Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Dragon and Tiger Entwined
Kenji
Once dressed, I didn't recognize myself.
The mirror showed a man wrapped in black wool and silk. Gold beading outlined the lapels. The jacket sat tight across my shoulders. The fabric was so fine it moved like water when I shifted.
Dragon cufflinks glinted at my wrists— fourteen-karat gold with scales so precise I could feel the ridges under my thumbs. It was the sort of detail that would make me destroy my Tiger’s pussy this evening.
Mmmm.
For the left lapel, she’d provided a pin of a dragon entwined with a tiger. The dragon coiled in a fluid spiral. Its long body formed the base of the piece. Its head was arched forward with sharp fangs bared. Tiny rubies served as its eyes.
The tiger curved around the dragon. Muscles sculpted. Stripes rendered in thin lines of gold. Its gaze rested on the dragon.
Tora. . .
I turned and checked out more of the outfit in the mirror.
You’re going to make an excellent wife.
The trousers broke clean over my shoes. The shirt beneath was collarless, exposing the inked dragon's tail that wound up from my ribs and curled just beneath my collarbone.
I like how you dress me. Perhaps, this will be your job.
For some reason, my mind went to my Personal Scales. Yuki used to pick and put on my shirts. Hina would manage the shoes, always kneeling without being asked. And Mami. . .
No.
I shut the memory down before her face could fully form. But her name dragged Sako's with it, and for a half-second I smelled smoke and the odor of burning bodies.
Mami had betrayed me with Sako—my house steward and childhood friend. Two people who'd lived inside the walls of my trust, who'd eaten at tables I'd built for them, and who'd sold me to my father like I was cargo to be redirected.
I burned them alive along with their families and I would never allow myself to lose sleep over it.
Some betrayals didn't leave room for mercy.
Days ago, Reo had sent Yuki and Hina to London. My Roar knew that their faces would keep bringing up unwanted memories.
Hina would finish her degree, which would let her live independently of me one day. Yuki had just enrolled in college and hopefully would figure out her future path.
I'd wanted to cut them loose entirely and wipe the ledger of them out of my life for good.
But my mother's voice sat in my brain. She would have been furious if I’d easily let them go. The Fox had taken those girls when they were children, forced them into servitude for me, and shaped their entire lives around the duty of dressing, feeding, and keeping me comfortable.
The least I owed them was the money it took to learn how to live without me.
They now had a new monthly allowance that provided enough for tuition, an apartment in Kensington, and food.
And I had a fresh start with my Tiger.
I took one last look in the mirror. The gold beading shimmered in the light and threw tiny sparks across the ceiling. The dragon-tiger pin sat over my heart as if she intended to brand me.
Naughty Tiger.
I smirked.
Someone knocked.
I crossed the room and opened it, and for a moment I just stared.
Reo stood in the hallway, and I almost didn't recognize him either. He wore a black tuxedo and black shirt with a tie the color of oxblood.
How did she know that red was his favorite color?
The suit cut close. The jacket pulled across his shoulders, clean and exact.
The color shifted when he moved his arm, making it appear more dark and wet.
Yet, the pin on his lapel sharpened everything. It was an opened dragon’s jaw, forged in gold and curved in an arc across the lapel. Each fang was carved and polished to a pale gleam.
I parted my lips and stepped closer.
Within the open curve of the dragon's jaw, thin concentric rings fanned outward, representing the rambunctious sound coming out of the dragon.
Aww. The Dragon’s Roar. Nice touch, Tora.
Reo’s hair was actually styled. Swept back from his face, the sides tapered, the top structured. He looked like he belonged on a magazine cover, not standing outside my door nervously cracking his knuckles.
Reo took me in. “The Heart outdid herself. She dressed you. Right?”
“Yes.”
He quirked his brows. "Do you like what I’m wearing?"
It was such an odd question to come from the Roar. Never had he asked me such a thing. Still, I shrugged. “I do.”
"Your Heart dressed me too."
Pride hit me. Then, jealousy. Would this always be the battling state within my chest when my Tiger took care of my men? Love and envy. Gratitude and rage.
My Tiger had dressed him, assessing his body, his coloring, his build, and selected clothes for him the same way she'd selected mine. She'd thought about his measurements. His preferences. The shape of his neck above a collar.
I smiled, yet gritted my teeth.
I knew it was irrational, but dragons were possessive territorial beasts that hoarded treasure.
I cleared my throat. "You look good."
Reo brushed his finger over the lapel. “Thank you.”
I leaned my head to the side. “Did she leave you a note too?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
“I hope you like this. If not, you do not have to wear it.”
“Hmmm. Mine was longer and more romantic.”
Reo smirked. “Of course it was.”
“Let’s go.” I headed out.
My security team gathered, forming a tight ring around us—five ahead, two on each side, and five behind.
Reo fell into step beside me. "I looked into the Burial Ritual."
Tension gathered in my shoulders. "What did you find?"
"A lot." He exhaled. "Your mother's bloodline goes back further than I thought."
The hallway stretched toward the elevator.
I glanced at my Roar.
"The old Shinigami hunters came out of the mountains of Japan. They believed the earth itself was a living body."
I slowed my stride.
Reo kept his voice even. "For them, soil was flesh. Roots were veins. The lotus was the earth's heart flowering upward."
My chest tightened.
We got to the end of the hallway.
A guard pressed the elevator button.
Brass clicked.
The doors slid open.
