And he would do it for me right now, calmly, with his hands still warm from touching my face. Because to him. . .I was the only thing in the world worth protecting.
The realization didn't arrive like a thought. It arrived like a temperature drop. The bedroom's warmth—the same warmth that had cradled me five seconds ago, that had laughed withme about my new hobby, that had blushed when I called him a prime grade bad ass motherfucker—had cooled around the edges.
All because the Dragon had arrived.
And I would need to deeply understand these two sides of him. I was lying beneath the man who had lovingly whisperedTorain his sleep and apologized for tears he hadn't caused. And I was also lying beneath a man who had just asked me, calmly, if I wanted him to murder a pregnant woman.
Both men were the same man.
That was the insanity my mind kept tripping over—the way these two versions of him weren't separate, weren't a switch he flipped, weren't a costume he changed into when the situation required it.
The Dragon was the man who had cocooned me all night. The man who had cocooned me all night was the Dragon. Loving me and lethally destroying another were not two different settings. They were the same setting, expressed differently depending on what the room required.
The Dragon held me because he loved me.
The Dragon would burn the world for the same fucking reason.
And he was waiting formyanswer.
Jesus Christ. . .If I say yes. . .he will really do it. . .
I was new to loving a man who meant his warnings literally.
He waited for my response, and his gaze never left my face. His eyes had gone dark, almost pitch-black. The brown gone deep enough to disappear. And what lived behind them was the unyielding grip of a beast, ready to strike. Its hissing breath laced with poison and malice. It was an unrelenting force, an endless void with jagged edges that threatened to swallow everything in its path, leaving only emptiness and destruction in its wake.
Kenji was waiting.
No.
The Dragon was waiting for his Tiger to tell him whether to set a pregnant woman on fire, and I had to gather myself for that fact. Knowing that whether I liked this part of him or not. . .there would be no escape.
Then, the dragon-shadow rose from his back, his shoulders, the breadth of him that was caging me against the silk. The shadowy wisps uncoiled out of his spine. Long, dark ribbons of smoke peeled away from the line of his shoulders first.
Then more.
Then more still.
Soon, the smoke gathered itself in the air above us, thickening, darkening, taking shape as it climbed.
A neck unspooling.
Scales appearing and then shimmering.
A massive body forming and taking up the entire fucking ceiling.
Shit.
Its serpentine spine stretched the full length of the bedroom. Its body arched along the ceiling and pressed against the corners of the room until the corners weren't corners anymore but the soft inside curve of a shadowy beast that had filled the whole space. Its tail dragged down the wall in a slow, shimmering coil and laid itself across the foot of the bed like a chain made of obsidian.
The wings unfurled along the walls and stretched themselves wide.
Its head tilted down toward me. Those eyes were still gold and they watched me, probably waiting for my answer too.
It’s still. . .big from the party. How long will it last? Is it. . .stronger somehow?
I swallowed. “Kenji. . .she’s pregnant and—”
“Just tell me—”
