Black stone carved into impossible angles, towers that seem to lean toward each other in conspiracy, walls that drink the dying sunlight and give nothing back. I spent weeks inside those walls, and still the sight of them makes my stomach clench with remembered fear.
Lakhu’s deadline is sunset. We’re arriving at sunset a whole day early—not to negotiate, but to shove his ultimatum down his throat.
Beneath me, Zyphon’s wings cut through the air with powerful strokes. His scales are warm under my thighs, his presence a steady anchor against the chaos we’re flying into. I can feel his anticipation humming through his body, shadows stirring beneath obsidian scales veined with cracks of purple light.
My Zyphon. I’m not quite ready to say those words out loud, but I feel them settling into my bones with the same certainty as my own heartbeat. Mine. The dragon who kept a garden alive. The man who watched me sleep until dawn because he was afraid I’d vanish if he closed his eyes.
We’re going to survive this. We’re going to kill Lakhu, rescue Selene, and then we’re going to figure out what comes next. Together.
Around us, fifty dragons darken the sky. Bronze and gold and red, scales glinting in the last light of day. The Brotherhood in all its terrible glory, descending on the Shadow Clan like judgment made flesh.
Drayke leads the formation, his massive form cutting a path through the gathering dusk. I can feel his fury from here—a heat that has nothing to do with dragon fire. Selene is down there, somewhere in that nightmare of stone and shadow. And nothing in this world or any other is going to stop him from reaching her.
I understand that desperation now. Understand what it means to have someone worth dying for—worth killing for. The woman I was in my first life loved with passion, but she’d never known the particular terror of loving someone you’ve already lost once.
I know it now. Feel it in my chest every time I look at Zyphon and remember that he spent over half his life grieving me.
The stronghold’s defenses flare to life as we approach. Wards shimmer into visibility, layer upon layer of protection accumulated over centuries. Shadow-constructs materialize on the walls—not dragons, but things made of darkness, vaguely humanoid shapes with too many limbs and no faces.
Lakhu’s welcome party.
“Ready?” Zyphon’s voice rumbles through his chest, vibrating against my legs.
I gather my shadow-flame, let it build in my palms until my hands glow with dark fire. “Let’s burn this place to the ground.”
War begins with fire.
Drayke strikes first, his bronze form smashing into the main gate with enough force to shake the mountain itself. Stone explodes outward. Wards shriek and shatter. And then he’s through, fire pouring from his jaws in rivers of gold and crimson, shadow-constructs dissolving before the heat.
The Brotherhood follows.
Dragons pour through the breach in Drayke’s wake, filling the air with roars and flame. Shadow dragons rise to meet them—Lakhu’s forces, dark-scaled and vicious, fighting for the prince who promised them power. The sky becomes a chaos of scales and claws and fire, dragons tearing at each other with primal fury.
I watch from Zyphon’s back, my fire gathering in my palms, and something fierce blooms in my chest. This is what a family looks like when one of their own is taken. This is what love looks like when it has claws and wings and centuries of rage to draw upon.
Rurik tears through the enemy ranks with gleeful abandon. His red-gold form is a blur of motion, flames trailing from his wings, laughter echoing across the battlefield even in his shifted form. He fights without strategy, without caution—pure chaos incarnate, destroying everything in his path simply because it’s there to be destroyed.
A shadow dragon twice his size swoops toward him. Rurik doesn’t dodge. He meets the attack head-on, teeth sinking into the enemy’s throat, claws raking across scales, the two of them spiraling through the air in a deadly dance. When they separate,the shadow dragon falls. Rurik rises, blood on his scales, still laughing.
I understand now why Aisling fell for him. There’s something magnetic about that reckless joy, that refusal to take anything seriously even in the middle of a battlefield. He makes war look like a game, and somehow that makes it less terrifying.
Auren is his opposite—cold where Rurik is hot, precise where his brother is reckless. He moves through the battle with surgical efficiency, every strike calculated, every movement designed to cause maximum damage with minimum exposure. Shadow dragons fall before him not in explosions of violence but in quick, clean kills. One moment they’re fighting; the next they’re dead, and Auren has already moved on to the next target.
He fights like a mind, not a heart. No wasted energy. No unnecessary risks. Just cold, relentless precision that leaves a trail of corpses in his wake.
And Drayke?—
Drayke is devastation given form. His fire burns hotter than any I’ve seen, fueled by desperate love, by the claiming bond screaming Selene’s location through every fiber of his being. He doesn’t fight the shadow dragons so much as annihilate them, leaving nothing but ash and echoes where enemies once stood.
Nothing stands between him and his mate. Nothing survives the attempt.
The main assault is doing its job. Drawing Lakhu’s forces, splitting his attention, creating the opening we need.
“Now,” Zyphon says, and banks hard to the left, away from the chaos of the main battle.
The secondary entranceis exactly where I remembered—a crack in the mountain’s face, barely visible in the fading light, hidden behind wards that pulse with cold malevolence.
Zyphon lands on a narrow ledge, his claws finding purchase on the stone. Rurik follows, Aisling still clinging to his back, her face pale but determined. The two dragons shift in near-unison, forms shrinking from massive predators to dangerous men.
