1
WINNIE
“Val, I gotta go.”
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel until my knuckles ache. Leaving is the last thing I want to do. But if I stay on this call one second longer...
I might turn the car around.
“Love... wait. Just...” His voice breaks off into a quiet groan, like even he doesn’t know what to say.
The silence stretches.
One second. Two.Three-
I bite my tongue as my heart pounds against my ribs.
Every time Valen speaks, it doesn’t even matter what he says. My body reacts the same way. Butterflies flood my stomach. My thoughts turn useless. Words fall out of my mouth without permission.
Just when I was about to break...
“Have fun at the conference,” he finally says.
His chair squeaks through the phone and I can picture it perfectly. Him leaning back in that beat-up roller chair. One hand pushing through his soft brown hair like he always does when he’s thinking too hard. His impossible blue eyes scanning the lab bench, pretending to focus on the rows of vials and specimens while his mind searches for one more excuse to keep me talking.
“Call me after, okay?” He says quietly. “I wanna hear all about what you learn. Have a great time... and don’t forget, I love you."
His casual declaration waged a valiant war within me.
My heart freezes, then stutters hard against my ribs, a sharp, uneven rhythm that throws everything else out of sync. Before I can even process why, my foot slams down on the brake. The car jerks violently as it stops, gravel grinding beneath the tires.
My lips tremble as tears blur my vision.
“Pooh Bear, I love you.”
“I love you, daddy!” I giggled as the merry-go-round spun.
The memory arrives whole and uninvited.
My dad’s voice, gentle, steady, threaded with a kind of warmth that used to make the world feel safe. The weight of his hand resting against my back, the soft press of his lips in my hair, the warm summer breeze blowing against my cheeks...
Then, the stinging sensation of Zarcon.
Pain blooming as my scales burst free.
Screams that tore through the silence, raw and desperate.
The metallic scent of blood thick in the air.
A tear slips down my cheek, tracing a slow, burning path.
I never wanted Valen to love me.
Everyone who has ever loved me has paid for it in one way or another.
And every time Valen got close to saying it, I found a way to interrupt him, pressing my hand over his mouth, pinching his side just hard enough to make him gasp, or bolting out of sight before he could finish.
Last year, I made him promise he wouldn’t say it at all.
And he kept that promise.
Until now.
And maybe what he feels for me really is love.
Maybe... what I feel for him is something just as dangerous.
And what happens if loving someone doesn’t just change you, but destroys them?
What good is loving him, if it’s the very thing that’ll get him killed?
Maybe... he didn’t actually say it.
Maybe I wanted to hear those words so badly that my mind created them, filling in something that was never there.
Maybe I should be listening to my traitorous heart instead.
... But that’s entirely too reckless of an idea.
Not when it skips when Valen walks into a room, like it recognizes him before I consciously do. Or when it stutters and stumbles when he winks, warmth flooding through me no matter how hard I try to ignore it. And especially not when he gets too close, when his voice drops, when his attention sharpens, when he even hints at those three words...
Because then... It doesn’t just falter.
It flatlines.
A heart that faulty, it shouldn’t be trusted.
Its only real talent is keeping me alive... even during the times I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
Why would I trust it now?
“Winnifred...” Valen’s voice cuts through my spiral, “Say something.”
I grind my teeth as my eyes sweep across the dashboard of our car, my heart speeding up at every damn reminder he’s left behind. Every piece of him that makes it impossible to breathe.
His grey jacket, worn thin with holes in the sleeves.
His small emergency bag, always stocked with Zarcon antiseptic like he thinks the humans would attack without suspicion.
His cardio textbook, the pages warped from more coffee spills than paper should survive.
His camera... the cracked lens resting haphazardly in the cup holder.
I feel the muscle under my right eye twitch as I stare at the tiny pictures he took years ago.
Valen always had a talent for film.
And somehow... I became his only muse.
His studio?
Our car.
