.3

.3
MALRIK’S POV

“ONE DAY, I’LL fucking kill him!” Orion snarled, chest heaving violently. 

Unimpressed, I stepped down from the throne. He only ever shouted like this when Seneca wasn’t here to hear it. He flashed his fangs and swung his fists as if his dragon hadn’t cowered the moment Seneca raised his voice earlier. If Orion ever fought him head-on, he’d lose. 

And he’d tried enough times to know it.

Seneca would win every single time.

“And how exactly do you plan to kill him?” I mummured. “You always cower, Orion. You scream, you throw tantrums, you put on a show like a child, yet you’ve never managed to scratch Seneca. Not once in all these years. So tell me… what’s different now?”

My words only pushed him closer to the edge. His chest pumped, fangs dripping, the humiliation burning in both him and his dragon.

“I’ll have his blood on my hands!” he roared. “I’ll watch him bleed out in front of all those demons that worship him—”

He slammed a fist into his chest.

“I should be the ALPHA!”

“Yet the Alpha dragon chose him. Not you.”

“I SHOULD BE KING. I should give the orders. I AM THE OLDEST—”

“Oldest and weakest.”

“Malrik!” 

I stepped closer. “You only have age on your side. Seneca has the power to back his position. You were born, what…. five years before him? And you think that alone entitles you to the throne?” I shook my head. “No one cares what you think you deserve. You bark and scream, but you never bite deep enough to make Seneca bleed.”

He knew the truth of it. 

We all did.

Orion could never take Seneca on. 

I’d bet my balls on it and lose them long before the fight ended.

He went quiet for a long moment, the lights flickering overhead, throwing violent shadows across his face as he sucked in breath after breath.

Finally, in a lower voice, “I thought you were on my side.”

Electricity crackled in the air from the heat of his dragon.

The lights flickered on.

Off.

On again.

“I still am,” I clipped.

“I thought we both hated him.”

“That hasn’t changed.”

“You still want him dead?”

“But you’d never see me run into the lion’s open mouth,” I said. “That’s the only problem you have Orion, you attack without a plan. It leaves you on the losing side. It always will.”

Shamefully, wordlessly, and most importantly, without his breeder, Orion turned and walked away. 

Thunder rolled in the sky enough to shake the foundation of the building the instant the doors closed behind him, as he once again left the throne room with his tail between his legs. 

If I wanted to get rid of Seneca, I thought, then I might have to do it myself.

Orion wasn’t strong enough to. Twelve years of raging, and he hadn’t been able to overthrow. 

And truthfully, I hated my brothers just as much as I hated the father who raised us—different sons from his different women—in one house so his sons could grow with unity and love. 

Pathetic. 

All those years of growing side by side with my brothers, all I’d seen was the hatred and anger each time he favored one over the other. 

He always favored Seneca, his second son, over Orion. He always favored Vorath, his last son and redhead Irish, over me. And altogether, he placed the three above me. 

While my mother claimed his indifference had nothing to do with my skin being shades darker than my brothers, I’d grown up seeing things exactly through that lens.

Hating my brothers from the background. 

Waiting for the day they’d all fall to death one after the other like our father had done when I shoved a hunting knife deep through his gut and disemboweled him, ripping him open right there on the kitchen floor, even before he had completed his demon transition.

Our ancestors had been dragon worshippers and the only thing I’d inherited from lineage was the dragon spirits that inhabited us when the demons ran wild over the surface of earth.  

Then when Vorath died next without me having to lift a finger, I celebrated.

My only plan had always been to bring destruction to them all in the background, where they’d never suspect me, until my eyes landed on her again.

And all my focus flickered from destruction to obsession.

The unspoken rule between us brothers had held for centuries. The law was simple: Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s assets.

But the law only applied after a claim was marked. 

And Riley still belonged to the market. 

Seneca hadn’t claimed her.

So would it really be wrong of me to take her, when I’d laid eyes on her long before Seneca even knew she existed?

Ten years ago, on the night we raided her haven. I walked through fire and found her in a pool of her own blood, head cracked open against marble. Two children clung to her, sobbing. I reached for them, not expecting her to still be conscious, let alone armed. The dagger was in my back before I realized she could still move.

Now ten years later, I still carried the scar that refused to heal. Every year, on the same night, it burned like she was stabbing me all over again. Maybe sending her the same dagger she’d left buried in me as a gift was a mistake I’d regret in the future. But I was crazy enough to do anything to jolt her memory. Anything to make her remember she had met me long before Seneca ever set his eyes on her.

So while my brother attended to his human doctors, I took the long stretch to Riley’s bedroom.

The mark I had on her wasn’t a bonding mark yet, more of a tracking mark, but it was enough to make me feel every jump of her pulse and every violent wave of emotion that swept through her. 

And right as I stepped in front of her door, the pulse was there, but barely existing.

And… she wasn’t alone in the room. 

I picked up the scent of another human, but without a care, I pushed the door open with a brutal shove, Azael humming in my mind that we were making a mistake and something felt too off.

He was right. 

The instant I stepped inside, my eyes blew wide over the chaotic scene.

Riley was trashing in the bed, burning enough to have smoke going up in the air.

A maid was slumping over her, in tears… daring not to touch.

Azael growled three words through my skull, loud enough to confirm my suspicion of the scene unraveling right before my very eyes, “KAELITH JUST CLAIMED.”