"He wasn't always like this," Rhystan says eventually. "When I was young—very young, before my first rut—he was different. Stern, but not cruel. He used to take me flying over the mountains. Taught me to hunt. Told me stories about our ancestors." A pause. "Then I killed my mother, and something in him broke. He looked at me differently after that. Like I was a weapon that had misfired. A tool that couldn't be trusted."
"You were twenty-five. In your first rut. With a curse you didn't ask for."
"I know." He finally tears his gaze away from his father's corpse, meets my eyes. "You told me that before. That the curse was the monster, not me. I'm trying to believe it."
"Keep trying." I reach up, touch his face with claws I'm still learning to control. "It took me a long time to stop blaming myself for my heats. For the violence I couldn't control. You've had three hundred years of believing you're a monster. That's not going to change overnight."
"But it can change?"
"It's already changing." I pull him down, press my forehead to his. "You broke the curse. You chose your children over yourfather's legacy. You chose me over power." I let him feel my certainty through the bond. "That's not what monsters do."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then he pulls back, straightens his shoulders, and becomes a king again.
"We need to burn the bodies," he says. "All of them. Dragon tradition—return them to fire, let the smoke carry them to whatever comes next." He looks at the priests' corpses with something colder. "Even them. They were doing what they believed was right. I won't dishonor that, even if I hated what they stood for."
"And your father?"
"Him too." The words cost him something—I see it in the tightening around his eyes. "He was a bastard and he tried to kill you and I'll never forgive him for that. But he was still my father. He still deserves the rites."
I nod. Don't argue. This is his grief to navigate, his complicated tangle of love and hate and loss. All I can do is stand beside him while he does it.
The burning takes hours.
Rhystan shifts to dragon form to provide the flame—proper dragonfire, hot enough to reduce bone to ash. I stand at the edge of the courtyard and watch body after body disappear into white-hot heat, smoke spiraling up into a sky that's finally starting to clear.
The household staff gather to watch. Corvith stands at the front, face grim, keeping count of the dead. The mystic tends to wounded guards nearby, her ancient hands steady despite the chaos. Servants I recognize from the kitchens, the stables, the endless corridors of this place that's become something like home—they all stand witness while their king burns his father and his enemies alike.
When it's done, Rhystan shifts back. He's naked and ash-covered and looks more exhausted than I've ever seen him, but he stands straight as he addresses what's left of his household.
"The curse is broken." His voice carries across the courtyard, steady despite everything. "The ritual succeeded. My children will be born free of divine punishment, and no more omegas will die on claiming altars."
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. Some faces show relief. Others show uncertainty. A few show something that might be fear—directed at me, at the scales visible on my arms and throat, at the gold eyes that mark me as something not quite human anymore.
"There will be consequences," Rhystan continues. "My father's allies will not accept this quietly. The War God's remaining priests will call us heretics, blasphemers, oath-breakers. Other kingdoms may see weakness where the curse once projected strength."
He pauses. Finds me in the crowd. Holds my gaze.
"Let them come. Let them call us whatever they want. I have my mate, my children, and my people. That's worth more than any curse ever was."
Corvith is the first to kneel.
Then the mystic. Then the guards, the servants, the stable hands and kitchen staff. One by one, they drop to their knees in the ash-covered courtyard, pledging themselves to a king who just killed his own father for the right to love freely.
I don't kneel. Queens don't kneel to their kings.
Instead I walk through the crowd to stand beside him, take his ash-covered hand in my clawed one, and face whatever comes next together.
The weeks that follow blur together.
Rebuilding. Recovery. The slow, painstaking work of putting a castle and a kingdom back together after everything fell apart.
I learn my new body in pieces. The claws retract eventually—not easily, but with practice. The scales don't spread further, settling into patterns that cover maybe a third of my skin. My eyes stay gold, stay slitted, stay inhuman. My strength is greater than before, my senses sharper, my reflexes faster. The curse is a weight in my bones, but a manageable one. Most days.
Some days it's harder.
Some days I wake snarling, the divine rage pressing against the inside of my skull, demanding release. Those days Rhystan holds me until it passes, talks me through the breathing exercises he developed over three centuries of containing his own beast. Those days I understand, truly understand, what he's been carrying all this time.
And those days I love him more for it. For surviving. For staying sane. For finding ways to be gentle despite everything inside him screaming for violence.
