My first tear slid down my face before I understood it was coming.
I made no sound as I looked up at my mother.
I miss you and. . .sometimes that emptiness . . .the fact that I will never see you again. . .it is hard to understand.
A second tear left my eye.
Maybe more.
It had been so long since I’d gazed at a picture of my mother for more than a few seconds.
I miss you. I fucking MISS you!
Shivering, I looked at Jobon’s picture and then Hiroko’s. No words formed in my head, yet more tears came.
They’re watching the Dragon weaken. Surely they are. . .
I couldn’t see the Claws, but I felt their gazes on me. Or maybe that was just what I told myself.
Nyomi's arms went around me, and I let her hold me.
How could she be so calm as dangerous men broke around her?
My head dropped against her shoulder. And the Dragon of Japan cried into his woman's collarbone like a boy who had lost everything and only just now been allowed to realize it. “D-damn you, Tora. . .Damn you.”
And then. . .I thought of the sentence from the book I’d found within my mother’s belongings, the line that had been living in my chest since earlier that day. . .
“To become something powerful, you must first be buried."
Chapter fourteen
The Queen's Risk
Nyomi
I'dtakenahugerisk with the grieving space.
The biggest risk of my life. The kind of risk that could have burned down everything I'd built with the Claws in the last few days.
Because if it hadn't worked—if Kenji had turned cold on me, if Hiro had hardened instead of broken, if the Claws had walked out of the ballroom and never looked back—it would have broken my heart.
And softness, with men like these, was a currency that did not replenish.
I thought back to one of the first things Hiroko had taught me.
Hiroko tilted her head. "Let me tell you a secret most women never hear: The stronger the man, the deeper his ache to surrender."
I blinked. "You think so?"
She smiled. "I know so. Alpha men spend every moment of every day making decisions, commanding people, and orchestrating worlds. They wear their dominance like armor. But armor is heavy. And power is lonely. In the quiet moments—in the dark—they long for relief. They want to be told what to do. To be undone. Most die never getting that relief."
"Why?"
"Because true surrender requires immense trust, and many men of this sort see it as weakness."
Of course I wanted the Claws to dance, drink, and have fun at their party. They had been boys who had never been allowed to laugh.
But as I planned it all. . .I considered the fact that boys who had never been allowed to laugh had probably also never been allowed to cry.
