Chapter 17 Ramsey
RAMSEY
“Mr. Mondragon, are you listening?”
“Hm?” I respond, just because it pisses him off.
“I’d like to revisit the day of your epiphaneia, and the emotions that precipitated your dragon’s appearance.
Epiphaneias are already chaotic and disorienting, whatever emotions triggered your moratus awakening must have been particularly strong, and understanding what those triggers are can help us work towards improving your emotional regulation and control.
What can you recall from the moments leading up to your epiphaneia? ”
Can we eat him yet?
Ignoring both the dragon and Dr. Lystad, I try to stop the barrage of images from that day. Because the truth is, I remember everything.
Halfway through my shift as the club’s “bad cop” bouncer thanks in part to my scars and permanent scowl, I’d been scanning IDs one after the other, not bothering to look at the indistinguishable faces of drunk humans poisoning themselves with shitty alcohol.
Every night for the past two months had been the same: get to work, look scary, get paid, go back to my shitty apartment where my roommate would be fucking whatever piece of ass he picked up for the night.
That night wouldn’t have been any different, except a nasally voice barked out my name from across the street.
Angling my good eye towards the poorly-lit alley, I could just make out a group of drunken frat-bros stumbling towards the club entrance.
I didn’t recognize them, but the asshole leading the charge seemed to recognize me as they approached.
“Dude! Holy shit! What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked loudly, eyes glassy.
“I don’t know you, man,” I grumbled, waving another person through the door when they thrust their ID at me.
“Nah, man, you’re Atlas’ big bro!” Mention of my younger brother made me tense and turn towards him as he continued to smile like a fucking idiot.
“Hard to forget scars like that.” He said, motioning to my face.
“Guys! It’s Mondragon! No, not Atlas, Ramsey.
The Dragon Prince! Well, not any more—Atlas got you there!
” he brayed like the fucking jackass he was, slapping his knee as if the whole reason I was at that Fate-forsaken club, sleeping in a near-condemned apartment, was the funniest thing in the fucking world.
“Oh shit!” One of his friends crashed into him from behind and they staggered close enough to smell the rancid scent of fae whiskey on their breath.
They’d started to attract attention, which was the last thing I wanted.
I couldn’t risk losing another job. “Ramseyyy,” the one who crashed into idiot #1 said.
“Dude I thought you were dead! Have you been here the whole time?”
I fucking wish I’d died. Instead, my shifter DNA kicked in and managed to heal the savage claw marks on my face enough so that I didn’t immediately die of infection. Couldn’t save my eye, though, dragon or not.
“In or out?” I grumbled, but they were too drunk, and probably high too, to pay any attention to the club entrance.
“Dude we should tell Atlas!” A third jackass lurched over, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. My heart raced as he fumbled with his phone, trying to call my younger brother. I rose to my full height, easily towering over these pieces of shit, before knocking his phone out of his hands.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I growled. My eyes narrowed at the guy’s shocked face but none of them backed up. Instead, they started shouting over one another at me.
“Hey!”
“Why the fuck’d you do that?” Idiot #3 with the phone slurred.
“Fuck. Off.” I repeated, but they only squared up, never minding the fact none of them could stand straight.
“What do you think you’re doing, man? You’re exiled—we could fuck you up for that and no one would give a shit.
In fact, your dad would probably throw us a goddamned party!
” Idiot #1 cried over idiot #2’s shoulder as the others cheered.
Like my life was a joke because I never shifted.
Like I was worthless, just because my family decided I was.
“You could fucking try,” I growled, the sound reverberating deep in my chest. His gaze held a new, sinister glint when he turned back to me.
“Maybe we should, you know? Remind you where the disgraced dragon prince belongs on the hierarchy, except—oops. You’re not really a dragon though, are you?
You’re nothing more than one of them,” he nodded to the line of humans watching eagerly as our confrontation escalated.
“You’re nothing,” he sneered. I ground my jaw, swallowing the hot bile threatening to rise from my throat.
“Last chance,” I grit out, but idiot #1 just laughed.
He laughed.
They all laughed.
I lunged for him with an animalistic shout, my fist connecting with his face before anyone could see me move, let alone stop me. And then we toppled over, my larger body easily subduing him.
