But then something shifts in his expression.
The rage banks slightly, cooling into something harder to read, and when he speaks again, his voice carries weight that makes my bones ache.
“I’m a dragon.” The admission falls between us like a stone into still water. “A fire dragon. Centuries old. Cursed by a witch to lose my fire because I burned too hot, destroyed too much, and couldn’t control the rage that came with power. So, as punishment, she cursed me into the Appalachians to be this ice monster you see before you.” He straightens, pulling his hands back from the desk, and the frost begins to recede. “The flame in that dome? That’s what’s left of my fire. It’s dying, slowly extinguishing until I find ‘true contentment,’ but if I do not find ‘true contentment’before the flame goes out completely… so do I.”
I process this information in the space between heartbeats.
Dragon.
Cursed.
Dying flame.
Itshouldsound unbelievable.
Itwouldsound unbelievable if I hadn’t spent a month surrounded by vampires, shapeshifters, and beings that shouldn’t exist outside mythology and nightmare.
“So, Scar’s actually a vampire.” The observation escapes before I can stop it, pieces clicking into place with disturbing clarity. “That explains the no-sunlight thing.”
His expression flickers, surprise, maybe, that I’m accepting this so readily. “Yes. Scar’s a vampire. Five hundred years old. Wreck’s a wendigo who feeds on fear. Coil’s a basilisk shifter.Maul’s a werewolf. The rest…” he waves a hand dismissively, “… they’re all supernatural. All are bound to this club. All operating under laws that predate your species’ understanding of civilization.”
“And the witch?” I push, needing the full picture before my brain can properly categorize the impossibility of what I’m hearing. “The one whose laws you keep mentioning?”
“Is the one who cursed me.” His eyes hold mine with intensity that makes it impossible to look away. “She enforces the boundaries between your world and ours. Humans aren’t supposed to know we exist. Those who find out…” He doesn’t finish, but the implication lands with brutal clarity.
“Die.” I supply the word he won’t say in a hushed tone. “They die. Which is why you should have killed me the moment you found me touching your flame.”
“Yes.” The single syllable carries no apology, no regret, just a statement of fact delivered with the same neutrality of a trigger pull already decided. And suddenly, the fury that’s been building for four weeks reaches critical mass.
I surge to my feet, chair scraping back hard enough to hit the wall. “And you’re keeping me prisoner because you’re afraid of a witch? You’re a dragon who runs a criminal empire spanning multiple states. You have brothers who can tear apart hunters without breaking a sweat. You operate businesses that move millions through systems humans can’t even detect. But you’re afraid of…one… witch?”
His eyes flash dangerously. “You don’t understand—”
“I understandperfectly!”My voice climbs despite the cold pouring off him in waves that make my breath fog white. “You’reterrified!Terrified that killing me breaks some rule. Terrified that letting me go exposes your precious empire. Terrified that maybe,just maybe,I actually matter to that dying flame and you don’t know what that fucking means!” I lean forward, my handsbraced on the desk, meeting his glare with everything I’ve got. “Grow a spine and make a decision instead of keeping me in limbo while you figure out which option scares you less.”
The temperature plummets, not gradually, not like a warning, the air seizes, pressure slamming into me hard enough to steal my next breath as the space between us crystallizes in a violent rush. Something detonates outward from him, invisible for a heartbeat and then blindingly, brutally real.
Ice.
It erupts with concussive force, shards and plates forming faster than thought, the impact hurling me backward as if I’ve been struck by a physical blow. My shoulders hit the wall with bone-jarring force, the sound knocked clean out of my body while the air rips from my lungs. Cold tears through me instantly, a burning, invasive chill that bites straight through fabric and skin, sinking deeper with every frantic inhale.
I don’t fall.
I’m held.
Frozen pressure locks me in place, my feet lifting an inch from the floor as ice cages me against stone without a single touch. Frost races across my arms and throat in jagged veins, climbing fast enough that panic finally breaks free, the cold gnawing into nerves with a promise it doesn’t bother to hide.
This isn’t restraint meant to frighten.
It’s power, reminding me exactly how fragile I am if he chooses to stop holding back.
I stay still, unbroken, and that refusal unsettles him more than any scream ever could. I stare him down even as the cold eats into me, even as my lungs protest each shallow breath, even as fear tries to claw its way past the stubborn defiance I’ve wrapped around myself like armor.
“Do it!” The words scrape out of me, rough and steady despite the trembling starting in my limbs. “Kill me. I’m dead eitherway, aren’t I? At least this way, I go out knowing I didn’t let yousee… me… break!”
His eyes widen fractionally. It’s not shock, it is something deeper—recognition, maybe. Like I’ve said something that cuts through the rage and hits whatever’s left of the man beneath the monster.
The ice fractures. Cracks running through glassy structures hold me prisoner until they shatter completely, and I slump against the wall, gasping. My skin burns where the frost touched, angry red marks already blooming into patterns that will probably scar, but I’m breathing and conscious, and that’s more than I expected sixty seconds ago.
