He had roared at them. Roared with fear disguised as fury.
He’d seen the terror in their eyes, and they had not looked at him as father or protector. They had looked at him as prey looked upon fire. He hadn’t meant to scare them, and yet he had.
It was morning when he finally lifted his head to the sound of rustling. Elowen was still asleep, but the boys were awake. Their golden eyes were wide and uncertain, flicking from his claws to his teeth that he had used on them in rage.
They were still afraid. Midas’ stomach twisted.
He lowered himself intentionally, making himself as small as he could in his weaker, human form, trying to be less threatening. His mouth opened to speak, and the boys immediately tensed.
“I am sorry,” he started. “You disobeyed me, but I was…too loud, too harsh, but not because I was angry. I did not mean to frighten you, I was just…afraid.”
Kalen furrowed his brow. “Of us?”
Midas shook his head. “No. I was once small and curious like you, and the humans took everything from me. I was afraid of losing you, too.”
They blink together. “You yelled at us,” Auric said, his words shaking.
Midas paused. He did not know what to say. He simply huffed out: “Yes.”
“The humans have never yelled at us,” Kalen added, and it was a well-deserved sting.
Midas bowed his head lower. “I know. And I am…sorry.”
The boys exchanged a glance, and then, slowly, Kalen crept closer. Just a step. Just enough to reach out and touch the edge of Midas’ wing. Auric followed his brother, sitting cross-legged by Midas’ other wing. “Can you tell us what it was like when you were little?”
Midas paused, furrowing his brow. “You want…a story?”
“Yeah,” they said together.
The request is so ordinary, so innocent, like they had immediately forgotten why they were afraid. Midas glanced once toward Elowen, still sleeping, and then curled his tail gently around his sons.
“Do you remember what it was like before?” Kalen prompted as he felt the scales lining his father’s human arm.
Auric shifted slightly, balancing himself on Midas’ tail. “Before the humans,” he added curiously.
Their words struck deeper than they should, not because they were sharp, but because they were curious and innocent.
How could they understand? They were born from all the love and warmth the world could offer them—born beneath a sky unmarked by their fear. Midas would not dare to give them a story that would give them that fear, but they were still young and curious as all boys were.
He could not hide the truth from them forever.
Midas closed his eyes. For a long time, he did not speak, and instead imagined the world long before they drew their first breaths. A low rumble rose from deep in his chest, thick with smoke and sorrow.
“I remember fire,” he began. Kalen and Auric both fell silent and alert at his words. “It was not brutal, raging fire. It danced along the mountainside. It warmed our nests. The dragons lived in these very mountains.So manydragons that we could block out the sun itself with our bodies. Before the humans thought our roars were the sounds of monsters, they thought it was song. Song that could shake ice from the mountaintops. Song that called storms. Song that summoned the stars and the moon.”
He did not have the heart to tell them how the humans began to hate their songs, nor did he describe the way they killed the young and mothers first. How they laid traps and laughed as the songs turned to terrified roars.
He did not have the heart to speak of the blood he could somehow still smell—a scent that never left his scales.
Yet somehow, Midas knew his boys understood that much without him having to say it. It was in their bones—the trauma of their father seeped into their lives from conception. He could feel it in their silence, all the things they wanted to ask, but didn’t know how.
“And you were alone,” Kalen added, remembering how Midas told him as much.
Midas nodded. “Yes.”
“For how long?” Auric asked.
“Too long,” Midas answered quickly, but then lookeddown at his children and softened his face. “Until I met your mother.”
