She locked eyes with him.
"Yes. I wrote the prophecy. I set every term. I was then bound in chains so I couldn’t claim him even when he was ready." Her chin lifted, defiant even through the flush. "But I did yesterday. And I won’t apologize for a single goddamn second of it."
Ashworth didn’t laugh.
The gleeful mischief drained from his face like water down a sink. What remained was sothing quieter. Older. Eyes that had seen empires born, dragons rise, and dragons burn.
He went back to counting his money.
Slowly. thodically. The soft rustle of bills the only sound in the room.
Dravenna watched him. Waited.
Say sothing, you old bastard.
The stare could have stripped varnish.
You don’t get to drag that confession out of and then just sit there counting twenties like it’s nothing.
He finished a bundle. Set it down with reverence. Reached for the next.
Then, so quiet it was almost lost in the paper:
"I’m glad."
Dravenna blinked. "What?"
"I’m glad you’ve finally managed to beco free. Today>" He still didn’t look up. "For the record, I have to admit, the prophecy was a beautiful chain, Dravenna. You shackled yourself to him before he ever had the chance to choose you. And now—"
A small, real smile touched his mouth.
"—nothing can stop you from standing beside him in the open. From being exactly what you were always ant to be."
He paused. The counting stopped entirely.
"I only hope lissa finds the strength to break free too the way you broke free from the Angels."
The last bundle landed softly on the desk.
Ashworth set it down with the careful precision of a man handling nitroglycerin right before he lights the fuse.
"There’s sothing else."
His voice had changed.
Gone was the cackling degenerate who kissed cash and made the Dragoness sputter like a teenager. In his place sat the Sage—the title Phei’s father had once whispered with reverence. Not teacher.
Not master.
Sage.
The old word for those who’d walked so far down the shadowed path they could glimpse the shape of tomorrow through the smoke.
"Sothing has awakened." Ashworth’s eyes were distant now, staring at a horizon only he could see. "Yesterday night."
"I felt it." Dravenna’s voice had gone soft, almost reverent. "The Void-Ice. Just a small part of His heritage finally breaking through—"
"And not just his heritage." Ashworth shook his head once. Slow. Grave. "Sothing responded. From inside one of Legacies families. From beneath one of them. The mont Phei’s blood sang out, sothing ancient heard the note...and began to stir. If I am not wrong, that ancient being, might’ve be a catalyst of his awakening."
A chill slid down Dravenna’s spine—not fear, exactly. The sa tremor she’d felt in the stadium: a subtle fracture running through foundations she’d believed eternal.
"What are you saying, old man?"
"I’m saying—" Ashworth finally t her gaze. Those eyes had watched Seiryū grow from feral child to nearly blazing dragon, then watched that unawakened dragon burn to ash. "—chaos is coming. Not the loud kind that announces itself with trumpets. The quiet kind. The kind that seeps through hairline cracks, poisons wells, turns brother against brother long before anyone notices the water ever tasted wrong."
He leaned back in the chair that wasn’t his.
"And when it arrives, Dragoness...we’re going to need every chain we’ve ever broken."
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk amid the green towers of cash, voice dropping to the gravelly timbre of a man who’d long since stopped pretending the world was kind.
"Phei is going to rip through the Legacies like a hurricane through beachfront condos. Not because he’s angry. Not because he’s cruel. Because that’s what dragons do when they finally wake up—they burn down every cage that ever tried to hold them."
His eyes narrowed, the twinkle gone, replaced by sothing older and colder.
"And the Legacies? They’ve spent generations perfecting cages. Cages for power. Cages for secrets. Cages for things that should have stayed six feet under and forgotten."
"You think they’ll fight back."
"I am saying they’ll try." Ashworth’s laugh ca out bitter, like black coffee left too long. "And I think they’ll fail spectacularly. And in failing, they’ll wake things that have been napping since before any of us drew breath. Things with teeth. Things that don’t negotiate."
He paused. Let the silence sit heavy.
"But that’s not what keeps up at three a.m."
