Of course he doesn't. He's Valdris Vhal'kar, the Dragon King who held his throne for five hundred years before passing it to me. Who watched his own father die and felt nothing but satisfaction. Who's killed more men than I can count and never lost a moment's sleep.
He shifts mid-rise, the change taking him between one heartbeat and the next. Crimson scales erupt across his body. Wings unfurl, tattered from our earlier battle but still functional. His jaws open wide, dragonfire building in his throat.
He's aiming at Kess.
I hit him before the fire can release.
We crash through the wall together, out into the courtyard, into the fading light of a sun that's nearly gone. The impact drives the breath from both of us. But I don't let go. Can't let go. If I give him an inch, he'll go back for her.
"She's an abomination," he snarls into my face, claws raking at my eyes. "Look what she's become. Look what you've let her become."
"She's my mate."
"She's a monster wearing your curse. You think that makes her yours?" He twists, gets his hind legs up, rakes them down my belly hard enough to spill blood. "She'll turn on you. The rage will consume her. Everything you love about her will drown in three centuries of divine punishment."
"You don't know her."
"I know the curse." He breaks free, gains distance, circles me in the blood-soaked courtyard. Bodies everywhere—his priests, my guards, dragons fallen mid-shift. "I've watched it destroy four generations of our family. Your mother. Your grandfather. Everyone who gets too close to it dies screaming."
"Then it ends with me."
"It ends with HER." He lunges again, jaws snapping. "Kill her now and the curse returns to you. The children die, yes, but you survive. The bloodline survives. Everything I built?—"
"I don't want what you built."
I catch him mid-lunge. My claws sink into his shoulders, my weight bearing him down. He's weaker than he was an hour ago—blood loss and exhaustion taking their toll. I'm weaker too. But I'm fighting for something that matters.
He's just fighting to preserve a legacy of pain.
"You could have been different," I tell him, and my voice comes out dragon-rough, barely human. "You could have lovedme. Could have tried to break this curse instead of worshipping it. Could have been a father instead of a king."
"I was always a king first." No regret in his voice. No apology. "That's what you never understood. The bloodline matters more than any individual. More than love. More than children. More than you."
"Then the bloodline ends here."
His eyes widen. "Rhystan?—"
I close my jaws around his throat.
He struggles.
Claws at my face, my neck, anywhere he can reach. Opens wounds that will take weeks to heal. His tail whips against my flanks hard enough to crack ribs.
But I don't let go.
I think of Kess. Of the transformation wracking her body, the agony I felt through the bond as the curse poured into her. Of the children she just saved—our son freed from divine rage, our daughter no longer hunted by her own brother.
I think of my mother. Stepping between me and that omega girl during my first rut. Dying under my claws because she loved me too much to let me become a monster without trying to stop it.
I think of three hundred years of guilt. Of forty-seven dead omegas. Of carving memorial stones with my own bleeding hands because I needed to feel something that matched the pain inside me.
I think of a future where none of that gets passed on. Where my children grow up free. Where the curse ends here, in this courtyard, in this moment.
My jaws tighten.
His struggles weaken.
"You could have loved me," I say again, though he probably can't hear anymore. "That's all I ever wanted. For you to look at me and see your son instead of your curse."
