Weak.
Pathetic.
“Who’s nothing now, bitch?” I taunted him with a vicious smile as my hands closed around his throat, watching as he struggled to breathe through the blood dripping down his throat from a shattered nose. Before I could see the light die from his eyes as they rolled back, I was shoved off by one of the other idiots. I rolled and stood with a manic laugh, surveying the damage. Idiot #4 was trying to resuscitate his friend while idiots #2 and #3 rushed at me, swinging wide like amateur brawlers.
A sadistic thrill raced through me as they kept swinging, kept missing, and when I finally saw an opening?—
There.
With a grunt, I struck idiot #2 in the chest. And then I heard it, the stuttering of his heartbeat, once, twice. He was dead before he hit the ground, eyes fixed on me in confusion as the electrical impulses from his brain fired for the last time.
“Colin!” Idiot #3 cried, dropping to the ground and shaking his friend in desperation. Something violent, vicious, burned within me in voracious triumph. I wiped the blood from my mouth, having let one through so I could take the opening, and spit it at his feet.
“You fucker!” he screamed, rising more swiftly than I anticipated and swiped at me with claws—another shifter, then. Narrowly avoiding getting gutted, I rolled with the force of his momentum and we grappled on the hard, cold pavement. When I landed on top of him, just like #1, my hands first found his throat, then covered his mouth and nose as my knees pinned his arms.
I saw my reflection in his wide, wild eyes.
Slits for pupils.
Fangs turning my grin feral.
My skin began to glow.
My vision whited out.
Pain washed over me so suddenly I couldn’t even scream.
Instead, Iroared.
Windows shattered and crashed on top of the human spectators surrounding us.
I rolled off his charred body, desperately clutching my head in until blood ran down my face, scalp shredded by the new razor-sharp claws extending from my fingers.
The heavy scent of ozone filled the air as shrieks of terror cut through the fog in my mind. It felt like my head was going to fucking explode, unable to contain the power that was ripping me apart, reforming my body.
A baptism by fire.
By white dragonflame.
Moratus. The word echoed in my mind just as a deranged laugh left my chest, but it wasn’t mine. It was anewvoice. The same voice, I realized, that had shown me the opening I needed to end my attacker’s life with one hit.
Show them what it means to beking.
As my body contorted farther than any human could survive, I surrendered to the primal, instinctual urge to free the beast trapped within.
My dragon.
My monster.
My savior.
All along I continued to bellow as agony seared through my mangled body, dragonflame incinerating me from the inside out to reveal the new obsidian scales beneath vaporized flesh. Crazed screaming faded into an ear-piercing roar as theravenous power running through my veins exploded outward, desperate to devour and consume whatever remained from the chaos my dragon wrought.
I rose from the flames of my epiphaneia a creature of legend, of terror and destruction.
A conqueror, raining molten white fire over the field of his victory.
Aking.
