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Dade
Fourteen years old
“On your feet, boy.”
I spat a glob of blood at the dirt, my head ringing and my sword beside me. I could stretch out and reach it, but I couldn’t. Every part of me was chipped—my very bones brittle and aching.
“Dade,” Serrin barked.
I pushed to my feet, too slow for his liking, and landed flat on my ass as his steel-toed boot collided with my gut. My breakfast left my stomach, burned its way up my throat, but I’d been here before.
Every damned day. Morning, noon, and night, I was tortured beyond reason, but the reason was always the same.
My uncle came for my jugular. “Do you think they’d be proud?” He released a snide laugh. “You’re a disgrace. Now get on your fucking feet,” he roared with a vehemence I couldn’t ignore.
I understood his pain. I felt it every waking morning when he forced me to before my eyes had fully opened. My father had been his best friend, his idol, a mate found in a brother.
And he’d never let me forget.
I snatched up my sword, and we danced. I struck, left, left, right, then feigned a turn, catching him off guard. It only served to enrage him further, his attacks no longer practiced caution but life or death.
The shock of it could’ve killed me, but he’d been this furious many times before. Just once, the first time, as I’d lain in a pool of my own blood, unsure if I’d see the sun rise again, was enough for me to take his deadly rage seriously.
We fought until I was shoved back against the wooden fencing, other warriors of similar ages going through their morning stances and routines in the pens across from ours.
I could feel their eyes on us, hear the general bark at them to clear out as I pushed back against the steel that came for my side. My teeth bared, blood boiling as Serrin’s eyes clashed with mine, the hatred and grief and frustration in his too much to break away from.
Trapped. I was trapped, and he’d never set me free.
I wanted to avenge my parents’ deaths. I wanted to rule this kingdom with a brutal, furred fist. I wanted to make sure everyone knew the price of crossing a Volkahn.
But I also wanted to follow the others as they left the training yards and returned to their homes or barracks. I wanted to fly with them, fight with them, and I knew I would, but… when?
When would I be good enough to live a life outside of my uncle and his bloodlust? When would I be able to laugh with the others as they trained and fought together? When would I be treated as a growing king and less like a beast that would never be tamed? When would I be able to follow a female around who’d piqued my interest rather than eye the female warriors from afar?
When would I be able to fucking breathe without being berated and reminded and beaten and controlled?
A roar tore from somewhere deep inside, shocking us both as my skin hummed but did not catch fire with the change. “If this means so much to you, why don’t you just become king?”
Serrin’s eyes flared, and he pulled away. Just when I thought he was done with me for the morning, he spun back, the side of his blade catching me in the shoulder hard enough to slice through my leather tunic and graze my skin. “You ungrateful—”
I let go, unraveling into a darkness so complete, a burn that split apart my breathing and bones and remolded everything into more. Sharper, fiercer, deadlier—it happened so quickly, faster than ever before, that my uncle had no time to react.
I snarled, teeth poised over his throat, my growled breath pluming the frigid air. Pi For the first time in my entire life, he stared at me with fear. It swam in his eyes, flooded and seeped through his pores, and I inhaled it deep, drunk from a growing power stronger than anything I’d encountered from my maturing body before. A thunderous growl left me, uncontrolled and steaming the air, dampening his cheek. His hands rose, his eyes collecting pain to accompany the fear as my claws sank deeper. “Dade,” he ordered, though it lacked the usual sharp conviction. “Dade, return. Change back.” Bone crunched beneath the weight of my paws, his blood ru He tried again, voice softer, more gentle than I’d heard before. “Dade, please. You must change back.” I snarled, teeth closer to his cheek, tempted to take a bite—just one. Though I was sure his flesh would taste like sour milk, he had to learn. He had to pay. “Your mother wanted you,” he said, shocking me. “You were a surprise, of course, though she knew your father was lying. That he’d pla I eased back on my haunches, but only a little. “Not even a week,” he continued. “She didn’t even get a week to learn how to stop feeling your pain, your hunger, your confusion as if it were her own, and your father… when he left for the a I retracted my claws. He hissed, the wounds steaming the cold before they slowly began to close. “He was gone a day too long. That one day was enough to have your mother pacing, torn between her two greatest loves. I said I would go. I begged for her to stay, to wait until morning when the rest of the guard would be ready to leave with her. She said she would.” He swallowed, and it sounded as though it hurt. “She promised,” he rasped, tears slowly leaking from his eyes now. “And I know he’ll never forgive me because I went to bed. I did not stop her that night when she left you with the nursemaid and ran. She ran to her mate, to her death, and she did so with hope that whatever was wrong could be fixed, that he would be okay, though she knew and could feel otherwise.” I whined low, peeling my paws from his shoulders, bone grinding under my weight, and stood over him instead. But I wouldn’t let him leave. Not yet. Not until I’d heard the rest. Not until I’d felt that organ inside me blacken and perish just that little bit more. Serrin sniffed, groaning before he went on. “When we reached old bridge later the next day, they were gone. It would be another two days of riding and flying through Sinshell until we found them hanging from flower-trussed poles, blood leaking from everywhere, and Kenton Gracewood demanding we agree to his terms, or they would die.” His grief melded with my own, climbing higher into a fury that scorched through every vein until I felt it embed deep within my soul. “Those terms?” Serrin said, a dry laugh following. “To send you to a human kingdom, either Errin or across the sea, to be raised as one of them so that you would not know all of what you could be, and therefore not bring the doom they feared you would. The foretold bullshit from a deranged sorceress who claimed you would be the end to the Gracewood line.”