My father’s voice whispers in the back of my mind, like a specter from another life where a he still saw the future in the bright eyes of his son. A voice that faded into darkness and cruelty when my twenty-first birthday came and went with no dragon to show for it. I would have committed the last kind words he said to me to memory if I’d known I’d never hear it again.
Not even after my first shift four years later nearly destroyed a city block when the dragon rained fire from the skies, finally freed of its mortal chains.
Not when the beast landed on the steps of our ancestral stronghold, the birthplace of kings, driven by mindless instinct and feral rage; fury for the five jagged lines across our face and the sightless eye my father left behind when he cast me out.
The dragon had risen from the fires of my grief-ridden anger, and when I’d surfaced from the prison of my mind, skin smoking from the dragonflame coursing through my veins, my father’s eyes had shone with greed at the sight.
“Moratus,” he’d whispered in awe.
Coward, the new, rumbling voice hissed in my mind.
Betrayer, it echoed in the silence.
The challenge had been laid between the usurper and the doomed king.
A day of reckoning promised, just beyond the horizon.
Then the dragon stole my next breath, breaking and reforming my body into our new, bestial form, and we flew far, far away.
Not far enough to escape the High Council and their hunters, though. Six fucking months at this prissy school, and if I ever see one of those fuckers again, I’ll chew them up, spit them back out, burn their entrails in front of their families, and leave the ashes on the High Council’s doorstep as a present for daddy dearest.
My lips twitch despite my scowl as I think of what my mandated therapist would say about my increasingly savage impulses ever since my epiphaneia. Not that I was raised to be anything other than brutally ruthless by an equally brutally ruthless man himself. Some shifters struggle with their other halves—one consciousness suddenly seeing its equal and opposite reflection, trapped together in one mind. Some lose themselves to the beast entirely, forsaking their human forms and disappearing into the darkness.
That was never my problem. In fact, we got on a littletoowell for a newly-awakened shifter, which terrified those limp-dicked pricks on the Council who thought they could bring me to heel, that I’d come around, begging for help with controlling my beast.
It’s laughable how wrong they were, and still are. It makes me downright giddy to picture them pissing their panties when faced with a fully realized moratus dragon. Their first mistake was underestimating me. Their last will be not running when they had the chance.
My father most of all.
Speaking of the devil himself. I delete the texts as soon as they come through, just like I have the last six months. There’s nothing in this universe that would compel me to voluntarily walk into that den of narcissistic assholes. The mere thought makes my dragon long to stretch his wings and chase the horizon over the open ocean. Only two more useless hours of “independent study” left before I can fuck out of here.
Most people have learned to leave me alone. The Heirs and Legacies tried to recruit me when I first got here, but it didn’t take long for them to realize how few fucks I gave about their hierarchy. Of the few that might have put up a challenge, none were ballsy enough to try—except for that Kovacs fucker.
“Like should stand with like,” the Ignis Heir had said. He’s everything I’m not—conniving, composed, in control. That apple doesn’t fall far from that fucking tree, if anything my father told me about his fellow councilman is true. Kovacs only smirked after I’d attempted to give him a matching set of scars in response, like he’d found a new toy he couldn’t wait to break. Fucking creeped me out.
My phone vibrates again, and in a flash of annoyance I swipe it off the table where it disappears beneath the stacks. I debate leaving it behind, but if my therapist hears I broke yet another phone he’ll spend two hours lecturing me about “emotional dysregulation” and more hippie shit about aligning my ego and id.
My body protests as I stand, unfurling from the worn chair that creaks as much as my bones do. It didn’t take long to claimthis corner of the library for my own—dragons are known for being territorial, after all. All I had to do was set a few fires to get the message across, but now the librarian and I have reached a truce of sorts—he lets me stay here undisturbed so long as I don’t burn any of the books. Fair’s fair, I guess.
I’ve grown used to the blessed solitude, so when the beast stirs in the back of my mind, I trust his instincts and sharpen my senses. If I’ve learned nothing else in the past six months, it’s to trust in him—there’s a reason dragons are the apex predators, after all. I inhale, scenting, searching for what has him on edge.
The smell of old books languishing on polished wooden stacks. Spilled coffee that no one bothered to clean up before it stained the worn carpet. Stale air pushing through rusted ducts in the ceiling. And… there.
What the hell is that?
My vision distorts as the beast takes control. Even my left eye, despite never fully recovering from my father’s betrayal. The colors shift from visible light to ultraviolet, and heat signatures begin to register in the distance as we lock onto an approaching figure.
Female.
Young.
Witch, but no trace of magic yet.
Ripe, the fucking weirdo whispers.
What the fuck is wrong with you?But instead of responding he forces my body to lurch forward until I’m stalking her through the stacks, whoever she is. He remains fixated on her slightest movements, even as he retreats to the back of my mind now that she’s in our sights.
She’s new.
