Chapter 2 What Hunts Does Not Always Bite
I did not feel powerful.
I felt hunted.
The forest blurred as I ran, branches clawing at my cloak, roots threatening to send me sprawling. My lungs burned, every breath sharp and shallow, but I didn’t slow. Fear lent me speed—fear and the unbearable weight humming beneath my skin.
The dragon’s presence was not loud. It did not roar or demand.
It watched.
Coiled somewhere deep in my chest, a living ember, aware of everything I felt. My panic. My resolve. My fury at the world that had never offered me mercy and now would come to collect a debt I hadn’t known I was incurring.
I didn’t ask for this, I thought fiercely.
The ember stirred, warm and steady, as if amused.
I burst from the tree line just as dawn broke over Valmere’s outer walls. The city rose before me in stacked rings of stone and shadow, spires cutting into the pale sky. Somewhere within those walls, my brother lay dying. Somewhere within those walls, people with far more power than me would already be stirring, sensing the ripple I had sent through their ordered world.
I slipped through the gate with the early laborers, keeping my head down, blood still slick on my palm beneath the wrap of my sleeve. No one stopped me. No one ever did.
The Lower Rings swallowed me again.
By the time I reached our building, my legs trembled with exhaustion. I took the stairs two at a time, heart hammering, dread coiling tighter with every step. I didn’t know what I’d brought back with me from that shrine—salvation or damnation—but I had to try.
I knelt beside Lio’s pallet and pressed my hand to his burning forehead.
The heat beneath my skin surged in response.
Not violently. Not uncontrollably.
It waited.
I swallowed hard, steadying my breathing. I had no training. No healer’s knowledge. Just instinct and desperation and something ancient watching from inside me.
“Please,” I whispered—not to the dragon this time, but to myself. “Let me help him.”
I let the warmth flow.
It spread from my chest down my arm, gentle as breath, sinking into Lio’s skin like sunlight after winter. He gasped, arching slightly, then settled. The fever broke in a rush of sweat, his breathing evening out.
I sagged forward, tears spilling freely now.
I had done this.
Me.
Not the Council. Not a ranked mage. A girl the city had never counted.
But relief was fleeting.
The ember flared sharply.
Danger.
I froze.
The air in the room shifted, thickening, as if shadows had weight. Every instinct screamed at me to run—but I had already used too much magic. I felt it now, echoing outward like a beacon.
Footsteps sounded below.
Measured. Unhurried.
Not the scrambling rush of guards from the Lower Rings. These steps were precise. Controlled.
I rose slowly, heart pounding, and stepped toward the door just as it creaked open.
He filled the frame effortlessly.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in dark leathers etched with faint sigils that pulsed almost imperceptibly. Power clung to him like a second skin—not wild like mine, but honed and disciplined, sharp enough to cut.
His hair was dark, falling just long enough to brush his collar, and his eyes—
Gods.
They were the color of a storm held back by sheer will.
Alaric Nightfall.
I had never seen him before, but I knew him instantly. Every story whispered in the slums painted the same picture: the High Council’s executioner. The man they sent when something needed to disappear without leaving a mess.
His gaze swept the room, cataloguing everything in a single heartbeat. Then it landed on me.
And lingered.
Something electric snapped between us.
Not magic—something older, more dangerous. Awareness. Recognition. The kind that tightened low in my belly and made my spine straighten instead of bow.
“You’re bleeding,” he said calmly.
I didn’t look down. “You broke into my home.”
“This isn’t a home,” he replied. “It’s a liability.”
Anger flared hot and bright. “Get out.”
One corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, exactly. More like interest.
“I can’t.”
I shifted subtly, placing myself between him and Lio without thinking. My body moved on instinct, shoulders squared, chin lifted. I felt the dragon stir, pleased.
Alaric noticed.
His eyes darkened, focus sharpening. “You don’t even know what you are, do you?”
“I know exactly what I am,” I shot back. “Someone who doesn’t kneel.”
A pause stretched between us, thick with tension.
“You awakened forbidden magic,” he said quietly. “Dragon magic. The kind sealed away because it destroys everything it touches.”
“I saved my brother.”
His gaze flicked briefly to Lio, then back to me. Something unreadable crossed his expression.
“That won’t save you.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “You didn’t.”
The way he looked at me then was dangerous—not predatory, not cruel. Curious. Assessing. As if I were a problem he didn’t yet know how to solve.
I felt suddenly, acutely aware of my body. The heat under my skin. The way his presence pressed against me, controlled and lethal and… compelling.
I hated that.
“Are you here to kill me?” I asked.
Honesty burned in my chest. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t run.
Alaric studied me for a long moment. Then he said, “If I were, you’d already be dead.”
A shiver slid down my spine—not fear.
Something else entirely.
“Then leave,” I said.
His gaze dropped to my mouth before he could stop it.
The dragon purred.
“No,” Alaric said, voice lower now. “Now I need to understand you.”
“And if you don’t like what you understand?”
His eyes met mine again, dark and intense. “Then this becomes much more complicated.”
I crossed my arms, steady and unflinching. “You should go,” I told him. “Before you make a mistake.”
A slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that mistake already happened.”
And in the silence that followed, I realized something that made my pulse race—
Whatever I had awakened in that shrine, it had not only summoned a dragon.
It had drawn him.
And neither of us would walk away unchanged.