[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-qt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining":3,"chapter-qt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining-qt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining-chapter-277":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","QT: I hijacked a harem system and now I'm ruining every plot(GL)",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1854616,2462,"Chapter 277: What could have been?","qt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining-chapter-277",277,"\u003Cp>Chapter 276\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lani\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I look at my pregnant sister’s protruding stomach, a perfect, round curve beneath the intricate embroidery of her luxurious dress.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>We are in her sitting room within the royal palace itself, all silk cushions and the faint, ever-present scent of lemon polish and power.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She reclines on a chair, one hand resting on the stomach, the other gesturing as she speaks of her morning—a tense meeting with some noble lady, a surprisingly pleasant walk in the queen’s private garden with Lady Edith... I meanQueenEdith, and ofcourse his highness the king.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I indulge her and listen, and mentally shudder at the thought of how this would have been my life once upon a time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"...that’s all about me,\" she says, finally pausing to take a delicate sip of infused water. \"What about you? How is the married life?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ah, yes. My husband.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I met him back at the academy. A quiet wolf-shifter from a minor but respectable line, who, like me, has particular interests.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Our marriage is a document, a shield, a mutually beneficial business arrangement. He has his life with his male partner in the country estate we purchased together, and I have mine with Marie, and several other ladies, I haven’t been fortunate enough to find a stable partner but my current life is not so bad.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only a select few know the true nature of our marriage and unfortunately my twin is not one of them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"He is well,\" I say, my voice perfectly even.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Preoccupied with the new timber imports from the eastern marches. He sends his deepest regards and regrets his duties kept him from accompanying me today.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It’s a lie ofcourse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Oh, pish!\" Lira laughs, a bright, tinkling sound that suits the sunlit room. \"I’m almost glad. This way we get to be just sisters for an afternoon.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She seems happy. Genuinely happy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I’m happy for her. Truly. It might be because I don’t spend as much time with her, and our lives have completely diverged. The paths that once ran parallel have now stretched so far apart that I can look across the distance and simply see my sister, not my rival.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The old, one-sided envy and jealousy I used to carry like a second skin has finally withered and fallen away. There is no more score to keep, no spotlight to fight for.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"It suits you,\" I say, my voice softer now, all pretense gone. \"Motherhood. This place. All of it.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She looks at me, and for a moment, the bright socialite facade drops. I see the girl I shared a womb with, the one who knew all my secrets before I even had words for them. \"Thank you, Lani,\" she says, and it’s just her, not the consort.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"It does. It really does,\" she says, her voice softening into something private, real. The performance for the court falls away entirely. \"I’m happy here. And I love Felix.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I know you do,\" I say, and there’s no bitterness in it, only a quiet awe.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My own love is a different creature—hidden, unorthodox, flourishing in the spaces the court’s light doesn’t reach. It doesn’t make hers less, or mine more. They are just different.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I’m glad,\" I say again, because it’s all that’s left to say.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>***\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Poppy\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I look at my son, a small, sun-gilded whirlwind of laughter, and at my husband, who is on his hands and knees in the grass, pretending to be a fearsome stag-monster.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sound of their play—my son’s shrieks of delight, Isaac’s playful growls, fills the garden of our modest, sunlit townhouse. The air smells of cut grass and the sweet pastries I brought out for our picnic.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My gaze drifts past the garden wall, past the rooftops of the noble district, to the distant, gleaming spires of the palace.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I wonder, not for the first time, what my life would have been like had I just stayed. Would it have been this peaceful? Would I be sitting in a manicured royal garden instead of this slightly wild one? Would I still have this bone-deep, quiet happiness, or would it have been chipped away by the constant, quiet terror of being small in a world too large, of being prey in a den of predators?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My son, little Harry, chooses that moment to shift.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With a bold leap, he launches himself onto his father’s head, his little paws scrabbling for purchase on the broad, velvety antlers. Isaac lets out a comical, startled \"Oof!\" and then a rich, rumbling laugh that shakes his whole frame, the tiny bunny now a living, wiggling crown.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I snort out a laugh, the sound inelegant and utterly free.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I look from my laughing husband with a bunny on his head, to the distant, cold palace spires.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I don’t think I would have been this happy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>***\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lumiya\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Your Grace, the Duke requests your presence.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The attendant’s voice is a servile murmur from the doorway. I don’t respond. I continue staring out the narrow window of my northern estate’s tallest tower, watching the grey clouds scrape against the even greyer mountains.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Your Grace, I—\" she tries again, her tone dipping into nervousness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Without patience, without even turning, I snatch the half-empty crystal wine glass from the ledge beside me and toss it over my shoulder. It arcs through the dim room and hits her square in the face with a satisfying thwack and a tinkle of shattering crystal.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A sharp cry, quickly stifled.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Can’t you use your brain, or something?\" I snap, my voice icy and sharp as the broken shards on the floor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Say I’m sick. Say I’m indisposed. Say I’ve been carried off by a feverish melancholy. Invent something. Must I script every lie for you?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A ragged breath, the sound of a hand clamped over a stinging cheek. \"Y-yes, Your Grace. Apologies, Your Grace.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The scuffle of a retreat, the door clicking shut.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Silence, my beloved and only faithful friend, returns with the attendant’s disappearance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the deep quiet, I accidentally catch my reflection in the dark, cold windowpane—a pale ghost against a darker night. I resist the urge to smash this image too. To destroy the evidence of my own stagnation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My beauty. I am so proud of it. My heritage. A Snowfrost. We are carved from ice and starlight, bred for thrones.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But in the blurred reflection, the image shifts. My own white hair seems to lighten into a platinum blonde. The sharp, cold features soften into a vulpine cunning, a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Edith.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I stand so abruptly my chair scrapes violently against the stone floor. A raw, guttural scream tears from my throat, directed at the phantom in the glass. \"Get out!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The image shatters in my mind, leaving only my own furious, panting face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That’s all she is. A cheap imitation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She came and took my place. My destiny. All she did was spread herself for that stupid, weak-willed man, and he fell for it like a dog for a scrap of meat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Is that all he thinks with? To replace me—a Snowfrost, a queen in blood and bearing—with that? Is it because I chose not to roll in the sheets with him at the academy like his other little whores? But I am different! I am a Snowfrost! Our value is not measured in sweaty, fleeting moments in a dormitory bed. It is measured in centuries, in lineage, in power!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As if I could not? What is so special about laying with someone? It is a transaction of fluids, a momentary loss of control. I could have performed it. I could have mimicked the sighs, the movements.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I clench my fists so tightly my claws pierce my own palms. The sharp, familiar pain is a grounding counterpoint to the chaos in my head.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A new, corrosive thought drips into my mind, more terrifying than any phantom.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Maybe if I had... if I had simply given him that one, meaningless thing...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Maybe if I had lain with him, played the simpering lover in the dark as well as the polished partner in the light, I could have been the one standing on the palace balcony. I could have been the Queen, not a duchess exiled to this barren, silent land.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The possibility is a torture more exquisite than any insult.\u003C\u002Fp>",1392,"2026-06-09T07:29:29.584Z",1,"novelbin.me","c5ac78fd922aeda9156e523c6b6b23e45c49c46388c82ca198fb3b64c95876c0","qt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining-chapter-278","qt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining-chapter-276",399,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fqt-i-hijacked-a-harem-system-and-now-i-m-ruining-cover.jpg"]