Zephyron (Dragon Master Daddies #5)

Chapter 1

Thalia

THALIA

The Thornback Woods spat me out into the cold dawn like something poisonous it couldn't digest. I stumbled from between two ancient oaks, their branches still clawing at my torn priestess robes, and fell to my knees in wild grass wet with dew.

Three days.

Three days of running, and my legs finally remembered they were made of flesh instead of pure adrenaline.

My back screamed. Not the dull ache of exhaustion—the sharp, hot agony of infection setting into carved flesh.

I'd used a blessed obsidian blade to etch the sealing spell fragments into my own skin, working by feel in a storage room while the cult prepared for evening meditation.

The only way to transport the intelligence without magical detection.

The only way to carry the proof of what the Unnamed truly was, what Solmar planned to do.

Every breath pulled at the wounds. I could feel them weeping through the thin fabric of my undershirt, the ritual robe's outer layer long since abandoned.

The carved lines followed my spine like a perverted mirror of the cult tattoos that spiraled up from my lower back—those marks of rank and devotion that I'd spent six years earning.

Now both sets burned. The tattoos with shame. The carved spell with infection.

I pressed my scarified palms into the wet grass and forced myself upright.

The scars across my hands—one horizontal line for each blood ritual I'd performed—caught on the grass blades.

Twenty-seven lines. Twenty-seven girls. I'd held each blade, spoken each binding word, watched each light fade from terrified eyes while Solmar stood behind me and called it holy.

The tracking magic pulsed in my cervical spine.

I could feel it—the obsidian shards they'd embedded during my High Priestess initiation three years ago.

They'd told me it was a blessing, a way to always feel the Unnamed's presence.

I'd believed them. I'd believed everything until the Unnamed himself spoke through that final sacrifice and showed me what he really was.

Not a god.

Not a monster.

Something far worse.

The shards pulsed again, stronger. Broadcasting. Calling.

I looked back at the woods. Through the morning mist between the trees, I saw them.

Torches. At least three, maybe four. Moving fast, spreading out in a search pattern.

Brother Torum would be leading—he always led the hunts.

He'd taught me the harvest chants when I was fifteen, his voice patient as I stumbled over the ancient syllables.

He'd probably volunteered to bring me back.

Probably thought he could still save me.

I turned away from the trees and saw Tempest Reach.

The city rose from the plains like something from a fever dream.

Glass towers caught the dawn light and threw it back in shards of rose and gold.

Metal spires reached toward the sky, topped with strange spinning mechanisms I couldn't name.

Electric lamps still glowed despite the sunrise—I could see them, yellow and steady, dotting the streets in neat rows.

The wind shifted and carried city smell toward me.

Coal smoke. Baking bread. Something sharp and metallic I didn't recognize.

Machine oil, maybe. The hum of industry already starting, a low vibration I could feel in my bones.

I'd never heard anything like it. The cult's temple complex had been silent except for chanting and the screams.

I forced my legs to move. One step. Another. The grass gave way to harder ground—a road, packed earth worn smooth by cart wheels. Early merchants would be lining up at the gates. I could slip in with them if I moved fast enough. If my legs didn't give out first.

They almost did. Twice I stumbled, catching myself on nothing, pure momentum keeping me upright.

My vision swam. Three days of running on stolen apples and stream water.

Three nights of maybe an hour's sleep each, hidden in hollow trees and abandoned hunter's shelters, jerking awake at every sound.

The cult had trained us to endure fasting for ritual purity.

This was different. This was my body consuming itself, burning through reserves I didn't have.

The ritual jewelry I'd discarded miles back—the obsidian prayer beads, the silver circlet that marked me as High Priestess, the bronze bells for my wrists and ankles.

All of it dropped into a ravine, watching it fall into darkness.

But I couldn't remove the tattoos. Couldn't cut away the scarification on my palms. Couldn't dig the tracking shards from my spine without killing myself.

I'd kept only three things from my old life. The thin copper coins in my pocket—my entire savings from six years of service. The knowledge carved into my bleeding back. And the guilt that sat in my chest like a stone, so heavy I was surprised each step didn't drive me into the earth.

