# Chapter 9: Eat.
I let go of the white dragon.
Not because she'd stopped struggling — she was still wiggling under my claw like a particularly determined stress ball — but because Vesperra was already there. Settled into the stance at the cliff edge. A coiled spring of crimson scales and absolute certainty.
And my entire body had just stopped listening to my brain.
Front low. Head down. Hind legs coiled. Tail up, taut, streaming behind me like a green banner. The stance wasn't a choice. It was a command, written into my bones before I'd been born. Every scale on my body angled itself against the wind. Every muscle in my legs tightened like a spring being wound. My wings — still folded, still untested — hummed with a tension that said *ready* even though my brain was still catching up.
The cliff edge was maybe twenty body-lengths below the tunnel mouth. Too high to miss. Too far to hesitate.
Beside me, Vesperra's claws dug into the stone. Her crimson eyes were locked on the valley below, unblinking, absolute. She wasn't looking at the shellcrabs. She was looking at the *space* between herself and the shellcrabs — calculating angles, wind speed, the exact moment to release.
I didn't need to see her calculations. I could *feel* them, like a frequency my blood was tuned to.
Then she launched.
One heartbeat later, so did I.
The world exploded.
Wind roared against my scales, trying to peel me off course, but my body didn't care. It adjusted — micro-shifts of wing membrane, tiny tilts of my tail, each one automatic, each one *right.* I wasn't flying. Not yet. I was falling with *intent,* a guided missile made of scales and hunger and something older than thought.
The air pressure changed as I dropped. My ears popped. My nostrils flared, pulling in scents that hadn't existed ten seconds ago — wet stone, crushed vegetation, the briny tang of shellcrab sweat. Everything was sharper now, faster, more *real.* This was what my body had been built for. Not tunnels. Not darkness. *This.* The rush, the hunt, the absolute certainty of purpose.
I'd never felt anything like it in my previous life. The closest comparison was the moment a project deadline hit and everything else fell away — except this was a thousand times more intense, and the stakes were actual blood.
The ground rushed up.
Below me, a sentry shellcrab spotted us first. It raised both claws and clacked them together — a sharp, metallic *crack-crack-crack* that echoed off the valley walls.
Every shellcrab in the valley froze.
Then they ran.
All of them. Eight legs churning, bodies low, streaming toward the dark river in a massive, panicked exodus. They moved fast — faster than anything that size had any right to move — a dark tide of shell and claw racing for the water.
Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty.
My wings snapped open.
The sensation was *electric.* Two enormous surfaces of emerald-green membrane unfurled from my sides, catching the air with a sound like a sail filling in a storm. I wasn't falling anymore. I was *flying* — diving, yes, but with control, with precision, with a certainty that lived somewhere below my thoughts.
My target locked. One shellcrab, slightly behind the others, its shell gleaming wet in the dim light. My wings folded again. I dropped like a stone.
*Impact.*
My claws punched through the shell like it was parchment. Green venom threads surged down through my talons and into the creature's body — automatic, instinctive, the same way I'd breathed since hatching. The shellcrab convulsed once, then went limp, sliding across the valley floor for five meters before stopping.
I stood on top of my kill, heart hammering, eyes scanning.
More shellcrabs were still running. A few had turned to look, claws raised defensively, but none of them charged. None of them fought back. They just... ran.
*Really?* The Inheritance had described these things as weak, but this was ridiculous. They were prey. *Prey with no fight in them at all.*
I raised my head, triumphant, and looked around.
I was the first. Every other hatchling was still in the air or just landing, scrambling for targets, overshooting or undershooting. But me? I was already standing on my kill, claws buried in shell, venom doing its work.
Then I looked at Vesperra.
She hadn't dived. She'd *landed.*
Directly on the valley floor, in the middle of the fleeing shellcrab swarm, and she was *wading* through them like someone walking through a crowd at a concert. A shellcrab charged her — one of the big ones, easily three meters wide, claws raised for a strike.
She didn't dodge. She didn't even slow down.
Her right claw came down in a flat, horizontal arc. The shellcrab's head — half of it, anyway — ceased to exist. Shell, flesh, and fluid scattered in a wide red arc. The body collapsed, legs curling inward.
Another shellcrab tried to flank her. Its claw snapped toward her side.
