The rain in the city didn't just wash the streets; it felt like it was trying to erase me.
I stood under the rusted awning of the bookstore, my fingers trembling as I scrolled through the final leaked pages of The Dragon's Wife. My heart ached for the Male Lead, King Alaric. In the story, he was a man cursed with the soul of a Great Black Dragon. He stayed human to rule, but to protect his borders, he had to let the beast take over—a process that tore his mind apart and left him colder every time.
"He isn't a monster," I whispered, my breath misting in the cold air. "He's just lonely."
I was so consumed by the tragedy of his dual existence that I didn't see the truck hydroplane. The screech of metal on wet asphalt was the last thing I heard before the world shattered into white light and a bone-chilling cold.
Wait... I haven't seen him find peace yet...
Whoosh.
The sound of a roaring fireplace replaced the rain.
I gasped, my lungs filling with air that tasted of cedar and expensive incense. I wasn't on the pavement. I was draped across a chaise lounge made of obsidian-colored velvet. My hands—once calloused from student life—were now pale, slender, and adorned with rings of heavy gold.
"The King is coming, My Lady. Please, for your own sake, do not provoke him tonight. The war on the Western Front... he had to shift. He is... unstable."
I looked up. A maid in a charcoal-grey uniform stood there, her eyes wide with genuine terror.
The King? Unstable?
I turned toward a towering silver mirror. The woman looking back was stunningly sharp—high cheekbones, lips the color of crushed cherries, and eyes of a haunting, dark violet.
I was Seraphina von Malcor. The villainess of the novel. The woman Alaric married in a political contract, but eventually executed because she tried to sell the secret of his "Dragon Weakness" to the enemy.
Suddenly, the heavy double doors at the end of the hall didn't just open—they were thrown off their hinges.
The air in the room temperature spiked by twenty degrees. I felt a "shiver" that started at my neck and raced down my spine.
A man stormed in. This was Alaric.
He was in human form, but only barely. He was tall, his chest heaving under a shredded tunic of black leather and fur. His skin was bronzed but covered in faint, shimmering scales along his jawline that hadn't quite faded back into skin. His hair was a chaotic mane of midnight black, and his eyes...
They weren't human. They were glowing slits of molten orange, pulsing with the heat of a furnace.
"Out," he growled. The voice was a low vibration that made the glass windows in the room rattle.
The maid fled without a second glance. I was left alone with a man who looked like he wanted to burn the world down.
In the book, Seraphina would scream here. She would call him a freak and hide. That rejection was what always pushed Alaric over the edge into his dragon form, losing his humanity completely.
Alaric lunged forward, his hand slamming into the wall beside my head. I could smell it now—the scent of ozone, smoke, and old blood. His skin was radiating a feverish heat.
"Why aren't you running, Seraphina?" he hissed, his face inches from mine. "Can't you see the smoke coming from my lungs? Do you want to see the monster tonight?"
My heart was thundering, but not just from fear. It was the "obsessive" pull of the story come to life. I reached out, my fingers hovering just inches from the shimmering scales on his jaw.
"The monster saved the kingdom today, didn't he?" I said, my voice low and steady.
Alaric froze. His golden eyes searched mine, looking for the usual disgust. He found only a strange, calm recognition.
"You're burning up, Alaric," I whispered, using his name for the first time. "The shift... it didn't finish, did it? You're trapped in between."
His grip on the wall tightened, his knuckles cracking. "How do you know that? You, who only cares for the crown and the treasury..."
"Because I'm your wife," I lied, stepping closer until my chest brushed his leather tunic. The heat was intoxicating. "And the contract we signed? It didn't say I only get the King. It said I get the Dragon, too."
The orange glow in his eyes flickered. For a moment, the predatory tension broke, replaced by a raw, human confusion. He was a man who had used his body as a weapon for so long that he forgot it could be touched for any other reason.
"What do you want?" he rasped, his voice breaking.
"I want to help you stay human," I said, my eyes locking onto his. "But in return, when the war is over, you will give me my freedom—and my life."
Outside, the dragon-shaped gargoyles on the roof were struck by lightning, illuminating the room in a flash of silver. In that moment, the King looked at me not as a political pawn, but as something far more dangerous.
An obsession.