The moment I touch one, the wall dissolves.
Inside is a chamber that feels ancient.Older than anything in the house.Dark stone around a single circular platform surrounded by candles.In the center is a black dragon scale the size of a platter, resting on a pedestal.My breath catches and my hands tremble.The air hums with power as I step in.
And I feel something shift deep inside me.The part of me I’ve been suppressing.Ignoring.Fearing.The part I couldn’t believe was real.Something that seems more and more possible with every passing moment.
Deep inside me is a dragon, far away from the surface and wrapped in fog, but closer now.Closer than ever.
I press my hand to the scale, close my eyes, and something in me answers back.
Chapter Ten
The Awakening
Acheron
I feel it before I see it.
The pulse.The whisper.A shift in the air that coils through my senses like smoke.My dragon lifts his head inside me, alert and hungry.Something has changed.
She’s stirring.Not my Zahara.Not the woman roaming the halls of my home.No, this is her dragon.The one she swore didn’t exist.
I close the ledger in front of me and stand from my desk.The numbers can wait.The world can wait.Every part of me is tuned to her now, her breath, her heartbeat, the unspoken song of her power waking like an ancient tide.
I move quickly down the hallway, seeking her out, my footsteps silent on the stone floors.The deeper I go, the stronger it gets.Magic, raw, wild, and untamed.Feminine and furious.A vibration that touches the core of what I am and challenges it.
She found the room.Of course she did.The ancestral chamber isn’t meant to be stumbled into.It reveals itself only to blood.Only to fire.Only to dragons.
And Zahara is one of us.Even if she won’t admit it.
I stand in the doorway and watch her as she touches my great grandfather’s scale, lust and hunger beating at my insides.
“What is this?”she asks, not turning around.
“It’s my family legacy.”She looks at me over her shoulder with a quirk of her brow.“My great grandfather was the high ruler of the realm ages ago.When he died, they built this room and sealed it away.When I came into my dragon and built my empire, I had it opened and built my home above it.I am nothing if I do not honor my ancestors.”
“That’s nice.”She sounds so sad that I can’t stay away from her.