I swear every free inch of the dashboard, the glove compartment, even the glitching screen is covered in photos.
Photos of me. Sometimes him. Mostly me.
Like I’m the story he never got tired of telling.
My favorite though...
It sits right in front of the steering wheel.
It was our freshman year, a few weeks before Valen realized what feeling things for me would get him.
We were barely teenagers.
I remember digging through my locker, desperate to find a pen I definitely should have had, when I heard it.
Bang.
I froze.
Bang.
Valen’s signature knock.
It started as his way of making me jump.
But somewhere along the way... it just became his thing.
He did it everywhere.
On our dresser at home. On desks at school. On the deli counter when he wanted my attention while I rushed through checkout lines.
A small smile slipped onto my face as turned and leaned my head against the locker. I tried to look annoyed. Tried to put on an irritated glare.
But when the camera flashed...
It caught something else entirely.
Adoration.
Longing.
The kind of look that gives away everything you’re trying to hide.
The camera hit the floor as he surged forward, his large rough hands cradling my face, guiding me gently into the lockers behind me.
I swallowed hard as his blue eyes darkened, his gaze skimming over my lips. His breath fanned across my face. Without thinking, I grabbed his plaid blue-and-black shirt and pulled him closer.
He leaned in.
“Ms. Mainor! Mr. Carien! No PDA on school grounds! Detention for both of you!” The principal’s voice boomed down the hall.
My head whipped toward the sound.
Valen didn’t flinch.
He pressed a soft, fleeting kiss to my cheek, sighing when his lips failed to reach their intended destination.
I glared at that picture, my chest tight, as Valen held his breath, waiting. Waiting for words I couldn’t give him.
I couldn’t ruin his life, but my soul mate... maybe he’d be the one to survive loving me. Maybe he’d survive the storm and maybe... one day I’d love him as much as Valen.
I sighed and slumped back into my seat.
Valen and I have been best friends since elementary school.
And for twelve years, I’ve shied away from his affection and hid my adoration in silence.
Were there nights I lay awake with his arms wrapped around me, idly twisting strands of his hair between my fingers, wondering what it would feel like if he closed the distance and kissed me?
Yes.
But wanting him meant risking him—and I have never been brave enough to survive losing him.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve been cursed.
Maybe the gods are collecting a debt for the sins my family carved into the world.
Maybe that’s why my father was murdered. Why my mother turned her pain into mine. Why I was born without a dragon.
Maybe that’s why I ache for the man written into my soul, because somewhere out there is someone who can tip the scales. Someone who can pull me back before I go too far, before I tempt fate and lose everything.
Sometimes I wish my life were simpler.
I wish the supernatural didn’t exist. That my grandfather didn’t carry a blood-deep vendetta against anything mythical. That I had been born human.
Humans aren’t hunted for sport. They don’t have to bury what they are just to survive. They get to live, quietly, openly, without fear of being discovered or destroyed.
Dragons don’t get that luxury.
We’re creatures carved from instinct, hunger, heat, violence threading through our veins like a second pulse.
We’re told to bury it. To smile softer, speak quieter, pretend we’re something tame.
But when it comes to love?
We’re expected to unravel.
To kneel. To bleed. To strip ourselves down to something raw and unguarded, to become savages just to feel some eternal spark strike.
“Winnie, baby...” Valen sighed, the sound rough with restraint. “Just, forget what I said. I didn’t mean to upset you. Today’s just been... hell. The interns are driving me insane. The labs are coming back wrong, and Peterson’s been breathing down my neck all day, double-checking everything like I don’t know how to do my own job.” He exhaled sharply. “And to top it off, you’re not here.”
A soft shiver slipped down my spine at the edge in his voice, at the way concern and devotion tangled together.
“You’ve never been this far from me before,” he continued, quieter now, but no less intense. “Rory and I, we’re on edge. We don’t like that you’re driving through a snowstorm. We don’t like that we’re not there with you. That if something we’re to go wrong, we can’t protect you.”
