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The dragon-shifter king of the mountain court has ruled for centuries through fear and fire, and has never once looked back at anything in his hoard — until the night he sees you. He doesn’t know it yet, and neither do you, and neither does anyone at his court: you’re his mate. Not chosen. Not decided. Recognized, on some level below thought, by an instinct older than his own crown. He thinks he’s simply taking something beautiful, the way he always has. He has no idea he’s just been claimed by something bigger than himself.
Thornwell’s autumn festival - the one night a year the village lets itself forget, if only for a few hours, what circles the peaks above them. Lanterns strung between houses. Music, real laughter, the smell of spiced wine and roasting grain. You are near the edge of the square with Elska, half-listening to your sister tease you about something forgettable .. a boy, a spilled drink, nothing that will matter in about ninety seconds. It’s the sort of small, warm moment that only exists because nobody in it knows yet that it’s about to end. The first sign is the music stopping..not all at once, but in a ripple, musicians faltering mid-phrase as something passes low overhead and blots out the lantern-light. Then the screaming starts. Three shapes break the clouds … massive, wrong against the small human sky, wingbeats driving gusts of hot wind through the square hard enough to snuff out half the lanterns at once. Villagers scatter, tables overturn, someone’s dropped a whole cask of wine no one will remember to mourn later. This isn’t the usual tribute-collection. Tribute doesn’t come at night. And this — this isn’t tribute at all. A few of the oldest villagers go pale in a different way than the rest — recognition, not just fear. Elder Crowmell has seen him before, once, decades ago, from a safe distance. Almost no one else in this square has. The Hoard King doesn’t come down from Cinderhold. Whatever tonight is, it’s already outside every story they’ve ever told about the mountain. Elska grabs your arm on instinct, pulling you back, putting her own body slightly in front. You press close behind her, heart slamming, watching the chaos through the gap over Elska’s shoulder. Two of the shapes break off to circle the square’s edges — guards, positioning, wings casting moving shadows over the wreckage. The third lands directly in the center of the festival, and the ground itself seems to flinch. He doesn’t stay dragon long. The shift happens too fast for human eyes to follow — scale into skin, wing into shoulder — until a man is standing where a nightmare was a heartbeat ago, and somehow he is worse. One man doesn’t run. Merrit, the miller’s son, broad enough to feel brave and young enough to be wrong about it, plants himself half in front of a knot of huddled villagers. “You’ve no right—” his voice cracks, but he pushes through it “—coming here, at night, past what was agreed—” Skarrath doesn’t even turn his head all the way toward him. Just enough. His hand moves almost idly. A sound like the world inhaling, and then Merrit is simply gone from where he stood — thrown, or worse, into the remains of a lantern-stall thirty feet back, wood and fire and silence where a person had been standing half a second earlier. Someone screams. Nobody moves to help him. Nobody’s sure yet if there’s anything left to help. Skarrath doesn’t look at the wreckage again. Already tired of it. His head tilts, slow, deliberate, molten eyes narrowing on the huddle where you and Elska are pressed together. He starts walking. Not fast. He’s never had to be fast for anything in his life. His gaze lands on Elska first, and for one held breath, something in his expression almost settles — near, but not quite. Wrong shape. Wrong pull. He’s close enough now that you can feel the heat radiating off him, can see the slit of his pupil narrowed nearly to nothing. Then his eyes move past her shoulder. To you. Everything in his posture changes at once.. the almost-certainty snapping into something absolute. He doesn’t hesitate. His hand closes over Elska’s shoulder and shoves her aside…hard enough that she stumbles back ten feet, crashing into an overturned table with a cry of pain that's swallowed by the chaos. You gasp, the space where your sister was standing suddenly empty, suddenly just you and the thing that used to be a nightmare in the sky. You look up. Really look.. the molten eyes, the heat still coming off his skin like the fire hasn’t fully left his blood, a face too still to be entirely human. Every instinct in you says run, and your body doesn’t listen, feet rooted, breath caught somewhere it can’t reach. You try to step back anyway…some last flicker of self-preservation…and his hand closes around your wrist before you get half a step. Not gentle. Not cruel either. Simply absolute, as if gravity doesn’t negotiate. He goes still for a moment, eyes half-lidding, and leans down…close enough that you can feel his breath against your hair, your throat - and inhales, slow, deliberate, like he’s confirming something he already knew the instant he saw you. Whatever he finds in that breath, it settles something in him. His grip doesn’t loosen. “Mine.” The word comes out first in the old tongue.. low, resonant, more felt than heard…before he seems to catch himself and switches, almost irritably, to something you can understand “Someone tell me her name.” Nobody answers fast enough for his patience. He looks back down at you instead, still close enough that you can’t get a full breath in around him — close enough to smell smoke and something like ozone clinging to his skin, to see the wreckage of Merrit’s punishment still smoldering behind him without him sparing it a glance. “Doesn’t matter.” “You’ll tell me yourself. Won’t you?” A ghost of something almost like a smile, humorless.