KORO’S POV “The Board is here,” Vane Thorne announced ten minutes later.
I could feel the heat radiating from Rujin’s back, a heavy, invisible curtain that blurred the air, and he hadn’t spoken to me since he’d tasted my blood on his tongue, a gesture so intimate and foul it made me want to scrub my skin raw.
The men who entered were six of them, the High Dons of the Syndicate, and looked like the damn scavengers I grew up with in the White Death.
They wore suits made of spider-silk and dragon-hide, their fingers weighted with rings that could buy a whole sector of the slums.
They were apex shifter predators: wolves, bears, and high-tier vampires who had spent centuries carving their names into the ice.
But as they walked toward Rujin, something changed.
The swagger slowed, and the loud, booming voices of the Bear-Shifter, Don Volkov, died down to a cautious rumble.
The Noble Vampires, usually so poised and arrogant, tucked their chins, their eyes darting to the floorboards.
It wasn’t respect but the primal terror of a creature they were all scared of.
“Rujin,” the bear Shifter Volkov stopped at the edge of the great glass table.
He was a mountain of a man, his shoulders broad enough to block out the light, but his hands were trembling.
He clasped them behind his back to hide them, but I saw the twitch of his fingers.
“We received the report that you acquired a new stabilization unit.” He looked at me, and his eyes were cold, calculating, and filled with a disgusting sort of envy, and to him, I wasn’t a man, and I was a high-performance usable heat.
“The Varg-Kyrie,” another Don murmured, a skeletal vampire with skin like translucent parchment.
“He is an abomination and a hybrid.
You’re taking a great risk, Marks, the Council doesn’t look kindly on genetic filth.” Rujin didn’t move, nor did he even look up from the glass he was swirling.
“The Council isn’t here, Malakai,” Rujin said, his voice a low, vibrating silk that made the glass table hum.
“Neither is my patience.” He stood up slowly, and the reaction was instantaneous, and every single Don took a half-step back.
The air in the room didn’t just get hotter; it became pressurized.
The oxygen seemed to vanish, replaced by the scent of dragon fire, and I felt my own skin begin to prickle as the Thermal Lock went into overdrive, my Varg-Kyrie blood screaming as it tried to suck the excess radiation out of the air before it incinerated the room.
“You come into my hall,” Rujin said, walking around the table.
“You question my assets, question my bloodline, and you do it while standing on the heat I provide you.” He stopped in front of Volkov, the Bear-Don was a head taller than Rujin, but in that moment, he looked like a child.
“The White Death is reclaiming the lower vents, Volkov,” Rujin whispered, the orange glow in his eyes turning into a blinding, incandescent white.
“Your sectors are freezing, your people are starving, yet you have the breath or time to waste on my risks?” Rujin reached out and placed a hand on Volkov’s shoulder, and the smell of burning wool hit me instantly.
Volkov’s expensive suit began to smoke, and his face contorted in agony, his jaw clenching so hard I heard the bone groan, but he didn’t pull away and was paralysed by the sheer weight of Rujin’s Dragon’s Aura.
“Please,” Volkov gasped, his knees buckling.
“Don Rujin, we only meant……..” “I don’t care what you meant,” Rujin snapped back in anger.
The room erupted with shadow and light, and we all watched behind Rujin, a massive, terrifying wingspan of a High-Mountain Dragon rise.
It wasn’t a physical transformation but a projection of his soul, a nightmare of scales and molten gold that filled the room.
The wings beat once, and a wave of heat slammed into the syndicate members, sending chairs flying and cracking the glass windowpanes.
The Dons collapsed, and they fell to their knees, their foreheads pressing against the cold floor.
T “Mercy, my Lord,” Malakai hissed, his forehead bleeding where it had hit the floor.
“The heat…
please…
we acknowledge the asset and acknowledge your leadership, Don Marks.
” I watched them from my spot, my heart hammering against my ribs with the dawning of the fact that Rujin wasn’t a man.
He was a monster of destruction wrapped in a human skin that was not holding him.
He slowly turned and saw the look on my face, the dawning, horrific realization of exactly who he was.
“Do you see now, Koro?” Rujin smirked, “They don’t bow to me because I have money or because I have a title.
They bow because I am the only thing keeping the world from turning into a block of ice, and the only thing that can turn them into a pile of ash.” My eyes widened in response, and I was tongue-tied and could not utter a word.
Get out,” Rujin commanded.
“Tell the sectors the heat remains, and if I hear one more word about genetic abominations, I will vent off and let you see how pure your blood feels when it is frozen solid.” They men scrambled to their feet and fled, and the doors hissed shut, leaving the two of us alone in the ringing silence of the chamber.
Rujin slumped slightly, his hand finding the edge of the table for support.
The orange veins in his neck were pulsing violently again.
The display had cost him, and I knew that had pushed his dragon to the brink just to terrify them.
“Come here,” he rasped.
I followed his command, and my feet moved on their own accord.
When I got near Rujin, my hand extended to his, and the reaction was instant as my cold fingers sank into his flesh, and his heat radiated in me, and he heaved a sigh of relief.
” You are a monster, Rujin,” I whispered.
” Koro, you already knew that, ” He smirked, and then his head leaned on my shoulder.
“But now you know why I need you.
If I don’t have someone to take this fire, I’ll burn the whole world down just to make the screaming stop.” “Eventually, I won’t be enough.
I’ll reach my limit, and I’ll melt just like the rest of them.” I whispered.
Rujin pulled back just enough to look me in the eye and reached up, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, his touch lingering.
“Then we’ll burn together, Koro,” he whispered.
“But until then…
You are mine, and I will not let my property break.”