“The water protects the female if she’s not of my species.” Each word comes clipped, controlled, bitten off as if he’s physically restraining himself from saying more. “It can be any water. The important part is that it shields the female the first time we join.” His fingers curl into fists at his sides, tendons standing out in sharp relief. “After that, burning is a nonissue.”
He moves to the door with sharp, jerky movements that lack his usual grace. His control is fracturing, splintering at the edges. I can see it in the way his shoulders bunch, in the rigid line of hisspine, in the heat that’s making the air around him waver like a mirage. “I have work to do.” The words came out strangled. “If you have other questions, we can address them later.”
The door closes behind him with barely a whisper of sound, though I sense the restraint it takes him not to slam it. The force of his departure creates a vacuum that makes the papers on my desk flutter and settle. The temperature in the room drops by several degrees almost immediately, leaving me shivering despite my internal fire.
I sit in the sudden silence, surrounded by shadows that have grown long and deep. The storm outside has moved closer; I can hear the distant rumble of thunder, feel the charge in the air that promises rain. The scent of ozone drifts through the gap beneath the door.
A flash of light catches my peripheral vision, bright enough to make me squint. I turn toward the window as warmth brushes against my senses, familiar and welcome after Finlay’s oppressive heat.
Mina’s familiar, Iris, hovers outside a shimmering presence wreathed in soft golden light, with parchment clutched in her talons. Her ethereal form pulses gently, like a heartbeat made visible. The sight of her sends a wave of warmth through my chest, easing some of the tension Finlay’s departure left behind. Even though her familiar, I can feel the echo of my mate’s presence, that golden thread that connects us across whatever distance separates us.
I cross the room, my footsteps muffled by the worn rug, and open the window. Cool evening air rushes in, carrying the scent of approaching rain and the sweet perfume of night-blooming flowers from the gardens below. The contrast to the stuffy,overheated office makes me gulp it down like a drowning man finding air.
Iris flies past me with barely a sound, just the whisper of wings that aren’t quite corporeal, and lands on my desk with the delicacy of falling snow. Her ethereal form cast dancing shadows across my scattered papers, illuminating the cramped handwriting and desperate theories I’ve compiled over two decades. I reach out, letting my fingers hover near her luminous form, and feel the phantom warmth of Mina’s touch through the familiar bond.
Over the last twenty-one years, my mate has sent Iris across our continent and the northern lands, gathering information for me. Piece by precious piece. Mina never questions why I need to know these things, never demands explanations for my obsessive hunt for answers. She understands the driving need to protect our daughter, to uncover the truth of what was done to me, to us. She just sends her familiar again and again, pulling threads from distant places and weaving them into a tapestry I’m only beginning to understand.
My throat tightens with emotion I don’t have time to process. Gratitude. Love. The bone-deep knowledge that I couldn’t have survived these twenty-one years of freedom without her. It seems my daughter isn’t the only chimera on record.
I unfold the parchment with trembling fingers, the paper crackling beneath my touch. It’s fine quality, the kind used by royalty, with the Fae king’s seal pressed into deep blue wax. The elegant script flows across the page in silver ink that catches the dying light, each letter precise and beautiful in a way that makes my handwriting look like the scratchings of a child. My eyes scan the words, and ice floods my veins despite the fire burning in my chest. My hands shake harder, making the parchment tremble.
The creation of chimeras only happens when there’s a fundamental shift about to occur. They are the answer to what the species lacks. I read the line again. Then again. My vision blurs at the edges. The chair scrapes against the floor as I sink into it, legs suddenly unable to support my weight. Outside, lightning flashes across the darkening sky, illuminating the office in stark white light before plunging it back into shadow. Thunder follows seconds later, making the windows rattle in their frames.
His letter continues, explaining how the mages have been systematically weakening dragons and other species for the last thousand years. Each word is a knife sliding between my ribs. The ink seems to swim on the page as my eyes track across sentences that rewrite everything I thought I knew. Intentional. It was all intentional.
My breath comes faster, harsher. The walls of the office feel like they’re closing in, the air growing thick and hard to pull into my lungs. My claws extend involuntarily, scoring deep grooves into the wooden armrest of my chair. The sound is sharp and grating in the silence. Chimeras exist to breed strength back into a species.
Dragons and basilisks have been hit the hardest on this continent. The words blur as rage builds hot and vicious behind my ribs, a living thing with teeth and claws that wants to tear free and burn everything in its path. My two daughters they’re the answer. The solution to a problem engineered by those who feared our power.
Raven. My sweet, fierce Raven with her chimera nature and her mates. She’s not an anomaly. She’s salvation incarnate. My throat constricts. The parchment crumples slightly in my gripbefore I force myself to loosen my hold, to keep reading even though every word feels like acid eating through my soul.
Orpheus is another chimera. The only male ever produced. Another piece of the puzzle, another answer to a question I didn’t know existed.
The Fae king’s words grow darker, his script pressing harder into the page as if his anger bled through the quill. The mages stole the ability to create the cursed eggs from his people. They twisted something sacred into something profane, corrupted a gift and turned it into a weapon. They use the eggs as prisons for the worst of their kind and for anyone else they deem too dangerous to walk free.
Like me.The two words echo in my mind like a death knell. Like Solaris, trapped and waiting for my daughter to free him. Young and powerful and guilty of nothing except being born with strength the mages couldn’t control.
Like countless others who never deserved the darkness forced upon them. How many? How many dragons and basilisks and other beings have been locked away, their power neutered, their bloodlines weakened, all because the mages wanted control?
Rain begins to fall outside, fat drops splattering against the windows. The sound is almost deafening in the quiet office, a drumbeat that matches the pounding of my heart. The storm breaks fully, wind howling around the stone walls, rain lashing sideways across the glass.
The parchment crumples in my fist as the truth settles into my bones with brutal clarity. The sharp edges bite into my palm, drawing blood that drips onto the desk, dark and viscous. Everything I’ve suffered, everything stolen from me — myfreedom, my years, my chance to watch Raven grow up it was never about justice or protection.
It was about control. About keeping dragons weak. About making sure we never rose to our full strength, never remembered what we were before they caged us.
The fire in my chest roars to life, consuming the ice, burning through shock and disbelief until only rage remains. Pure. Focused. Absolute.
My claws dig deeper into the chair arms, splintering wood. The temperature in the room spikes as my control slips, heat radiating from my body in waves that make the air shimmer. Papers curl at the edges, browning from the heat. The smell of smoke fills my nostrils.
Iris backs away from me slightly, her light flickering with concern. I force myself to breathe, to pull the fire back in before I burn down the entire office. The effort makes my muscles shake, makes sweat bead along my brow despite my natural tolerance for heat.
Outside, the storm rages. Inside, a different storm is building. And I’m going to tear that system apart, one cursed egg at a time.
Starting with Solaris. Raven will free him; give her the mate she needs. Then Finlay, once he realizes what fate has given him. Together, with the others, they’ll protect her.
The parchment falls from my hand onto the desk, spreading open like an accusation. The Fae king’s words stare back at me, damning and true. I rise from my chair slowly, bones aching with the weight of knowledge I can’t unknow. The storm continues outside, lightning painting the room in flashes of white, thunder shaking the foundations.
It feels appropriate. Like the world itself is responding to the rage burning through my veins. Let it storm. Let the heavens rage. It’s nothing compared to the fury of a dragon who’s finally learned the truth.