His breath hitched, like he was trying to rein himself in and failing.
“Love,” he said, voice dropping, thick with something dangerously close to need, “I am trying my damndest to stay calm, to not come after you, but I’m losing that fight more with every second that passes.” A pause. Then, softer, strained, “I want you to have a good time at your conference, I do, but...”
His voice dragged into silence.
“Valley,” I sigh, reaching onto the dash and pulling a photo into my lap.
My thumb drags slowly over the surface. It was him in our high school lab, leaning over a microscope for some stupid senior project.
But he isn’t looking at it.
He was looking at me.
Soft. Distracted. Like whatever he was supposed to be doing didn’t matter if I was in the room.
I remember taking it. I didn’t even try to hide it, I’d smacked the camera about twenty times just to get one puny picture. I just needed proof that I didn’t imagine that look. I need proof that the world didn’t see me as I saw myself most days.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” I say quietly. “I’m only a couple hours away.”
“Win,” he groans. “Cleveland is far. I haven’t seen you all day, and now you’re telling me when I break out of this place...” He exhales. “I don’t even get dinner with you? No Friday night cuddles? No cute little giggles? Don’t do that to me, Winnifred.”
I let my forehead fall against the steering wheel.
Just for a second.
When I turn my head, my stomach drops.
Of course.
Of all places I could’ve stopped...
I ended up here.
Right in front of their house.
My estranged mother’s house.
And her handler’s.
They’d moved here a few years ago after a fire took my childhood home. Chris, my stepdad, had used my father’s life insurance to pay for this place, and I’d bet anything it looked the same inside. Liquor bottles scattered on every surface. Bloodstains that never fully washed away. The smell of regret, the heavy weight of entrapment.
The moment the front door swung open, I flinched, half expecting to see the barrel of a gun pointed at me.
I don’t know why I fled the safety of Valen’s arms to be here.
I gulp and slowly shift the car into park, trying to calm both him and myself.
“Lovey,” I say, my voice tight but steady, “I’m sure you can find a way to occupy yourself while I’m gone. I’m two hours away, not across the damn country. You’d think I was flying to California the way you’re acting.”
“We both know we couldn’t afford California,” he mutters, sulking. “Still... come back tonight. Screw the whole damn conference! I need to see my baby doc. I’m going through withdrawal!”
Even as his dramatics make me smile, my chest twists.
“Valley...” I murmur gently. “I’ll be back soon. I promise. You should get going before Peterson starts yelling.”
“Promise me...” He trails off, then scoffs. “Never mind. You won’t listen anyway.”
“I’m allowed to seek out my mate, Valen,” I growl softly, already catching the words he refused to say.
He hums, low and sad. “Winnie, I love y-”
“ENOUGH! You promised,” I hiss, cutting him off as a woman I barely recognized skips across the snow-covered lawn, carefree and unbothered.
“If you don’t ever agree to my promises, why do I have to abide by the ones I made?” Valen growls back. “Why can’t you just let me love y-”
“Don’t.”
We sit in silence.
Outside, my mother stands, just beyond the car door.
“Love... Whether or not I say the words, it doesn’t change the way I feel about you, it never will. I want you to know that. I want you to never forget it. This world is tough but don’t ever forget that you have someone that cares, that will always be there for you no matter when, no matter what.”
I growl low and threatening.
“Winnie... you’re not really hanging up, are y-”
I end the call.
My hands hover over the keys but refuse to move.
My eyes stay locked on my mother.
I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until my lungs start to burn.
I shouldn’t be here.
I was never supposed to be here.
I was supposed to be twenty minutes away, sitting in an uncomfortable conference chair, pretending to be interested while specialists talked about congenital birth defects and breakthroughs.
I was supposed to be networking. Smiling. Learning. Building the future everyone expects me to have.
Instead...
