Chapter 17: Mating Rivalry
The fireplace poker was cold and stupidly heavy in Hana’s hands. She hefted it, her knuckles white. “This is useless, isn’t it?”
Taichi didn’t answer. He was staring at the archway leading to the living room, one hand splayed over his stomach. The low thrum had become a frantic, dizzying vibration, a swarm of bees trapped under his skin. It wasn’t fear. It was a warning system, and it was screaming.
The air pressure dropped, making their ears pop. The chandeliers flickered, not the gold-leafed ones from before, but older, darker iron fixtures that had somehow manifested on the ceiling, their light now a sullen red.
“Ryuu,” Taichi whispered.
A sound like shattering stained glass, multiplied by a thousand, echoed from the direction of the penthouse foyer. Not a physical breaking. Something worse. The taste of ozone and burnt honey—Ryuu’s signature scent—was ripped away, replaced by the acrid sting of lightning and wet stone.
A figure stepped into the dining room doorway.
He was tall, almost as tall as Ryuu, but where Ryuu’s power was a banked furnace, this man’s was a live wire, crackling and unstable. His hair was the colour of ashes, his eyes a pale, watery grey that fixed on Taichi with terrifying focus. He wore a modern, expensive suit, now singed and smoking at the cuffs.
“There you are,” the man said. His voice was a scratchy tenor, edged with a static hum. “The little miracle. Smells human. Mostly.”
Hana stepped in front of Taichi, poker raised. “Back off. He’s got a dragon boyfriend. A really pissy one.”
The man’s lips peeled back from teeth that were just a shade too sharp, too uniform. “Kurosawa. The Thief of Hope.” He took a step, and the marble floor cracked under his heel, a spiderweb of fissures spreading. “He stole my clan’s last viable mate. A theft of genetic destiny. So I’m stealing you back. The math is simple.”
He moved.
It wasn’t a blur. It was a discontinuity. One moment he was by the door, the next he was halfway across the room, a hand with elongated, claw-like nails reaching for Taichi’s throat.
Hana swung.
The poker connected with his forearm with the sound of a hammer hitting rebar. She screamed, the vibration jolting up her arms. The man didn’t even flinch. He backhanded her, a casual, dismissive flick. She flew sideways, crashing into a sideboard with a sickening crunch of wood and a gasp of expelled air.
“Hana!” Taichi lunged for her, but the stranger’s hand closed around his bicep. The grip was freezing, a deep cold that seared.
“Don’t worry,” the ash-haired dragon hissed, yanking Taichi close. His breath smelled of thunderstorms and old graves. “My clan is not so crude. We’ll keep you comfortable. You just have to do your job.”
Panic, pure and animal, shot through Taichi. But beneath it, deeper, the frantic vibration in his core coalesced into a single, hot point of fury. It wasn’t his. It was a echo, a reflection. A bond.
He didn’t think. He brought his free hand up, not to hit, but to shove against the dragon’s chest. As he made contact, a word—not Japanese, not any language he knew—bubbled up from some primal place and tore from his throat. “Khas!”
A pulse of warm, amber energy, faint but tangible, erupted from his palm.
The rival dragon lord recoiled with a snarl, not from pain, but from surprise. The scent of ozone and forge-fire returned, overwhelming, filling the room like a physical presence.
The wall to their left didn’t break.
It vaporized.
Polished mahogany panels, plaster, and steel reinforcement ceased to be as a form of immense, scaled darkness filled the new space. Obsidian plates, each the size of a shield, gleamed under the red light. A neck, thick as an ancient tree trunk, arched. A head lowered, crowned with spiralling ebony horns. Ryuu’s eyes were not molten gold now. They were chips of white-hot stellar core, burning with a rage so old it had witnessed continents drown.
He did not roar.
The sound he made was a low, tectonic rumble that vibrated in their teeth, their bones, the very fillings in their molars. It was the sound of a mountain deciding to move.
The rival dragon—Escal, his name surfaced in Taichi’s mind through the bond—shoved Taichi away and faced the true beast. “Kurosawa! You hoard what you cannot rightfully claim!”
Ryuu’s answer was a swipe of one colossal forelimb. Claws, like curved sabres of black glass, tore through the space where Escal had been. The dragon lord was fast, dematerializing into a whip-crack of grey mist, reforming by the shattered wall.
“He bears the Oath-Scent!” Escal shrieked, his human form flickering, scales erupting along his arms. “A bond you forced! My clan’s scribes found the ritual first!”