Tempest Reach's outer wall resolved from the morning haze.

Thirty feet high, built from something that looked like stone but reflected light wrong.

Metal reinforcements caught the sun. Guard towers at regular intervals, their tops crowned with the spinning mechanisms I'd seen on the spires.

Everything about this place spoke of innovation, progress, controlled power applied to practical ends.

Everything the cult wasn't. Everything I'd been taught to despise as corruption.

The gates were open. A queue of merchant carts already forming, farmers bringing produce to market, traders with canvas-covered wagons.

I could see guards checking papers, but not carefully.

Not yet. It was early. They were tired. They wouldn't expect a cult priestess to stumble out of the Thornback Woods at dawn.

I looked back one final time. The torches were closer. Maybe a quarter mile. I could make out shapes now—four hunters, moving with the efficient spacing of trained trackers. They'd find my trail soon. Follow it right to the city gates.

I had to reach the Storm Lord first. Zephyron. The Lord of Lightning, of energy, or power. I had to tell him about the Unnamed, about the harvest magic, about the autumn equinox ritual that would transform a corrupted rejected mate into something with a dragon's power and a monster's hunger.

Had to deliver my intelligence and then let him decide what to do with the High Priestess who'd helped murder twenty-seven innocent women before her conscience finally cracked.

My back burned. The tracking shards pulsed. The hunters closed in.

I ran toward the city gates, toward whatever judgment waited inside those impossible glass towers. Toward the only choice I had left that wasn't the one I'd been running from.

The city swallowed me whole.

I'd never seen so many people in one place. The lower district streets packed with morning workers—men and women in practical clothes, moving with purpose, talking freely.

The noise was overwhelming. Cart wheels on cobblestones.

Merchants shouting prices. A child laughing somewhere.

Metal clanging from a smithy. Conversations happening everywhere at once, overlapping, no one asking permission to speak.

The Sunken Palace had been silent except for chanting.

This was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos.

I forced myself to move, to not stand frozen like the provincial cultist I was.

My torn robes drew stares. A woman with a basket of eggs looked at me with concern.

A man in a leather apron frowned. I ducked my head and pushed deeper into the crowd, trying to remember how normal people moved.

Not the gliding walk they'd trained into me.

Something more natural. Less controlled.

The streets opened into a square. Copperwheel Square, according to a sign posted near a fountain where water flowed freely, unblessed, just for drinking. People filled containers without ritual purification. Without prayer. Without permission.

That's when I saw them.

Three hunters from the cult, dressed in civilian clothes.

Simple tunics and trousers, farmer's caps pulled low.

But I knew them. Sister Vesla by the way she held her left shoulder—an old training injury that never healed right.

Brother Kayne by his walk, that slight limp from the time we'd spent three days in meditation poses.

And of course Brother Torum by the way he scanned faces, the patient thoroughness that made him the best tracker in the order.

They wore obsidian pendants under their shirts. I could see the outline against the fabric. Blessed obsidian, keyed to my tracking shards. They were triangulating. Narrowing down my position in the crowd.

I pressed myself against a fruit vendor's stall, heart hammering so hard I was sure everyone could hear it. The vendor—a massive man with a scarred face and forearms like tree trunks—was arranging apples in neat pyramids, his movements surprisingly delicate for someone his size.

Brother Torum's head turned in my direction.

I looked away, scanning desperately for a side street, an alley, anywhere to run—

The girl couldn't have been more than ten years old. Thin. Dirty. Wearing a dress that was more hole than fabric. She approached the apple barrel from the vendor's blind side, her movements quick and practiced. Her hand darted out for a bruised apple near the bottom.

The vendor's hand shot out faster. His fingers locked around her wrist like a vice.

"Filthy little thief!"

The girl's face went white. She tried to pull away but he held her, raising his other hand high. His scarred knuckles caught the morning light.

I didn't think. Didn't calculate. Didn't consider that I needed to stay hidden, needed to save my strength, needed to reach the Storm Lord before the hunters reached me.