She caught it. One claw, wrapping around the shellcrab's arm like it was a twig, and *squeezed.* The claw shattered. Then she was on it — one strike, two strikes, three — each one removing a limb with the casual efficiency of someone disassembling furniture.
No technique. No finesse. Just pure, unadulterated *violence.*
I stared. My mouth had gone slightly dry, and it wasn't from the venom.
In my previous life, I'd worked with people who led by intimidation. Loud voices, aggressive emails, the occasional table slam. I'd always thought it was a sign of insecurity — that people who needed to be *seen* being tough were usually compensating for something.
Vesperra didn't need to be seen. She didn't roar. She didn't posture. She just *did,* with the same emotional investment someone might show while sorting recycling.
That wasn't intimidation. That was *authority.* And it was terrifying.
*Okay. Note to self: do not piss off the red one. Or look at her wrong. Or exist in her general direction without permission.*
The hunt ended as the last shellcrab disappeared into the dark river. Six hatchlings had made kills. The rest had missed entirely and were now circling overhead, making disgruntled noises.
I turned my attention to my prize. My claws peeled back the shell, and—
Green. Dark, murky, *green* meat.
...That didn't look right.
I bit down anyway.
*Blech.*
The taste hit me like a wall — bitter, acrid, like someone had liquified a fish gall bladder and concentrated it ten times over. My tongue revolted. My entire mouth revolted. I spat it out so fast I nearly choked, claws scraping at my tongue trying to remove the flavor.
*What the—*
I looked at the other hatchlings. They were eating. *Enjoying* it. Eyes dilated, chewing happily, tails swishing.
Were they eating something different? I craned my neck and—there. The meat they were tearing at was *yellow.* Bright, golden-yellow. Crab roe. Actual crab roe.
Not the green sludge I'd bitten into.
The venom. My venom threads had poisoned the meat before I could eat it. The venom had spread faster than I could chew.
*Great. First hunt. First kill. And I'd rendered my own prey inedible.*
I stared at the green meat in disgust.
Then I heard dragging sounds.
Heavy. Rhythmic. Getting closer.
I looked up.
Vesperra was walking toward me. In her jaws, she carried an entire shellcrab corpse — a big one, easily twice my body weight — and she was dragging it across the ground like it weighed nothing.
She stopped in front of me.
The shellcrab hit the ground with a heavy *thud.*
She raised her head. Crimson eyes locked onto mine.
"Eat."
One word. Cold. Flat. Not a request. Not a suggestion. A *command.*
I stared at the shellcrab. Then at her. Then back at the shellcrab.
*...Is this a boss giving me a performance review?*
The shellcrab's claw joints were exposed where she'd torn it open. White meat, clean and unpoisoned, gleamed in the dim light. The venom hadn't reached this far.
She'd killed this for me. Carried it to me. Dropped it at my feet and told me to eat.
The word hung in the air between us. *Eat.* Not "would you like some." Not "here, I thought you might be hungry." Just: *Eat.* The same word she'd used in the cave, back when I'd first hatched, back when everything was confusion and instinct and the overwhelming need to *consume.*
She remembered. She was using the same word. And somehow, that made it mean something different now.
I didn't ask why. I didn't say thank you. I just lowered my head and bit into the claw joint.
The meat was tender. Sweet. The best thing I'd ever tasted — and I meant that literally, because my previous life's best meal had been a mediocre pad thai at a desk at 11pm, so the bar was low, but still. This was *good.*
And I ate.
I ate like I hadn't eaten in days. Like the hunger was deeper than my stomach, deeper than my body, like it lived somewhere in my blood and my bones and the ancient part of my brain that didn't use words. The shellcrab disappeared piece by piece, shell fragments and claw joints vanishing between my jaws, and Vesperra stood there the entire time, watching, her crimson eyes unreadable.
When I finally stopped, my belly was full, my claws were sticky, and I had the distinct feeling that something important had just happened — something I didn't quite understand yet, but would, eventually.
Vesperra turned and walked away without a word.
I watched her go — watched the crimson scales catch the dim light as she moved toward the river, her stride as unhurried as someone who'd already decided everything that mattered for the day.
I looked down at the scattered shell fragments at my feet. At the sticky residue on my claws. At the hollow space in my belly that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the fact that someone, for the first time in two lifetimes, had dropped food at my feet and told me to eat.
*Eat.*
Yeah. I could get behind that.
Tomorrow we meet the real boss. Don't miss it.