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Chapter 2

Kavan

Three months had passed since I opened my eyes to find my world fundamentally altered. Three months of waking with the crushing weight of what I had done pressing against my ribs like a slab of iron. Today, this very afternoon, the Alliance delegation would land with their diplomat to help my people recover what my grief had cost them.

I stood before the arched window of my private chambers, watching the morning sun climb above the eastern mountains and wash Argia's white stone ramparts in shades of burnt amber. From this height, the entire valley unfolded below me, thick forests that had grown wild during our long sleep, the rushing river slicing through the landscape like hammered silver, and the terraced fields my people were slowly coaxing back to life. It should have been a sight that brought comfort. It should have filled me with hope for the future.

Instead, my thoughts remained tethered to the ones who had never opened their eyes.

Forty-seven souls. Forty-seven of my people had closed their eyes seven hundred and fifty years ago and never took another breath. I had walked the quiet hibernation chambers myself during those first raw days after waking, standing over each still form while the silence pressed into my ears where strong heartbeats should have been. Some had been hardened warriors who had bled at my side. Others were younglings, barely old enough to shift into their scales, cheated of the chance to live.

Every single life lost rested squarely on my shoulders.

The Alliance healers called it an unintended consequence of extended hibernation, detailing in cold, sterile reports how certain Drakhoni physiologies could not endure seven and a half centuries of stasis. But clinical terms could not wash away the truth. If I had maintained control on Earth, if I had not surrendered to blind grief and rage until I reduced an entire province to smoking ash, none of this would have happened. My people would have lived out their natural spans, taken mates, raised children, and grown old beneath our own sun.

Instead, they had paid the price for my failing.

I pressed my palm against the cool glass, trying to anchor myself in the present, but the past had sunk its talons deep into my chest and refused to let go. The memories had been surfacing like this for weeks, sharp and relentless.

Marion.

Even letting her name take shape in my mind felt hazardous, but I could not stop the tide. Seven hundred and fifty years should have turned that wound into dull scar tissue, yet the forced stasis had preserved every drop of agony as though it had occurred yesterday.

If I closed my eyes, her scent still drifted through the dark corridors of my memory. She smelled of crushed wildflowers and summer rain, carrying a delicate sweetness that belonged entirely to the rhythm of her pulse. That scent had caught me the moment I saw her standing on the chalk cliffs of Étretat, her dark hair lashing in the Channel wind as she looked out over the gray sea. I had been aloft in my dragon form, circling high enough that no ordinary human should have noticed me, yet she had tilted her head back as if she sensed my shadow across the sun. Our gazes locked across the empty air.

In that single heartbeat, I was certain I had found the miracle every Drakhoni prayed for.

A blood singer. It was the rarest gift our species could ever receive. Most dragons lived their entire lives without ever meeting one, a female whose blood did not simply smell sweet, but sang a distinct melody that resonated directly into your marrow and awakened the most ancient instincts of the soul. Our oldest teachings claimed a dragon recognized his blood singer without logic or doubt, through a physical truth as unquestioned as his own breath. I had no reason to question what I felt.

I believed I had found my destined mate, only to lose her before the sunrise.

The memory of that night remained the most treasured and agonizing thing I owned. I had shifted into my human form and approached her on the cliffside, moving slowly so I would not startle her. Marion had not fled. She offered me a weary, knowing smile, as though she had spent years waiting for someone to find her. We talked for hours above the crashing tide, and she told me of her brutal husband, a noble who treated her like livestock, a man who had claimed her solely for her family's lands and harbored nothing but cruelty in his heart.

I had noticed the dark bruises ringing her wrists when the wind caught her sleeves, and the fading discoloration along her throat that she had tried to conceal beneath a high collar. Marion was frightened of traveling to the stars, but she was far more terrified of the monster sharing her bed, and she agreed to flee Earth with me. We met again in the dead of night, hidden in the loft of an abandoned barn at the edge of the estate. When she moved into my arms and the melody of her blood hummed between us, I swore I would tear apart anything that tried to harm her. I intended to carry her to Drakhone and crown her as my queen, ensuring she never felt fear again.

Yet I had not bitten her that night. I had not shared my venom to seal our bond. Some inexplicable hesitation, an instinct I could neither name nor fathom, had held my fangs back.

Before we could take flight, betrayal fell upon us. An informant had spotted our meeting and alerted Lord Huntingdon. The warlord arrived with two hundred armed men in iron mail, bearing heavy broadswords and pikes, as if cold steel could deter a dragon defending his mate.

I'd shifted instantly. I took my true form and tore the roof from the barn, roaring a challenge that shook the valley while heat gathered in my chest, ready to incinerate any man who stood between me and Marion. None could have survived my fire.

Huntingdon knew it too. He recognized he could not win the battle, so he struck the one blow that would destroy me forever.

He plunged his sword directly through Marion's heart.

I watched her collapse, watched that singing blood spill into the dirt, and the fragile tether holding my sanity snapped. The wrath that took me was not a conscious decision. It was a cataclysm. I tore Huntingdon apart with my bare claws before his men could even raise their shields. Then I let the fire consume the world. I burned his fortress, his garrisons, his surrounding villages, and every acre of land he had ever ruled.

By the time the red haze cleared, thousands were dead.

Now, standing in the quiet of my tower with Marion's melody reduced to a ghost of memory, the silence felt louder than any roar. It stood as a permanent monument to everything I had loved and destroyed.

I turned my back on the window, forcing the old grief down beneath iron discipline. The Alliance ship would arrive shortly, and my people required a king who was fully present, not a creature drowning in ancient regrets.

Seven hundred and fifty years was a staggering span of time, even for a race with our longevity. The galaxy had marched onward while we lay frozen in the dark. While my people preferred the simplicity of stone hearths and open skies, we needed modern tools if we were going to survive. We needed advanced medicine, long-range communication relays, and agricultural technology to feed a population that had skipped centuries in a single breath. Not to mention the human mates that kept my kind from extinction.

That meant negotiating with the Alliance once more.

I harbored little trust for their council. The previous Prime, Nuerik, had been a calculating politician who manipulated treaties and seemed to relish placing our world under quarantine stasis. However, reports indicated the leadership had shifted dramatically during our slumber. A Vaktaire female named Serna had risen to the rank of Prime through merit and honor rather than backroom bargains. Even more intriguing, she had taken a human male as her mate, elevating him to Prime Consort.