Contentment.
Redemption.
Words meant for men who haven’t burned cities to the ground and called it justice.
I bank hard, my wings snapping against the wind as the mountains scream around me. The sound rattles through my skull, but it doesn’t touch the hollow beneath my ribs.
Flight isn’t freedom.
It’s patrol.
It’s an obligation.
It’s making sure everything that belongs to me staysexactlywhere it should.
My eyes sweep the western border, the land carved into my memory by decades of bloodshed and rule. Valleys, ridges, kill zones, every inch accounted for.
Then the air betrays itself.
Not with sound, but with scent.
Heat bleeds into the cold, thin at first, then unmistakable. I turn, angling left as my vision narrows, and cutting through the twilight like a fresh wound, smoke coils upward from the forest floor, thick, dark, and fucking arrogant. It stains the sky as it rises, carrying the stench of human fire, oil, and the sharp metallic bite of gunpowder.
Someone lit a flame on my goddamn mountain.
My wings drive harder, frost cracking along my scales as something old and vicious shifts beneath the ice. This land is marked, claimed, and protected by teeth, magic, and men who don’t ask twice.
Every rule here is simple and final.
You do not trespass.
You do not burn.
And you sure as hell don’t hunt on my territory.
Whoever’s down there didn’t miss the warnings.
They decided to test me.
I fold my wings and dive, plummeting toward the clubhouse with enough velocity to shatter bone if I were anything less than what I am. The ground rushes up to meet me, but I pull up at the last second, my massive form casting shadows across the clearing as I transform mid-descent.
I hit the ground on two feet instead of four, my feet slamming into frozen earth hard enough to fracture the frost beneath them, ice splintering outward in sharp white veins. Steam pours from my bare chest in heavy plumes, breath tearing free of my lungs as the last of the shift burns itself out beneath my skin. I never bother with shirts when I fly. They don’t survive the transformation, and I stopped caring about the waste a long time ago.
The cold night air barely registers.
There’s too much ice coiled beneath my ribs for that, though my fury simmers hot and tight as bones grind back into place and my wings collapse into muscle, scales receding until all that remains is the man the world is allowed to see.
My dragon doesn’t leave.
It just settles deeper, waiting.
I grab my jeans, hanging outside the clubhouse door, and slide them on, the clubhouse doors slam open before I reach out to them.
Noise, movement, and urgency spill out in a rush, voices overlapping, feet scraping against concrete, the sharp tang of blood riding the air like a challenge. Scar stands in the doorway, his presence filling the frame as completely as the violence he’s known for. His red eyes gleam beneath the harsh interiorlighting, his fangs already descended, lips pulled tight as though the restraint costs him something.
The scar that carves down his face, a souvenir from a berserker long since dead, looks darker beneath the lights, the old wound standing out against pale skin.
He isn’t alone.