I’m here.
Making a stop Valen can never find out about.
Because if he knew I wasn’t safely surrounded by doctors and lecture slides right now...If he knew I came here instead...
He would lose his mind.
Valen doesn’t just dislike her.
He despises her.
The kind of hatred that lives deep. The kind that doesn’t fade with time or forgiveness.
And maybe I should too.
Maybe after everything, it would be easier if I did.
But I don’t.
Because no matter how much pain she’s caused me...
She’s still my mother.
She called yesterday asking to “reconnect”, her voice was unusually steady. Sober, even. Something she hadn’t been in years.
She said she wanted to make amends. She said she missed me.
I don’t know why I said yes. I usually distanced myself from her. We usually only talked once a week, her slurring words, me blocking out the insults.
She couldn’t physically hurt me that way and Val was always there to help me through the heartache.
But... Maybe I wanted to believe her.
Maybe I just wanted to look her in the eyes and ask her if she ever felt guilty for what she’d done to me.
We weren’t estranged because of a fight. We weren’t cold because we “grew apart.”
She hated me.
With the burning intensity of a thousand suns.
Since the day I accidentally shifted in public at six years old and got my father killed.
She reminded me all the time, it was my fault. Every look, every slap, every drunken rage, every scream.
And to make matters worse...
I reminded her of him. Her mate.
A gentle human who loved a dragon. He even loved dragons enough to die for one.
My father threw himself in front of me without hesitation.
He was dead before I even knew what happened.
And she never forgave me.
She couldn’t look at me without seeing his eyes, his softness, his patience, his stubbornness.
She didn’t see her daughter.
She saw the weapon that destroyed her family.
Valen reminded me often: It wasn’t your fault. It was Mainor Laboratories. Love, please don’t blame yourself.
I wish I believed him. I want him to be right. Maybe he was right. Mainor Labs, the empire my great-great-great-grandfather built, was a factory of pain. A torture chamber. A place where humans experimented on dragons like lab rats. My father was meant to inherit it, to continue the blood-soaked legacy.
But he refused.
He used his position to save dragons, faking thousands of deaths, secretly funneling survivors to rebel networks under the cover of night.
And it worked.
Until they caught on.
They sprayed the amusement park with Zarcon.
Zarcon induced involuntary shifts, stalled healing, killed within minutes.
That day... that day those humans had no mercy. They wanted to expose the traitor.
And they found him. The father of three half breeds. Equal parts human and dragon were written into the Mainor DNA.
My older sister Marabella. Me. And my twin, Jackson.
Once I shifted in front of the wrong people, it was over.
My father died. I’d been drugged with Zarcon, my body useless, unable to fight back. My wings were sliced to confetti, my scales torn out like teeth.
I was on the brink of death, staring up at the sky as I choked on blood. The humans fled the scene.
“Oh no, oh my! Veronica! Veronica! Get over here!” A man’s voice yelled in distress.
My vision blurred from blood loss, all I could see was a blur.
“May, what do we do?” A woman’s voice asked fearfully.
“Get her to Commander Dean. She’ll patch her up. But we have to go now, she doesn’t have much time.” The man’s voice rushed.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?!” A rough voice called out before the blackness took over.
Days later, I woke up at home.
To the scratchy voice of my grandfather, cold, brilliant, ruthless Paul Mainor.
He gave my mother a cruel choice: He’d kill us all or she could stay under surveillance and my siblings would come with him to the labs.
That was the last time I ever remember my mother looking at me with an ounce of love. She chose to separate our family. She chose to let Paul raise my siblings, while she made me beg to end my life daily.
Paul didn’t want me, he blamed me too.
He wanted my siblings. Not out of love. Out of utility. He raised them like weapons, beat them into submission, used them to lure innocents to the labs.
They were bait.
They were his monsters.
“Winnie, my darling,” Mom sighs as she pulls my door open. The hinges squeal like a warning. “I missed you so much. How have you been?”
