a cradle for his sleeping Familiar with the casual intimacy of someone rearranging his own room.

His abilities no longer felt like things he reached for.

They were him!

Almost more natural than breathing, because breathing at least required his nose and his chest to rise.

Melissa’s gaze moved over him:

His hair had changed.

She had tied it for him before they left the villa, gathering the newly lengthened black strands into a loose ponytail that fell well beyond where his hair had ever reached before two days ago. Melissa still had no idea how hair managed to become that black and so soo dark! It seemed to drink the elevator’s warm light without becoming dull, every strand carrying a darkness rich enough that ordinary black suddenly looked washed out beside it.

She rather liked the ponytail.

Quite a lot, actually.

But that discovery could remain private until Phei stopped possessing enough vanity to become impossible after receiving compliments.

His eyes were harder to hide from.

The amethyst remained, beautiful and unmistakably his, yet the color had deepened until every glance seemed to contain another depth beneath the first. Somewhere within that profound violet now rested a trace of gold. It did not ring his pupils or cut through the amethyst like some foreign color attempting to conquer it. The gold seemed born within the violet itself, appearing whenever the light caught his eyes correctly and shining beside the amethyst with a quiet magnificence that made Melissa occasionally forget whatever she had intended to say.

Even his body had changed.

The difference was subtle enough that someone who did not know Phei intimately might only think he had grown slightly broader through the shoulders, leaner through the waist and more powerfully built beneath his clothes. Melissa knew every line of him too well for subtlety to survive; more so she’d seen how his dick’s base size had increased from the usual 12 something inch to an intimidatingly hot 14 inch!

He had become more potent too.

’That is the word.’

Before, standing beside Phei sometimes gave Melissa the strange feeling of standing beside something godly that had inexplicably chosen to laugh, flirt, steal food and become offended when women called him shameless.

Now even that comparison had begun failing.

There was something encompassing about him, some unfathomable depth that never pressed against her and never demanded she acknowledge it, yet remained there all the same. The darkness and bloodlust that had entered him when Primordial Blood awakened had not disappeared but it had just become deeper, older somehow, yet infinitely more controlled, folded so perfectly beneath Phei’s ordinary warmth that Melissa doubted most people would recognize what rested beneath his skin unless he deliberately allowed them to.

It should have intimidated her.

Perhaps part of it did.

Yet standing beside him, hand held securely inside his, Melissa could think of nowhere in existence that felt safer than near the father of her child.

For her, everything began and ended here; on him!

’Phei is simply... it all for me.’ The thought was ridiculously lovestruck. Melissa accepted the accusation before her own mind could make it. ’Well, I am a lovestruck woman.’

That did not make her wrong.

And the most frightening part was knowing this was scarcely the beginning. Whatever Phei had touched over the previous two nights, whatever had looked through his eyes and whatever deeper piece of the Cosmic Dragon had begun awakening, Melissa knew enough to understand he was nowhere close to his true height and potential!

Not even remotely.

Not even 0.0001 percent.

She was not some woman exaggerating because the man she loved looked magnificent beneath flattering elevator lights.

Although the man she loved did look unfairly magnificent beneath flattering elevator lights.

Melissa’s mouth curved.

Phei caught the expression: "What?"

She shook her head, though her fingers tightened around his. "Nothing."

Phei gave her a suspicious glance. "That looked like something."

Melissa finally turned fully toward him.

Only then did she notice the tension hidden beneath his calm.

It was faint; Phei was excited to go inside, that much she could see. He wanted to see everyone. He wanted to tell them about their child. Beneath that happiness, however, his jaw had tightened slightly and some part of his attention had already travelled beyond the elevator doors toward people waiting above.

Dravenna.

Elena.

His Goddess.

The two days old wounds had apparently remembered they still possessed appointments.

Melissa’s expression softened.

She stepped directly in front of him.

Phei barely had time to raise an eyebrow before both her hands caught his face and turned him toward her. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

"Mel?"

She kissed him; her mouth covered his before the rest of the word escaped, warm lips pressing deeply against his while one hand slipped from his cheek into the dark ponytail she had tied herself. Her fingers threaded through the silky strands at the back of his head and tightened just enough to keep him there.

Phei’s surprise survived perhaps one heartbeat.

Then his arm circled her waist.

Melissa’s lips parted beneath his and his tongue met hers slowly, drawing a soft breath from her as the kiss deepened. There was no desperation in it and no rush toward anything beyond the elevator. She simply kissed the tension out of him, mouth moving against his with long familiar affection while her thumb stroked the skin behind his ear and Phei drew her closer until the warmth of her body rested fully against his.

He tasted the faint sweetness of her familiar lips he liked so much; she could feel him smiling.

Melissa made a soft sound into his mouth when he kissed her deeper, and Phei’s hand spread instinctively across her back before lowering toward her waist. He behaved himself there, though judging by the brief flex of his fingers, the decision required actual character development.