"They would be compensated. Protected. I'd make sure they had everything they needed."
"Money isn't the same as purpose." She pulled back enough to face me fully. "They've served you since they were girls. Their identities are probably wrapped up in beingyourScales. In belonging to you—even if you never touched them, even if you gave them freedom, they may still choose to stay. Or. . .they may harm themselves if they’re forced to go."
The helicopter cabin felt smaller suddenly.
“Tora. . .but what doyouwant to do?”
"If you sent them away," she continued, her voice dropping, "even with the best intentions, even with money and protection. . .wouldn't that break something in them?"
I thought she would simply tell me to get rid of them.
I hadn't expected this.
Hadn't expected her to think beyond her own comfort to theirs.
I tilted my head to the side. "You're worried about them?"
"I'm worried about what it would do to them." She glanced back outside where the three women waited. "They didn't choose this life initially. Your father chose it for them. But they stayed. They built their whole existence around you. And now I show up and—" She made a frustrated sound. "God, this is so complicated."
"It is." I agreed quietly.
"Part of me wants them gone," she admitted, her honesty cutting clean and sharp. "The jealous part. The part that wants you completely to myself. No shadows of what your father intended, no pretty women who look at you like you hung the moon."
"And the other part?"
"The other part sees three women whose entire lives would be upended because I felt. . .insecure." She met my eyes. "Now that I know you love me—really know it, feel it—I can't shakethe feeling that sending them away would be cruel. That it would hurt them more than keeping them could ever hurt me."
“Hmmm.” I pulled her close, pressing my lips to her forehead while my mind spun with something I couldn't quite name.
Admiration?
Confusion?
Awe?
I didn't understand this. Didn't understand her ability to see beyond her own feelings to the lives of three women who posed a threat—however small—to what we had. The empathy it took to weigh their futures against her comfort. The strength it took to even consider keeping them when every possessive instinct probably screamed to eliminate the competition.
If the situation were reversed—if she had three men who'd served her since childhood, who looked at her with devotion and barely concealed want—I wouldn't be sitting here calmly discussing their lives and futures.
I'd have killed them.
Right in front of her.
Without hesitation.
Without mercy.
Without a single fucking thought about their hopes, dreams, or the lives they'd built.
The image flashed through my mind with crystalline clarity: three male bodies at her feet, blood pooling on expensive flooring, my hands still wet with their blood while I told her they were gone and would never look at her again.
That was who I was.
That was the Dragon she'd claimed.
But here she sat, worrying about breaking them. Trying to navigate an impossible situation with both strength and grace. Thinking about people who weren't her, who might want what was hers, and still consideringtheirhumanity.
I don’t understand but. . .maybe she can teach me something I've never learned.
