365 Days to Bond With the Cursed Beast King

"You signed the account over to me years ago, Zenaida. I don't know what you think you're going to accomplish here."

Robert's voice hadn't changed. It was still smooth and steeped in that effortless, but suffocating certainty that he was the only reasonable adult in the room.

I stood amidst the dust and wreckage of what had once been my parents' study, clutching a worn folder of bank statements; three months of painstaking excavation, and watched my uncle look at irrefutable proof of theft as if it were a minor inconvenience he'd already factored into his budget.

"You forged my signature," I said in a tight voice. "I have the original right beside it. Anyone with eyes can see they don't match."

"Anyone with eyes and a very expensive lawyer." He offered that familiar, sharp little smile, the one he always used right before closing the door on a conversation. "Which, unfortunately for you, I have and you don't."

Before I could answer, the air in the room thinned.

A sharp drop in pressure hit behind my ears, the oppressive stillness right before a storm.

The desk lamp flickered violently.

Over Robert's shoulder, an old water stain on the ceiling split open, tearing along an impossible seam. It bled a blinding glare that had no right to exist in a damp, rent-controlled townhouse.

"What is that?" Robert murmured. For the first time in my life, the composure slipped from his face.

I didn't get an answer.

The seam tore wider with a sound like burning paper, spitting sparks of violent light. Gravity tilted sideways. I lunged for the edge of the desk, but my fingers scraped through empty air.

The fall wasn't a violent plunge; it was an eerie silence.

No wind, no rush of air; just the study shrinking into a fading pinprick of lamplight above me before snapping shut entirely. Then came an overwhelming surge of atmospheric heat, the blinding glint of gold, and too many eyes.

I slammed into someone.

There was zero grace to it.

My shoulder struck a fabric-clad chest hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, dragging us both down in a collision of limbs and the distinct texture of a coat.

Then, the silence returned; heavy, suffocating, and dangerous.

I pushed myself up, dizzy, only to find a ring of seven figures staring down at me around a massive stone table.

They looked carved from the room itself, clad in high collars and shiny iron.

A man half-rose, his hand instinctively clamping onto the hilt of a curved blade at his hip. A woman near the back hissed a low chant in a language that felt heavy with intent.

"Assassin," a voice pronounced, cold and final.

"I'm not..." My voice cracked.

I was sprawled awkwardly over a stranger on a dais, drenched in sweat, wearing jeans and a faded sweater that practically screamed that I didn't belong wherever this was.

"I don't know how I got here! There was a light, and I fell..."

The man beneath me went dead still.

I felt the change through my palms before I saw it.

Intense heat blasted off his chest, as if I were resting against sun-baked iron. Beneath my hand, his chest didn't just expand; it shuddered with a deep, unnatural reverberation that made the floorboards hum.

I looked down properly.

His eyes had been a dark, storm-grey a second ago. I was sure of it.

Now, the irises were expanding into molten gold, drowning out the whites entirely, glowing from some primal furnace deep within his skull.

He locked onto me with a terrifying focus.

"Vyrn." One of the lords at the table stepped forward, his face drained of color. "Your Majesty. Control it."

Vyrn didn't hear him. He was staring at me as if my touch had unsealed something ancient and violent within him.

The heat rolling off him into my palms surged higher, taut muscles shifting and expanding beneath his tunic.

"Mate," he rasped.

The word was low, rough, scraped out of a throat that hadn't spoken it in centuries.

Chaos erupted. Chairs slammed back against stone. Shouted orders clashed with the metallic rasp of drawing steel. The woman who had been chanting surged forward, her hands outstretched to tear me away.

I was paralyzed.

Beneath my grip, his pulse gave up all pretense of human rhythm, accelerating into a thundering war drum.

The molten gold in his eyes bled outward, weeping into his skin across his temples in dark, shimmering patterns of iridescent scales.

"Get her off him!" someone roared.

But it was already too late.

As my vision began to fray into blackness, his spine arched.

Black and gold scales tore through his tunic, and two massive, wings burst from his back, casting sweeping shadows across the vaulted ceiling as the chamber dissolved into a single, terrified scream:

"Dragon!"