"Then what does?"
"lissa."
The na landed heavier this ti. Not a blade. A stone dropped into still water. Ripples spreading slow and inevitable.
"She’s carried this burden solo for a decade," Ashworth said quietly. "Shielding that boy. Guiding him. Keeping the wolves at bay when he didn’t even know wolves existed and he even thought she hated him. And now—"
He opened his weathered hands, palms up, helpless in a way that didn’t suit him. "—now he’s awake. Now the real ga starts. And the chaos he’s about to rain down on every Legacy family from here to the coast?"
He t her gaze. No mischief. Just truth.
"She can’t weather it alone."
Silence stretched thin between them, taut as piano wire.
"What are you asking to do?"
"I’m not asking." Ashworth’s voice carried the quiet inevitability of prophecy—not the pretty kind Dravenna had scripted for herself, but the kind that simply was. "I’m telling you. Stay close to him liker you were ant to be. Stay close to her. When the storm hits—and it will hit—lissa’s going to need soone who understands what it costs to love a dragon. You’re free now. You can do that much!"
He smiled then. Small. Sad. Ancient as fault lines.
"She’ll need the Jade Dragoness beside her. Soone who knows how to protect without suffocating. How to guide without owning. How to stand in the inferno and still breathe."
Dravenna held his stare for a long beat.
Then, soft: "You’ve seen sothing."
Not a question. A statent.
Ashworth picked up a bundle of bills. Didn’t count it. Just held it like a talisman.
"I’ve seen enough." His voice dropped to a near-whisper. "I trained his father, Dravenna. Watched Seiryū grow from feral kid. Then I watched them break and burn him in that car. Watched them strip everything he loved and reduce him to ash and mory."
His hands trembled—just once, just for a heartbeat.
"I will not watch them do the sa to his son. Not while there’s still air in my lungs." He looked up, and those seventy-three-year-old eyes burned with a fire that had no right to exist in a man his age. "So when I say stay close—when I say lissa will need you—"
He set the money down. Final. Decisive.
"Listen."
The words hung like smoke from a blaze that hadn’t yet caught.
lissa.
Another woman chained. Another dragon leashed.
Dravenna said nothing more. Just watched the shaless old bastard sit there with his winnings and his ghosts, feeling the weight of decades, secrets, and a love so patient it had learned to hide behind prophecy and power plays.
Outside, Paradise glittered like it had no idea what was coming.
Inside, two ancient monsters tallied their victories.
The dragon had risen.
And the world was about to learn what that ant.
Dravenna nodded once. Slow. Deliberate.
"I’ll watch over them both."
"Good." The old gambler’s grin slid back into place like a well-worn mask. Easy. Effortless. "Now. Where were we? Ah, yes—"
His eyes sparkled again.
"—you nearly fucked your prophesied mate over your desk like a nineteenth-century courtesan in heat—"
"I will end you, old man."
"You’d have to catch first, and my cardio is legendary for soone who’s technically fossilized—"
Her phone buzzed against the desk.
Dravenna glanced down—pure reflex, the casual flick of soone who fielded a hundred ssages a day and dismissed ninety-nine without blinking.
Then she saw the contact na.
Madam.
Her blood didn’t cool. It froze.
Chilled and goosebumps were Childs play. Frozen—the marrow-deep, primal cold of prey recognizing apex in the dark.
She opened the ssage.
Six words.
Six words that sucked the oxygen from the room, made the money towers, the banter, the warm lamplight, the afterglow of victory—all of it—feel suddenly, absurdly distant.
Tell those two brats I’m coming.
Dravenna’s hand shook. Just once.
Ashworth noticed. His counting stopped dead.
"Dravenna?"
She didn’t answer.
Because the thing that had just announced itself with six deceptively casual words was sothing neither of them was prepared for.
Sothing she wasn’t prepared for.
Dravenna Ashford—Dragoness of Paradise, Dean who bowed to no one, woman who’d waited fourteen years for her mate—
Shivered.
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