“Your clan’s scribes are dust, and their rituals are desperate ghosts.” Ryuu’s voice was not a sound heard with ears. It was a pressure in the mind, vast and merciless. The dragon’s maw, lined with teeth that could sever cathedral columns, opened slightly. A glow, deep and terrible, ignited in his throat. Not fire. Something purer. Plasma.
Taichi scrambled to Hana, who was groaning, holding her ribs. “Can you move?”
“I think he cracked a filing cabinet,” she wheezed, staring past him at the two mythic beings. “Oh, my god. He’s… he’s actually…”
Escal moved again, not attacking Ryuu, but flowing like smoke across the ceiling, reaching for Taichi once more. He was a scavenger, a strategist. He didn’t want a fight. He wanted the prize.
Ryuu was faster.
The massive tail, a whip of layered obsidian, snapped upwards. It didn’t hit Escal. It hit the space he was moving towards. The calculated impact sent a shockwave through the air, throwing Escal’s form into solidity. In that instant, Ryuu’s head darted forward, serpent-fast.
The plasma blast never came. Instead, his jaws closed around Escal’s torso.
There was a wet, crunching snap.
Escal screamed, a truly human sound of agony. Grey light, like dying moonlight, leaked from between Ryuu’s teeth. He shook his head once, violently, and flung the rival dragon lord across the room.
Escal’s body hit the far wall, sliding down to leave a slick, dark trail. He twitched, his form shrinking, fully human again, his expensive suit torn and wet. He clutched his ruined middle, breath coming in ragged, bubbling pulls.
Ryuu shifted. It was not a slow transformation. One moment the dragon filled the broken wall, the next he was just Ryuu, striding naked and unconcerned across the ruined floor. His skin was sheened with a faint, heat-haze shimmer. He stopped before the dying Escal.
“You pierced my wards,” Ryuu said, his voice now human-cold. “You touched what is mine.”
Escal spat a glob of dark blood. “One… clutch… won’t save us. You know… what’s coming. The Silence. You’re just… decorating a tomb.” His watery eyes found Taichi’s, a last, desperate malice in them. “He’ll… burn you out… from the inside… little miracle…”
His body shuddered and went still. The grey light in his eyes faded, leaving them dull and empty.
The oppressive, electrified pressure in the room vanished. Only the ruin remained: the vaporized wall, the cracked marble, the shattered sideboard, the blood. The scent of lightning faded, leaving only Ryuu’s smoldering warmth and the coppery tang of violence.
Ryuu turned. He went to Taichi first, his hands—warm, human hands—cupping his face, scanning him for injury. “Where did he touch you?”
“My arm. It’s just cold.” Taichi was trembling, the after-shock setting in. The frantic vibration in his belly was subsiding, softening into a weak, distressed flutter. “Hana…”
Ryuu nodded, moving to Hana. He placed a hand gently on her ribs. A soft, amber glow emanated from his palm. Hana gasped, a shudder running through her.
“The bone is cracked. I have stabilized it. The pain will be gone by morning,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. He helped her to her feet.
She looked at the corpse by the wall, then at the massive, dragon-sized hole leading to the night sky. Wind whistled through it. “Okay,” she said, her voice thin. “So. That’s the ‘ill intent.’ Got it.”
Ryuu ignored the body, returning to Taichi. He pulled him close, wrapping him in an embrace that felt like a fortress. Taichi buried his face in Ryuu’s neck, breathing him in.
“You spoke a word of the Old Tongue,” Ryuu murmured into his hair, awe cutting through the residual anger. “A word of repulsion. You felt our connection and you used it.”
“I just… I wanted him away.”
“You defended our young.” Ryuu held him tighter. “My fierce, miraculous heart.”
Hana limped over, picking her way through debris. She looked at the two of them, then at the destruction. The practical horror finally hit her. “What do we do about…?” She gestured at Escal’s body.
Ryuu didn’t look away from Taichi. “The building will consume it. The wards will digest the evidence. By dawn, this room will be restored.” He said it with the certainty of someone who had done it before.
The chill in Taichi’s arm was finally receding, replaced by Ryuu’s pervasive heat. But another cold was taking root, deeper, in his mind. He saw the empty grey eyes. Heard the final, gurgling words.
He’ll burn you out from the inside.
The twin lives inside him fluttered, as if seeking reassurance. Taichi held onto Ryuu, the solid, real pressure of him, and tried to believe the danger had passed.
Outside the gaping hole in the wall, the city lights glittered, indifferent. Below, in the streets, life went on, completely unaware that a war for existence had just claimed a soldier forty stories above them.