Chapter 2

"What is that?" Maya whispered, though part of her already knew.

"Your inheritance," Vivienne said simply. "And your awakening."

The museum's lights flickered, and Maya smelled smoke.

“Ah, it appears that your mates have arrived as prophesied, all seven, a millennium ago,” Vivienne said matter-of-factly.

Maya's knees nearly buckled. "My what?"

The scent of smoke intensified, accompanied by something that reminded her of winter storms and deep ocean currents. She glimpsed shadows moving with inhuman speed across the courtyard through the museum's reinforced windows.

"Seven bloodlines," Vivienne continued, carefully rewrapping the pendant. "Fire, ice, storm, earth, shadow, light, and void. Each drawn by the same resonance that's been building inside you for weeks. Your mother's lineage is... unique. Light dragons are exceptionally rare, and when one awakens—"

"This is insane." Maya backed toward the door, but her body betrayed her, trembling with an anticipation she couldn't understand. "Dragons don't exist. This is some kind of elaborate—"

The building shuddered. Not an earthquake—something had landed on the roof with considerable force.

Vivienne's expression sharpened. "I had hoped for more time to explain, but it seems the ancient protocols are asserting themselves." She moved with surprising speed to a wall panel, pressing her palm against what Maya had assumed was decorative stonework. A section of the wall slid away, revealing a hidden passage. "This way. Now."

"I'm not going anywhere with you." But even as Maya spoke, golden light began seeping from her skin like liquid sunlight. The resonance in her chest had become a roar, and she could feel six distinct harmonies answering from different directions, each one pulling at something fundamental in her core.

The museum's main lights died. Emergency lighting cast everything in hellish red.

"Your choice," Vivienne said, stepping into the passage. "But I should mention—when a light dragon's awakening reaches critical mass without proper guidance, the results tend to be... architecturally significant."

Maya felt heat building in her chest as if summoned by her words, spreading outward like molten metal through her veins. The pendant in Vivienne's hands began to glow through its silk wrapping, and she heard the sound of glass shattering somewhere in the darkness beyond the windows.

A voice echoed through the museum's intercom system—Leon Blackthorn's cultured tones, though strained with something that might have been hunger. "Maya. We're not here to hurt you. But you need to come to us. Now. Before you bring the entire building down."

Maya looked at her hands. They were definitely glowing now, and the temperature in the room had risen at least ten degrees.

"How do I make it stop?" she whispered.

Vivienne's smile was grim. "You don't. You learn to control it. But first, you survive the claiming."

The word 'claiming' sent ice through Maya's veins despite the heat radiating from her skin. "What does that mean?"

But Vivienne was already moving deeper into the hidden passage, her footsteps echoing off stone walls that looked far older than the museum itself. Maya hesitated for a heartbeat before following—the alternative was facing whatever had just torn through the museum's main entrance, judging by the sounds of splintering wood and twisted metal echoing from the lobby.

The passage sloped downward, lit by phosphorescent strips that pulsed in rhythm with Maya's accelerating heartbeat. Behind them, she heard voices—multiple male voices calling her name with an urgency that made her skin crawl and her pulse race simultaneously.

"The claiming is... complicated," Vivienne said without slowing her pace. "Dragon mating bonds aren't chosen so much as they're recognised. Your resonance is a calling to theirs, and theirs to yours. There were rituals, ceremonies, and ways to manage the process in the old days. Now..." She shrugged elegantly. "Now we improvise."

"I don't want to be claimed by anyone." Maya's voice came out higher than intended. The golden light seeping from her skin was getting brighter, and she could feel something massive stirring beneath her conscious mind, like a creature waking from centuries of sleep.

"What you want became irrelevant the moment your dragon nature fully manifested," Vivienne replied with brutal honesty. "The question now is whether you'll learn to control it before it controls you."

They reached a circular chamber carved from living rock, its walls covered in symbols that seemed to shift and writhe in Maya's peripheral vision. Seven pedestals ringed the space, each topped with a crystal that pulsed with a different colored light—red, blue, silver, brown, black, and blazing gold at the centre.

"Your mother stood in this very room twenty-six years ago," Vivienne said softly. "She chose to suppress her nature, live among humans, and give you a chance at a normal life. But some inheritances can't be denied forever."

Maya approached the golden crystal, drawn by a pull she couldn't resist. The moment her fingers brushed its surface, the world exploded into sensation. She saw Seattle from impossible heights, felt wind beneath wings of crystallised sunlight, and tasted the freedom of the open sky. But underneath the euphoria was something darker—a desperate, clawing hunger that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the six resonances growing stronger by the second.

"They're in the building," she gasped, pulling her hand back from the crystal.

"Of course they are. Your awakening sent out a call that every dragon on the West Coast would have felt. But these seven..." Vivienne's expression grew troubled. "These seven were bound to you before you were even born. The prophecy your mother tried so hard to escape."

Heavy footsteps echoed from the passage above. Multiple sets, moving with precision and all male from the sound of their feet running towards them.

"What prophecy?" Maya demanded, her voice cracking as the golden light around her intensified, casting strange shadows across the ancient chamber.

"The Convergence," Vivienne answered, her eyes reflecting Maya's glow. "Once every thousand years, a light dragon is born who can unite all seven bloodlines. A nexus of power so profound it can either heal the rifts between our kinds or..." She hesitated.