The Silence
Chapter twenty-five
Nyomi
I stepped back against the wall, continuing to confirm that Kenji was near. His cold rage poured through the air like winter finding every crack in a house, thickening each breath until the room felt carved from ice. But that rage was only the surface of it.
Underneath it, his hot, lusty wanting moved like volcano magma traveling under a massive glacier—hidden, patient, yet capable of swallowing mountains while the world above believed everything was frozen.
My flesh forgot whether it had been made to survive him. . .or surrender.
The fabric of my shirt became unbearable against my nipples. Between my thighs, heat gathered and slicked. My pulse lost whatever rhythm it had once possessed, battering against my ribs as though desperate to escape me.
And then, cutting clean through all of that warmth, this cold fear slipped down my spine.
Then the wall across from me darkened.
What’s that? What’s happening to the wall?
Coils of black smoke seeped through the plaster, carrying the memory of fire.
One thin wispy ribbon.
Then another.
And another.
Until the wall could no longer hold whatever lived behind it. Hundreds of smoky ribbons bled through every crack at once and slithered through the air, twisting and turning like a nest of living serpents.
What the fuck?
Soon, those dark coils gathered and circled one another. They braided, knotted, and thickened into a darkness so dense it no longer resembled smoke.
The dragon-shadow. . .
He began to form right in front of me. He was bigger than I’d ever seen him. His massive head emerged from the swarm of hissing, coiling smoke with large horns carved from darkness. Whiskers unfurled into the air like ink poured into water.
Suddenly, his golden eyes ignited inside the darkness. Looking at them almost felt like staring into the sun.
His neck followed.
Longer.
Wider.
Higher.
Then, the rest of his body poured upward. Smoke folded over smoke. Scales shimmered. And this colossal dragon occupied the entire ceiling of the large space.
Oh. My. God.
The fluorescent lights flickered.
The bed frames hummed low against the floor.
Every IV line trembled.
This insurmountable power rolled off him in waves so immense the air bowed, and I almost fell to my knees. Even if a person couldn’t see him, I had no doubt people would know there was something otherworldly in here.
This. . .is what. . .our daughter did. . .
This was what her blood had purchased.
Of course, they won the war.
Pride swelled so fiercely in my chest it hurt, yet grief answered just as quickly.
Is she. . .here too? The Death Guardian said I would see her.
Desperate, I searched his enormous shadowed-body for my daughter. My gaze went to any pocket of air where a small shadow could be a curl of smoke shaped like a tiger or baby.
No.
Hope collapsed within my chest. I closed my eyes and did my best to hold back the pain.
Did the Death Guardian lie? Why can’t I see her? I need to. . .see her just. . .once. . .please.
My eyes burned.
Sound came—the snap of the double doors’ hinges twisting.
I opened my eyes.
A guard held the doors open.
I tensed.
Kenji stepped through the doorway in mid-change, pulling a black long-sleeve shirt down over his tattooed muscular chest. The fabric caught on the ridges of muscle before it settled against his ribs.
He must have done a quick wipe down of blood and death, then hurried straight to me. His hair was still wet at the temples.
Before the shirt’s hem dropped past his sides, I caught the white edge of a bandage under the cloth.
The guard backed out of the room.
The double doors closed behind Kenji.
And the oddest thing occurred.
The dragon-shadow turned his massive head. His gold eyes fixed on Kenji. His long mouth opened around a sound I could not hear. The silent word slid through the space between them.
Kenji nodded.
What?
I widened my eyes. "H-he can talk?"
"Yes." Kenji put his gaze on me. "And his name is Goryū."
I shivered. “Goryū.”
The dragon-shadow snapped his view to me.
My bottom lip quivered. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run.
His colossal body flowed toward me.
Oh, fuck.
Smoke unraveled from his scales, spilling behind him in long ribbons that dissolved before touching the floor. Every movement bent the air around him, making the fluorescent lights pulse more and the IV lines sway as though the room itself was struggling to exist beneath his presence.
Goryū stopped inches from me. Heat rolled from him.
His nostrils flared.
Once.
Twice.
He drew in one slow breath, and that inhale wrapped around me, lifting loose strands of my hair from my shoulders.
Smoke circled my wrists, my waist, my face, as though the dragon wasn't merely smelling me. . .he was remembering me. His whiskers drifted toward me, brushing lightly over my cheek. It was so faint I wasn’t sure if I felt him or I simply imagined it.
Then. . .the impossible happened. He lowered that colossal head down to the floor and closed his eyes. His horns dipped toward the floor until his forehead rested just inches from my feet.
The space shivered.
I widened my eyes. “W-what is he doing?”
“He’s bowing to you and saying thank you.”
My heart cracked and warmed at the same time.
Kenji frowned. “Goryū, rest.”
Monitors rattled.
The windows hummed.
I didn’t think Goryū wanted to rest at all.
Kenji sighed. “Please.”
And little by little, the dragon-shadow began to faint, unthread, and unbraid as those wispy coils drew backward into Kenji’s body.
Goryū folded in on himself. His gold eyes went last.
Then the room lost half its air.
Just in case, I braced myself for a vision of Kenji’s memory. Every time my sight had reached for a person since the ritual, the vision came without asking. Kiko's face had opened for me like a book with the spine already broken. My gaze on Yoichi, Deja, the doctor, and others.
But visions hadn’t come in a while, and when I looked at Kenji nothing came again.
My stomach twisted.
Is it gone? Did the power run out? Or was it built only for the war?
I searched harder. I let my eyes rest on the shape of Kenji’s shoulders, the line of his jaw, the pulse under the skin of his throat.