We stepped in together. Security split— four holding the hallway, two stepping into the elevator with us, the rest taking the stairs.
The doors closed.
"The ritual does two things. First, it further binds the hunter to his spiritual animal.” Reo watched the floor numbers above the doors. “After the binding, the beast fights with the hunter and feeds on his enemies during combat. This weakens them before the hunter strikes."
I thought back to the illustration from the book.
That’s what the spider-shadow was doing, weakening the man before his hunter could kill him.
"The ritual grants another gift." Reo turned his head slowly. "It’s called. . .Death-sight."
The elevator started its descent.
"Death-sight?"
Reo nodded. "During the battle, the hunter sees the moment of a person's death before it happens. Two minutes out."
I stared at him. “How does he see it?”
Reo's jaw tensed. "The old texts were not specific on that detail.”
Goddamn it.
I pictured a battlefield.
My men moving. A shadow passing over one of them, showing their deaths, and me only having two minutes to keep them safe.
Or two minutes to watch them die.
My hands curled at my sides. "What else did you find out?"
The elevator hummed.
"There’s a big price to this ritual.”
I looked at him. “What is it?”
“The ritual binds you to the woman permanently."
I put my gaze on the elevator doors. "Define binds."
"My understanding is that the rite braids her soul to yours, and it can't be undone." Reo held my eyes in the elevator doors’ reflection. "If you die, she dies too. And vice versa."
The elevator dropped past the second floor.
I said nothing.
My Tiger.
Tied to me like that.
Into the grave.
I thought of the war ahead. The men I hadn't killed yet who were coming for me whether I was ready or not. If I died in battle, then she would too.
That’s not right.
Reo let out a long sigh. “To do the ritual, a large hole must be dug in the earth. Then, nine lotus blossoms are placed within for her to lie upon. It has to be done on a full moon night."
I pursed my lips.
"You cut your palm. She cuts hers. Both of you bleed into the soil. That's the first binding—blood to earth." Reo paused. "Then you make love inside the hole under the moonlight. That's the second binding—flesh to flesh to earth."
The elevator kept dropping.
I stood there trying to hold all of it in my head at once.
A hole in the ground. Lotus flowers. Her blood.
My blood. Moonlight on both of us. Her underneath me.
My dragon-shadow above us watching. And after—if it worked and this was actually fucking real—a shadow beast at my back for the rest of my life, weakening my enemies and my Tiger’s life braided to my soul so tight that death couldn't separate us.
Crazy. This is all fucking crazy.
I was a modern man in a tuxedo about to walk into a dinner party. And I was standing in an elevator seriously considering an ancient rite my mother's dead bloodline practiced in the mountains a thousand years ago.
But Nyomi had seen my dragon-shadow, and her hairstylist saw Rin’s serpent-shadow. It made me think that none of this was bullshit.
And if that was true, a shadow beast might be the only thing that kept my men alive in this war with my father.
Two-minute warning to save my men from death.
I closed my eyes.
Mom. . .should I do this?
The elevator chimed.
I opened my eyes as the doors slid open.
Warm light spilled in from the corridor as the doors parted.
My other guards were already waiting for us.
We stepped off. The air changed the moment my shoe hit the marble. Garlic seared in butter. Ginger. Citrus notes with a savory aroma.
The kitchen had been working for hours and had filled the whole house with the evidence of that.
Reo kept my pace. "Tomorrow night is a full moon."
My heartbeat picked up.
"Do you want to do this?"
I looked at him. "What do you think I should do?"
Reo shook his head. "This is a big decision. If all of this is really true. . .this is a choice that only you and your Tiger could make.”
“And do you think it could be true?”
"I'm smart enough to know I know nothing about the mysteries of this world. Anything can be true."
We walked forward.
The corridor stretched ahead.
Servants passed and bowed.
My face gave nothing, even though a war had ignited inside my chest.
Should I do this ritual?
I turned the question over and over until the thought began to cut parts of me.
A man asked a woman to be his wife. That was one thing.
A man asked a woman to bleed into the dirt with him and braid her soul to his until the grave. . .that was something else. That was not a question a man put in front of the woman he loved.
That was a chain.
And what kind of man offered his woman a chain and called it love?
I swallowed.
But the war was coming. My father and brother were plotting.
And I had men behind me with wives and mothers and children waiting at tables for them to come home.
If an answer existed—even a strange, half-believed, ancient answer—could I walk past it? Could I look those mothers in the eye later and tell them I'd held the answer in my hands and set it down because the price felt too high for me?
I could not live with that.
And yet.
If I asked her—if I laid the whole rite in her lap and she said yes—I'd be walking her into a war she held no blade in.
If I fell, she fell. I’d get shot and she would die in a kitchen, garden, or asleep beside a book, and she would never see the bullet that took her.
A cold shiver ran through me.
Was it love to offer her that? Or was it the most beautiful cage a man could ever build?
The dragon inside me wanted her tied.
Wanted her braided.
Wanted her so far inside my soul that even hell could not find a seam to pry.
The dragon did not care about the cost.
But, the man within—the one my mother had raised—cared about the cost more than he would ever say out loud.
Reo looked back at me. “Should I have a place prepared for the ritual?”
“Do it, but I’m not sure it will happen. I am going to let my Tiger choose.”
“Understood.”
We got to the dining room.
The guards opened the door, and this shocking sight hit me.
What the fuck is going on with this day?