Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 104141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
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'd taken a huge risk 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.
And what if their grief was older than their lethality?
I think. . .this is working. . .
I kneeled with Kenji beside the altar for his mother, my hand resting on his back, my eyes on the sway of candlelight along the wall of faces. His shoulders were still trembling under my palm.
My Dragon was not finished with his tears just yet, and I would not rush him.
I glanced behind me and saw Hiro on the floor beneath Nura's frame with two monks on either side of him and Daisuke soothing Hiro and brushing Hiro’s hair away from his face. I watched Reo on his knees before his mother, Kaede with his jaw finally unclenched, staring at his grandfather.
My heart pounded.
The violin notes softened to a long, tender lullaby that a mother would hum over a sleeping child.
I raised my view to the dragon-shadow and grinned. The beast was flying along his mother's picture. Its long body was wispy, shadowy, and now for the first time shimmering black. Thin curls of darkness trailed behind it in rippling ribbons, breaking off at the tail and dissolving into the air before new ribbons formed along its spine.
Now I could actually see scales. My heart almost stopped. The scales were this deep black with a faint edge of silver where the light slid across.
Over and over, the dragon-shadow slowly flew around his mother’s picture. When it turned, sparks scattered. Little flecks of light, like crushed diamond dust, drifted down from the underside of its belly and disappeared before they reached the floor. Every beat of its wings released more of them.
In fact. . .the air around the altar had become a slow snowfall of shimmer.
Wow.
And the dragon-shadow’s eyes had gone from red to gold.
In my arms, Kenji silently cried and up above us, the dragon-shadow glided along their mother’s frame. Next, it flew right through the picture.
I parted my lips in shock.
The beast's body passed clean through as if the photograph were a doorway.
Seconds later, the dragon-shadow came back around again on the other side. Smoke trailed behind it in long graceful curls.
I watched it circle her.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
And each pass the dragon-shadow grew larger, sparks multiplied at its tail, and more ribbons of black smoke broke loose and drifted upward to pool against the ballroom’s ceiling.
This has to be a good thing. Right?
When Kenji had first walked into the ballroom, the dragon-shadow had been smaller than I had ever seen it. No bigger than a large cat, curled tight against the tension of Kenji’s muscular body.
I had watched it shrink further during the altar reveal, drawn in close to Kenji’s huge shoulders.