Chapter Nine
ROXY
Three Weeks Later
It’s been four weeks.
One week in that hell of a prison, three weeks of this gilded cage, and I’m done being polite about it.
The ledgers blur in front of me, numbers swimming across the page until they lose all meaning. I’ve been staring at the same column for the past fifteen minutes, my brain refusing to cooperate, refusing to pretend that organizing shipment manifests for cursed artifacts is normal.
That any of this is remotely acceptable.
Four weeks since the car crash.
Four weeks since I touched that flame and watched it surge to life like it recognized something in me that I don’t understand.
Three weeks of working their books, eating their food, sleeping in this room with its barred window and locked door while they decide whether I’m useful enough to keep breathing.
At least I can shower and change my clothes now.
But not once, not fucking once, has anyone explained what the hell is actually happening.
My hands curl into fists on the desktop, knuckles whitening as frustration builds behind my ribs like pressure in a sealed container.
I’m done waiting, done being patient, done accepting scraps of information delivered through visits from brothers who study me like I’m some fascinating science experiment instead of a person trapped in circumstances beyond her control.
The door handle turns without warning.
I don’t bother looking up, I won’t give whoever’s entering the satisfaction of my immediate attention.
Probably Maul with more paperwork or Flux wanting to wade through three different forms while explaining why their money-laundering operation is brilliant.
I keep my eyes on the ledger, on numbers that represent millions of dollars moving through businesses that shouldn’t exist, through an empire built on violence, magic, and laws that predate civilization.
“We need to talk.” His voice fills the room before his presence does, cold and commanding in that way that makes the temperature drop without him even trying. The president. The ice man. The Frosted Tyrant who put me in chains and thought darkness would break me.
I still don’t look up. “I’m busy.”
“Look at me!” It’s not a request, but a command delivered with the absolute certainty that it will be obeyed because he’s apparently never met anyone stupid enough to refuse him.
Congratulations. He’s about to meet his first.
“I said, I’m busy!” I flip a page in the ledger with deliberate slowness, making a show of studying numbers I can’t actually see through the red haze building behind my vision.
“Your secretary gave me a deadline… Sunday’s church meeting, just like the week before, and the week before that.
These books need to be perfect, or apparently, I get fed to Wreck.
So, unless you’re here to help reconcile accounts… you can leave.”
Silence stretches between us, thick enough to choke on.
I count my heartbeats, one, two, three, before the desk shifts slightly, his hand slamming down on the wood hard enough to make the calculator jump.
Frost spreads from the point of impact, crystalline patterns racing across the surface in delicate white veins that creep toward my fingers before stopping just short of touching skin.
“I. Wasn’t. Asking!” His voice drops into that sub-zero register that makes my survival instincts scream at me to run, to apologize, to do literally anything except what I’m about to do. “Look. At. Me!”
I lift my eyes slowly, meeting his glare with one of my own, and the fury I’ve been bottling for four weeks finally finds its voice.
“Why should I? You’ve given me zero reasons to respect anything you say.
You chained me in the dark for a week. Fed me to a monster who ate my fear like it was dessert.
Moved me here like upgrading my cell makes any of this acceptable.
And through all of it, not once have you explained what the actual fuck is happening! ”
He leans forward, both hands now flat on the desk, ice spreading faster as his control slips.
His eyes glow with that pale blue light that has nothing human in them, fire contained behind flesh that barely holds it.
Up close, I see details I missed before, the way his pupils are slightly slitted, the faint shimmer of scales just beneath his skin when he’s angry, the raw power coiled in every muscle like a predator deciding whether to strike or retreat.
“You want answers?” The question comes out with frost coating each word. “Fine. You want to know what you stumbled into? What you are to us?”
“Yes!” The word tears out of me louder than intended, but I don’t back down, I don’t pull away, even though every instinct screams that challenging him is suicide.
“Yes, I want answers! I want to know what the hell I touched that made your precious flame burn brighter. I want to know why you haven’t killed me when, apparently, that’s what you do to humans who see too much.