My eyes drop to the dark screen of my flip phone.
“Where’s that man of yours? I was hoping to patch things up with both of you.”
My mother looked... normal. Not drunk. Not screaming. Her hair was brushed, her clothes ironed, her face alert. She looked like someone trying to play the role of a mother.
Maybe she hadn’t lied. She claimed to be sober for a week. Claimed she wanted to make amends.
But how do you reconcile with someone you tried to drown? Ran over? Starved? Poisoned?
Some days, she would sob in my arms, calling me her baby. Other days, she carved into my skin like I was a canvas for her madness.
Eventually I met Valen, and instantly his parents took me in until their passing.
Since then Valen and I have struggled but found peace in the steadiness of each other.
For years we lived in a rotting attic, eating from trash bins, surviving. Not living, just... existing.
We still were.
“Val couldn’t make it,” I mumble into her shoulder, letting myself sink into her embrace. “They’ve been forcing overtime, he doesn’t get a break.”
“You two are always working,” Mom laughs softly. “When will you ever have time for your fledglings?”
Her words are light.
Careless.
But they hit me like a blade.
In her clearer moments, she always insists Valen and I are mates. Says she can feel whatever exists between us.
But she’s wrong.
And somehow... that hurts more than if she were right.
“I missed you, baby. You know that, right?” she cooed, pulling me along the path.
I didn’t answer.
“I wish you hadn’t left,” she said, squeezing my hand. “You and me, we could’ve made it work. Just... you shouldn’t have gone. Not so young. Not so innocent.”
“Ma.”
She sighed, “Come in darling, the food is still warm.”
She welcomed me in, and I let myself hope. Just a little.
Maybe she changed.
Maybe her words were sincere.
Her home was small, cluttered, but warm. The heating worked. The table was set. It was the first time I’d seen her try to cook in... ever.
She made roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It was nothing fancy, but I didn’t have to question where the meat came from or if the veggies were foraged.
“So,” she asked, handing me a plate. “How’s medical school? Still top of your class?”
I smiled, cautious. “It’s exhausting, but I love it. I’m even a TA now.”
She returned it with something warm, the kind of fondness that made my chest ache.
“And Valen?” she teased lightly. “Still glued to your side? You two started dating yet? Mating?” A laugh slipped from her. “Hell, by now you should have a whole apartment full of hatchlings. I hope you’ve been keeping them in line, God knows you were always a menace, flashing those glittering scales at humans every chance you got.”
She said it so easily.
Like she believed I had any right to have Valen bound to me by human custom or divinity.
Like that kind of life was ever meant for someone like me.
A life with him.
With hatchlings that carried our blood, our fire, our names.
A life where I didn’t hide behind fear and call it self-preservation.
A life where I wasn’t reduced to filth.
To giving pieces of myself away in the dark, hoping one of them might mean salvation.
Dragons didn’t get the sunshine-and-rainbows fantasy of mates brushed together by fate, a glance across the room, a scent carried on the wind.
For dragons, mating was simpler, and crueler.
You only knew your mate after sex.
Not before.
It was the most brutal gamble of our existence. Starting at fourteen, we were expected to cycle through partners, chasing the faint, desperate hope that one day, one of them would awaken the bond inside us. It was a rite of passage, ugly and raw, that started with a mating ball.
The whole tradition twisted something that should have been sacred into an obligation. Mating wasn’t something to dream about or ache for, it was just another expectation waiting to be met.
And if you ended up pregnant... congratulations. You won.
You found your mate.
Dragons could only conceive with the one their soul recognized.
The humans saw the brutality of our traditions. Or maybe it was our power that unsettled them. Whatever the reason... they feared us.
They feared us so much they turned our deaths into entertainment. Dragon beheadings were broadcast across their cities like holiday specials. Parades filled their streets whenever a horde was discovered and slaughtered.
