A little?—
The temperature drops.
Not gradually, like the cooling of evening. Suddenly. Violently. Like someone ripped open a door to the coldest winter night.
The air itself changes—gets heavier, thicker, charged with something that makes the hair on my arms stand up even through the heat-fever burning under my skin.
He's close.
I can feel it like a pressure building behind my eyes, like the grove itself is holding its breath. Like the whole forest knows what's coming and has gone silent in fear.
My heart kicks against my ribs. The ache in my belly twists into something sharper, something with teeth. Not the full heat yet, but close. So close. My body responding to the nearness of an alpha before I can even see or smell him.
The sky darkens.
Not with sunset. With wings.
The sound comes first—a rush of air, heavy and rhythmic, like the breathing of some enormous beast. Like the world itself has lungs and is drawing breath. Then the shadow falls across the grove, blotting out what's left of the dying light. The temperature plunges further as something massive passes between me and the sky.
He's here.
The Beast King has arrived.
I crane my neck against the altar stone, looking up through the canopy, and see him circling overhead. A shape darker than the darkening sky, so huge my mind struggles to make sense of it. Each beat of his wings sends tremors through the air that I feel against my skin like the bass note of a war drum. The ancient trees surrounding the grove bow and sway in the backdraft, branches groaning, leaves torn free and sent spiraling into the darkness.
The heat in my belly coils tighter, a snake preparing to strike.
Hold on. Stay conscious. Stay ready.
My fingers twitch toward my hair, toward the knife hidden there. Ready to grab it the moment he gets close enough to kill.
He descends.
The dragon drops from the sky like a falling star—like a god coming down to collect his due. Wings tucked tight against his body, plummeting straight down, and for one wild moment I think he's going to crash directly into me.
Then he spreads his wings at the last second and lands at the edge of the grove with a sound like thunder meeting earthquake. The ground bucks beneath me. The moss ripples outward in waves. The warm stone altar vibrates with the force of his impact, and I feel it in my teeth, my bones, the base of my skull.
Then he unfolds.
Wings spread wide—so wide they span half the grove, leathery membrane stretched between bones as thick as the oldest oaks. What's left of the dying sunlight filters through them, backlit gold and crimson, and I can see the intricate vein structure like stained glass windows. Like something holy, if holiness were made of skin and violence.
His body is massive. Longer than any building in my village. Scaled in black so dark it seems to drink the light, to swallow it whole. The scales overlap like armor forged by a mad god, each one easily the size of my spread hand, and they shimmer with undertones of gold when he moves—subtle, almost invisible, like embers buried deep beneath ash.
Four legs, each ending in claws the length of swords. They dig into the earth as he settles his weight, carving furrows through moss and soil like a farmer's plow through spring mud.
But it's his head that holds me frozen.
The dragon's skull is a study in terrible elegance. Long snout, powerful jaws, teeth visible even with his mouth closed—each one a bone-white dagger meant for shearing flesh from bone. Two horns curve back from his skull, massive and ridged, black shot through with veins of gold like precious ore. Smaller horns frame his jaw like a crown. Like a warning.
And his eyes.
Golden. Not metaphorically—actually gold, liquid and molten, like someone poured melted metal into his eye sockets and it learned to see. The pupils are vertical slits so black they look like tears in the fabric of reality. Ancient beyond measuring. Intelligent beyond what any beast should possess.
Fixed on me.
Every cell in my body screams at once—a chorus of conflicting orders that nearly tears me apart.
Run.