I want to know what gives you the right to keep me prisoner when I haven’t done anything except survive a car crash and have the terrible judgment to seek help from monsters! ”
His jaw tightens, muscles flexing as he grinds his teeth together. For a long moment, I think he’s going to freeze me solid, end this conversation the way he ended the hunter’s life, brutally, mercilessly, with ice that burns worse than fire.
But then something shifts in his expression.
The rage banks slightly, cooling into something harder to read, and when he speaks again, his voice carries weight that makes my bones ache.
“I’m a dragon.” The admission falls between us like a stone into still water.
“A fire dragon. Centuries old. Cursed by a witch to lose my fire because I burned too hot, destroyed too much, and couldn’t control the rage that came with power.
So, as punishment, she cursed me into the Appalachians to be this ice monster you see before you.
” He straightens, pulling his hands back from the desk, and the frost begins to recede.
“The flame in that dome? That’s what’s left of my fire.
It’s dying, slowly extinguishing until I find ‘true contentment,’ but if I do not find ‘true contentment’ before the flame goes out completely… so do I.”
I process this information in the space between heartbeats.
Dragon.
Cursed.
Dying flame.
It should sound unbelievable.
It would sound unbelievable if I hadn’t spent a month surrounded by vampires, shapeshifters, and beings that shouldn’t exist outside mythology and nightmare.
“So, Scar’s actually a vampire.” The observation escapes before I can stop it, pieces clicking into place with disturbing clarity. “That explains the no-sunlight thing.”
His expression flickers, surprise, maybe, that I’m accepting this so readily.
“Yes. Scar’s a vampire. Five hundred years old.
Wreck’s a wendigo who feeds on fear. Coil’s a basilisk shifter.
Maul’s a werewolf. The rest…” he waves a hand dismissively, “… they’re all supernatural.
All are bound to this club. All operating under laws that predate your species’ understanding of civilization. ”
“And the witch?” I push, needing the full picture before my brain can properly categorize the impossibility of what I’m hearing. “The one whose laws you keep mentioning?”
“Is the one who cursed me.” His eyes hold mine with intensity that makes it impossible to look away. “She enforces the boundaries between your world and ours. Humans aren’t supposed to know we exist. Those who find out…” He doesn’t finish, but the implication lands with brutal clarity.
“Die.” I supply the word he won’t say in a hushed tone. “They die. Which is why you should have killed me the moment you found me touching your flame.”
“Yes.” The single syllable carries no apology, no regret, just a statement of fact delivered with the same neutrality of a trigger pull already decided. And suddenly, the fury that’s been building for four weeks reaches critical mass.
I surge to my feet, chair scraping back hard enough to hit the wall.
“And you’re keeping me prisoner because you’re afraid of a witch?
You’re a dragon who runs a criminal empire spanning multiple states.
You have brothers who can tear apart hunters without breaking a sweat.
You operate businesses that move millions through systems humans can’t even detect. But you’re afraid of… one… witch?”
His eyes flash dangerously. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly!” My voice climbs despite the cold pouring off him in waves that make my breath fog white.
“You’re terrified! Terrified that killing me breaks some rule.
Terrified that letting me go exposes your precious empire.
Terrified that maybe, just maybe, I actually matter to that dying flame and you don’t know what that fucking means!
” I lean forward, my hands braced on the desk, meeting his glare with everything I’ve got.
“Grow a spine and make a decision instead of keeping me in limbo while you figure out which option scares you less.”
The temperature plummets, not gradually, not like a warning, the air seizes, pressure slamming into me hard enough to steal my next breath as the space between us crystallizes in a violent rush. Something detonates outward from him, invisible for a heartbeat and then blindingly, brutally real.
Ice.
It erupts with concussive force, shards and plates forming faster than thought, the impact hurling me backward as if I’ve been struck by a physical blow.
My shoulders hit the wall with bone-jarring force, the sound knocked clean out of my body while the air rips from my lungs.
Cold tears through me instantly, a burning, invasive chill that bites straight through fabric and skin, sinking deeper with every frantic inhale.
I don’t fall.
I’m held.