Weak.
Pathetic.
“Who’s nothing now, bitch?” I taunted him with a vicious smile as my hands closed around his throat, watching as he struggled to breathe through the blood dripping down his throat from a shattered nose.
Before I could see the light die from his eyes as they rolled back, I was shoved off by one of the other idiots.
I rolled and stood with a manic laugh, surveying the damage.
Idiot #4 was trying to resuscitate his friend while idiots #2 and #3 rushed at me, swinging wide like amateur brawlers.
A sadistic thrill raced through me as they kept swinging, kept missing, and when I finally saw an opening—
There.
With a grunt, I struck idiot #2 in the chest. And then I heard it, the stuttering of his heartbeat, once, twice. He was dead before he hit the ground, eyes fixed on me in confusion as the electrical impulses from his brain fired for the last time.
“Colin!” Idiot #3 cried, dropping to the ground and shaking his friend in desperation. Something violent, vicious, burned within me in voracious triumph. I wiped the blood from my mouth, having let one through so I could take the opening, and spit it at his feet.
“You fucker!” he screamed, rising more swiftly than I anticipated and swiped at me with claws—another shifter, then.
Narrowly avoiding getting gutted, I rolled with the force of his momentum and we grappled on the hard, cold pavement.
When I landed on top of him, just like #1, my hands first found his throat, then covered his mouth and nose as my knees pinned his arms.
I saw my reflection in his wide, wild eyes.
Slits for pupils.
Fangs turning my grin feral.
My skin began to glow.
My vision whited out.
Pain washed over me so suddenly I couldn’t even scream.
Instead, I roared.
Windows shattered and crashed on top of the human spectators surrounding us.
I rolled off his charred body, desperately clutching my head in until blood ran down my face, scalp shredded by the new razor-sharp claws extending from my fingers.
The heavy scent of ozone filled the air as shrieks of terror cut through the fog in my mind. It felt like my head was going to fucking explode, unable to contain the power that was ripping me apart, reforming my body.
A baptism by fire.
By white dragonflame.
Moratus. The word echoed in my mind just as a deranged laugh left my chest, but it wasn’t mine. It was a new voice. The same voice, I realized, that had shown me the opening I needed to end my attacker’s life with one hit.
Show them what it means to be king.
As my body contorted farther than any human could survive, I surrendered to the primal, instinctual urge to free the beast trapped within.
My dragon.
My monster.
My savior.
All along I continued to bellow as agony seared through my mangled body, dragonflame incinerating me from the inside out to reveal the new obsidian scales beneath vaporized flesh.
Crazed screaming faded into an ear-piercing roar as the ravenous power running through my veins exploded outward, desperate to devour and consume whatever remained from the chaos my dragon wrought.
I rose from the flames of my epiphaneia a creature of legend, of terror and destruction.
A conqueror, raining molten white fire over the field of his victory.
A king.
I remember every fucking second.
“Sorry, doc. Couldn’t tell you.” Lystad’s mouth settles into a hard line.
He knows I’m full of shit. In the months after the High Council dumped me here, I haven’t said more than a few sentences during our mandatory weekly sessions.
I only agreed, using the loosest definition of the word, when the Council guaranteed my father wouldn’t interfere.
I was particularly pleased with that little “fuck you” to dear old dad: not only had the first moratus dragon in recorded history slipped through his grasp by his own doing, the High Council neutered his authority as King of the Shifter Council to get me back under thumb.
“You’re as well aware as I am, Mr. Mondragon, that if you don’t begin to show progress in our sessions, the Council will have no choice but to—”
“Burn,” my dragon interrupts with a bone-rattling sibilance, wiping the smug arrogance right off the rat bastard’s pale face. I chuckle even as his presence fades into the back of my mind and my voice becomes my own once again.
“How’s that for progress, doc?” He stammers, scared shitless.
Nice, I mentally high-five.
Now can we eat him?
He probably just pissed himself, so no. His rumble of distaste makes my lip curl, which only serves to make the pathetic asshole in front of me tremble further.
“I—well. Yes, I suppose we can consider this a step in the right direction.”