Chapter 131 CHAPTER 131
ZADE'S POV
I should have listened to her.
That thought circled my head like a vulture as the first creature drove its fist into my ribs and I heard something crack that shouldn't. I don't know exactly what it is but I knew it was wrong. Unliving.
She said it wasn't safe. She said we should leave. She said it with fear in her eyes, and I smiled, telling her to relax because nothing was going to happen.
That I was strong enough to protect her in a world without magic, after all, I should be the superior being here.
But now, a hundred mechanical nightmares were pouring into the streets and the woman I promised to protect was fighting for her life beside me.
Because I didn't listen.
Because I was tired of being useless.
Three weeks on this planet and what had I contributed? I ate another man's food from his fridge. I played his games on that weird thing they call a TV screen. I slept in her dead mother's bed while she worked jobs that exhausted her so we could survive.
As if that's not enough, she covered my scales without resentment, taught me how to use every device in the house while I fumbled like a child learning to walk.
And when she came home every evening, smelling of strange food and stranger people, she still kissed me like I was enough.
I wasn't.
Tharagaun knew it. He'd been restless since we arrived, pacing inside my skull, starving for Drakkonian air and magic that this grey world couldn't provide.
And I kept him caged. Kept him quiet. Told him we were fine when we were dying slowly under one pathetic sun.
I threw my hand forward, reaching for the air the way I'd done a thousand times in battle, expecting the blast that used to flatten Fae soldiers and shatter bone.
A breeze came out. Nothing more than what you'd feel opening a window.
I tried ice next, pushing Tharagaun's cold through my veins and into my fingers. Frost crept across my knuckles and died at my fingertips, refusing to leave my body.
Three hundred years of power and this world had reduced me to frozen hands and a stiff breeze.
So I used what still worked. My tail, my claws, my fists, and the kind of violence that doesn't need magic to be effective, just rage and the memory of what it feels like to lose everything you love while standing right next to it.
A machine grabbed my arm and twisted. I felt the joint strain and I roared, tearing it apart with my tail, but two more replaced it immediately.
They weren't alive, that was the problem.
In Drakkonia, everything I fought had a pulse. A heartbeat I could hear, a fear I could smell, a moment of hesitation I could exploit. Fae soldiers, leeches, even Kovar — they all had blood and blood meant they could be broken.
These things had nothing.
No pain to inflict. No fear to weaponise. Just relentless, mechanical hunger programmed by a madman with scars and a grudge.
I crushed one's head between my hands and kicked another into a wall so hard it embedded in the stone. My tail swept three more off their feet and I stamped on the one that crawled toward Alira.
But for every one I destroyed, more came. An endless tide of metal and malice.
I was going deeper into the mechanical throng when I felt a needle pierce my neck. Then another on my shoulder.
I growled, throwing off the creature with so much anger that five more followed its trail.
But the damage was already done.
Tharagaun screamed inside me, not in pain but also in recognition.
He remembered this.
The falling. The failing. The feeling of your body betraying you when the person you love needs you most.
He'd felt it when that Fae weapon pierced his chest so many years ago.
When his wings failed and the sky rejected him and the sea rushed up to meet us.
He'd poured everything he had into me that day to keep me alive. Every drop of his essence, his magic, his soul.
He died so I could live and I'd spent centuries wondering if he made the wrong choice.
Now his essence was trapped inside a body that couldn't even protect one woman from a human with toys.
My knees hit the ground.
Machines piled onto my back, my arms, my tail. I fought but the injections were spreading, turning my muscles to water.
But through the bodies pinning me down, I could see her.
Alira. My Sunshine. Fighting with everything Florian had taught her, claws out, fast and vicious, taking down machines with a fury that made my chest ache with pride and shame simultaneously.
Pride because she was magnificent.
Shame because she shouldn't have to be.
I was supposed to be her shield. I was supposed to be the reason she could sleep without nightmares and walk without looking over her shoulder.
But here I was, face down on a street in her world, pinned by things that weren't even alive, watching her fight alone.
Just like Tharagaun had fought to keep me alive. He carried me while dying and made decisions about our survival while I contributed nothing.
He chose me over himself and I let him.
Now Alira was choosing to fight while I lay here leaking blood and failing the only promise that mattered.
A machine stamped on my spine and something went numb below my waist.
I couldn't feel my tail.
Tharagaun's roar inside my head was deafening, furious, desperate. He was throwing everything he had at my failing body, trying to heal what the injections were destroying, trying to keep me conscious, keep me fighting.
But there wasn't enough.
He had no access to the things that could help us shift fully; no double sun, my Chi was slower and my magic was being attacked.
My face hit the ground, cold pavement against my cheek, the taste of blood and dirt flooding my mouth as I struggled to keep my eyes open.
Through the legs of the machines still standing over me, I saw her. Alira was on her knees with a machine pinning her arms behind her back and she was thrashing, screaming my name with a voice that was getting further away even though she was right there.
Baldwin walked toward her slowly, no rush because he'd won and he knew it.
“You've gotten really good at this you know? But I've had time to prepare and unfortunately, you're not strong enough. And this time, I won't let you slip through my fingers.”
She spat at him and he laughed and I tried to move but my arms wouldn't respond. I tried to call Tharagaun but all I felt was silence where his roar used to be.
I opened my mouth to scream, to roar, to shake the earth the way I used to when I had a dragon on the outside and not just the memory of one trapped inside me but all that came out was a weak puff of smoke that dissolved before it reached the air.
Baldwin looked over at me and that smile widened before he turned back to her.
The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me was Alira's eyes finding mine across the pavement, green and terrified and sorry, apologising to me for bringing me here, for not being stronger, for loving me enough to ruin me.
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she was the best thing that ever happened to my miserable existence and that I would do all of it again, every second, even this one.
But my eyes closed before my mouth could form the words and everything went dark.