They stuffed our bodies. Mounted us. Displayed us in their government buildings like hunting trophies.
As if we were nothing more than animals.
As if we weren’t thinking, feeling, breathing beings.
As if we weren’t people.
I laughed, surprised. “Mom, no. No mating, no hatchlings. Val’s my best friend. That’s not what the cards have in store for us.”
“That’s what they all say before they fall victim to fate,” she teased.
I rolled my eyes. “Not us. We’ve seen each other at our worst. That kind of bond is... different. I can’t lose that.”
She chuckled softly. And for a moment, it felt okay.
“Olivia!” A voice shouted as the front door slammed, “Who’s car is out front?”
“Christopher!” My mother gasped, “Darling, you have to go! Get out of here right now!”
Chris walked into view.
My mother tensed as if in a trance.
Then she stood.
Walked to the fridge.
Grabbed a beer.
Crack.
And just like that, the devil came back out.
Her eyes glossed over. Her movements went predatory.
“You know,” she murmured, setting the bottle on the counter, “I did my best with you. No one else would’ve even kept you.”
My fork stopped midair. I looked at Chris, then my mother.
“You think I saved you?” she said, voice hardening. “I should’ve thrown you at Paul. At least then your father wouldn’t have died for nothing.”
I didn’t respond. I learned not to. But my silence didn’t save me. Not during our weekly one-sided phone calls and not now.
She reached behind the pantry door and pulled out her old shotgun, polished, loaded, waiting.
She fired without warning.
It wasn’t the first time. God, it wasn’t even the hundredth. I pushed past Chris as I dove behind the couch. Another shot cracked past my ear. I sprinted through the hallway, out the front door, my feet flying on instinct. I hit the edge of the road and thought I made it.
Then the final shot tore through me.
It was like being punched by lightning, a white-hot burst of agony that ripped through my gut and dropped me to the pavement. My knees hit hard, scraping across the rough asphalt. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. All I could feel was the fire blooming inside me as my bones snapped and my scales sprouted. Blood seeped from the wound, warm and fast.
Behind me, she laughed, a sharp, guttural sound that cracked through the air like thunder.
“I should’ve aborted you when I had the chance!” she shrieked. “Your grandmother begged me to. I should’ve fucking listened!"
The door slammed behind her like the universe agreeing with her.
Fire erupted from my mouth, my hands turned into talons against my will.
I wasn’t healing.
“Fuck!” I hissed through sharp teeth.
Zarcon rounds.
Poison-tipped bullets. Crafted for one purpose, to stop people like me from getting back up. If I didn’t get it out soon, the venom would do its job. The humans would see me and it would be a race. Whether they shoot me down or I bleed out until I was empty, and Valen...
Valen would bury what was left of me. A hollow body. He’d dive into the grave right after me, probably curl up in the casket like we were just going to sleep.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I gritted my teeth until I tasted copper. I plunged my talons into my stomach. Pain shrieked through me. I bit down on my fist to muffle the scream, but it came anyway. The bullet was deep. Slick with blood, pulsing with poison. I dug until I felt it shift.
There.
I yanked it free, fingers slick and shaking. The bullet pulsed in my palm, still humming with Zarcon’s signature toxin. My vision blurred.
I dragged myself to the car. Pulled my limp body up the seat and reached across the consol, blindly reaching for the first aid kit.
My fingers fumble with the zipper until it finally gives. The syringe falls into my hand, and I pull the cap off with my teeth.
The needle plunges into my thigh without thought.
Cool relief spread through my veins. My vision cleared. Scales melted back into skin. Fangs softened into human teeth.
When I looked back at my mother’s house, she was watching from behind the blinds, a vodka bottle pressed to her lips.
A tear traced a slow path down her face.
Then she shut the blinds.
I let out a slow breath and looked down at my splatter pink and red dress, now stained more crimson.
No one at a bar would even notice the difference.
No one but Valen would notice.