Still, nothing came.
Or is it him?
Maybe this bond stopped the possibility.
Or perhaps, I’d truly exhausted it for tonight.
I raised my eyebrows. "When Goryū spoke to you earlier. . .what did he say?"
He said, "Careful."
I leaned my head to the side. "Careful? Why?"
Kenji did not answer, but his rage did, swelling through the space and heating my skin.
What the fuck?
Kenji stayed near the door. At least twenty feet of tile lay between us. His eyes drifted from my face to the chair beside the empty bed where I’d been sitting. A small stack of children's books rested there.
Sighing, Kenji walked over to the books. When he got there, he picked one up, turned it in his palm, and set it back down. "They said you read to the kids during the war. The kids still stuck on the island because they couldn’t make the evacuation in time. The kids that were too sick to be moved."
"I did."
Kenji picked up another book.
This one was thinner. The cover was a watercolor of a tiny girl in a pink kimono. Her hair was black as ink. She held a paper crane cupped in both hands like the crane might lift off if she loosened her fingers. The pastels bled soft into each other.
Kenji turned it over in his huge, scarred palm. His thumb slid across the cover slow. I held still as he opened it. The paper made a small dry sound against his skin. His eyes lowered to the first page. I watched his long lashes flutter.
Then his mouth opened, and his voice came out lower than I'd ever heard him. "Nanami was the smallest girl in her village. . ."
I parted my lips.
"But she had the biggest heart. . ." His voice cracked. "And that was how she saved the world. . ."
He stopped reading, yet his gaze stayed on the page. Through our bond, his sadness flowed into me and mingled with my grief. His jaw locked as his fingers tightened on the small book until the spine bent a little against his grip.
Then, slower than he had picked it up, he closed the book and set it down away from the stack.
When Kenji finally raised his eyes to me, the cold rage that had poured through the wall when he first arrived was gone. What replaced it had no name yet. There were too many emotions wrestling with each other and forming into one massive complexity.
Finally, he spoke, "You gave my men’s frightened children bedtime stories while the island burned and exploded around them. They will remember your voice longer than they remember the fire."
I gritted my teeth. I did not want to be told my worth right now. I needed to know why the fuck he was so angry and why it felt like it was directed at me.
I let out a long breath. "They said the war is over.”
“It is.”
“Your brother and father are dead?"
“They are.” His voice held no rage, even though I could feel it moving between us.
I swallowed. "How is my Roar?"
"I sent him with Hiro and the twins to a private hospital in Tokyo. They will get checked out. He will be fine."
"And my Claws and Fangs?"
"All are fine."
“Rin was—”
“One of the Silent Ones came to me and explained that Deja and him did the burial ritual.”
Shock hit me. “Oh.”
“They’re bonded and exhausted, but they were transferred to my mansion in Tokyo. Rin has a room there.”
“The Fangs and Claws live with you too.”
“They have private rooms on the second floor. After moments like this, I keep them close to make sure they’ve fully healed. Once I know for sure, they go off to their condos.”
“Okay.” I bit my bottom lip.
He studied me. "And how is my Tiger?"
"Fine."
His eyes slowly traveled down my body and stopped at my forearms where all of Kiko’s scratches were—red angry lines on my brown skin.
He frowned. "Who scratched you like that?"
"Kiko."
He sneered. Fast, his hand went to his back pocket. He pulled out his phone.
I shook my head. "I killed her."
His hand paused halfway to his ear. He blinked. Pure shock rippled across his face and stayed for several seconds. Then. . .slowly. . .he set the phone back inside his pocket. “You. . .killed her?”
“Yes.” I tucked a braid behind my ear. “And. . .I ordered her cousins, even Tet, to be burned in a pile in front of the Bamboo Garden.”
Kenji blinked. “You did?”
“Yes.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.
“Did I overstep?”
“How could you, Tora? It was your call.”
“Okay.” Some of the tension loosened from my shoulders. “And. . .I assume you already know about the DNA results for the baby twins.”
“I don’t.” His gaze remained on me, and it didn’t even look like he cared about that at all.
What is going on with him?
I swallowed. “The twins are Hiro’s.”
“They’re my nephews?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” He continued to watch me in that eerie way, unsettling me.
This unnerving silence ran through the space. Kenji's eyes hadn't moved from my face, steady and unblinking, like he was waiting for me to crack first. And no sound came from him—not an exhalation nor shift of fabric.
The space between us held nothing—no fidgeting, no shifting weight, just him watching me with that same flat, unreadable expression. And the silence pressed on. It was a thick, heavy fog rolling in and settling around us, making it hard to stand tall.
My mouth went dry.
"Thank you, Tora." His voice was calm, but his emotions in our bond were not. They were a hurricane of rage, sadness, and guilt. "We owe our victory to you."
My chest tightened. "You’re angry. I can feel you wanting to hurt someone and. . . I am the only one in the room so. . ."
"Yet, you know I could never hurt you, Tora."
"But you are mad at me. I can feel it. We are. . .bonded. . .Do you feel it too?"
"I felt your emotions through the whole war." He pursed his lips. "Anger. Sadness. Vengeance. Grief."
What?
The overhead light hummed.
I looked away. "Why are you angry with me, Kenji?"
"You may feel my emotions, but you cannot read my thoughts. How could I ever be angry with my Tiger?"
A shiver rolled down my back. "Still. . .you cleared the room. . ."
"I did."
"Why not just have me come to you?"
"Because a king does not summon a queen."
I blinked and turned back to him.
He continued to stare at me. "What was the sacrifice, Tora?"
Oh, no. Not that.