Prologue
Every generation of the House of Romanov produced a dragon.
Not always the eldest son.
Not always the heir.
Sometimes the old blood appeared in a second son, or a younger brother, or a child nobody had expected to carry anything more remarkable than the family name.
But eventually, inevitably, there would be one.
A dragon.
For three centuries, the Romanovs had known what to do with them.
They raised them.
There were nursery journals filled with practical advice passed from one generation to the next.
Keep the child well fed after his first transformation.
Fever often precedes the emergence of scales. Cool water may soothe him.
Do not restrain a frightened young dragon unless he presents an immediate danger to himself or others.
The first flight should never be undertaken alone.
There were stories, too.
A six-year-old dragon who had discovered his wings halfway down an imperial staircase.
Another who had sneezed during Christmas dinner and removed his grandmother's eyebrows.
A young prince who had become stuck halfway through his first transformation and spent an afternoon beneath the nursery table with a tail, one wing and an intense objection to trousers.
The family remembered these things fondly.
Because dragons were extraordinary.
They were powerful.
They were dangerous.
But first—
they were children.
Their mothers learned which cries meant pain and which meant frustration.
Their fathers taught them how to fly.
Brothers and sisters learned not to pull tails.
Nurses learned which blankets survived accidental fire.
Physicians treated burns, strained wings and transformation fevers with the same practical concern afforded scraped knees and childhood coughs.
When adolescence brought older instincts, there were instructions for those as well.
During the first rut, appetite may increase considerably.
Irritability is common.
Do not isolate him unnecessarily.
Permit flight whenever conditions allow.
Familiar company is often calming.
Above all, remember that instinct is not madness.
The dragon remains himself.
The knowledge survived wars.
It survived revolutions.
It survived marriages into foreign houses and children born thousands of miles from Russia.
It survived because every generation understood one simple truth.
A Romanov might be born a dragon.
He was still somebody's son.
Then came Andrei Alexandrovich.
He was sixteen when the physicians stopped asking what frightened him and began recording what provoked transformation.
Seventeen when the War Ministry measured his maximum altitude.
Seventeen when they calculated how far he could fly without food or rest.
How much weight he could carry.
How accurately he could strike a target from the air.
How long he could remain transformed.
How much cold he could endure.
How quickly damaged scales regenerated.
How much pain was required before instinct overwhelmed conscious restraint.
The old journals remained in the Imperial archives.
Nobody destroyed them.
That would have required somebody to admit they were being ignored.
Instead, centuries of family knowledge were translated into something modern.
Scientific.
Efficient.
A frightened transformation became a response.
A first flight became aerodynamic capability.
Dragon fire became effective range.
Protective instinct became territorial aggression.
Adolescent rut became reproductive instability.
And the boy himself became—
an asset.
At eighteen, somebody wrote the word beside his name.
His father signed the report.
Andrei learned to shift on command.
He learned to fly when ordered.
He learned to remain airborne when exhausted.
He learned that pain was information.
He learned that fear was irrelevant.
He learned that obedience ended experiments faster than resistance.
And eventually, the Imperial War Ministry congratulated itself.
Russia possessed something no artillery factory in Europe could manufacture.
No battleship could match.
No enemy could easily destroy.
A weapon that could cross mountains.
A weapon that could think.
A weapon that could choose its target.
They called him the War Dragon.
They forgot that the ability to choose was precisely what made him dangerous.
Because dragons had never been machines.
They remembered.
They loved.
They hated.
They chose.
And when pushed hard enough—
they broke their chains.
