CHAPTER 8: Forced Partnership

"The prince has been attacked."

​The messenger's announcement cut through the garden like a drawn blade. For a long, breathless moment, no one moved. Conversations died mid-sentence, and the ambient sounds of the estate vanished beneath a suffocating blanket of silence.

​My heart slammed against my ribs.

​This isn't right.

​In my first life, there had been only one assassination attempt during the mating ceremony. The attacker had been cut down before ever reaching Kael, and the incident had quickly dissolved into harmless court gossip. There had never been a second attack. Never another strike on the exact same day.

​Something was wrong. Not merely different—fundamentally broken.

​The future wasn't just shifting; it was warping. Every choice I made sent ripples through events that should have remained static, and those ripples were fast becoming a tide I couldn't control.

​"Is he alive?" Vivienne asked.

​Her voice was sharp with distress, her performance exquisite. Anyone watching would have believed the panic written across her face—the widening of her blue eyes, the tension in her delicate shoulders, the slight tremor in her breath.

​I knew better than most how convincing she could be when playing the devotion game.

​The messenger nodded hastily, wiping sweat from his brow. "His Highness survived."

​A collective sigh rippled through the gathered servants and noble guests. Mine never came.

​Relief was nowhere near what I felt. If anything, the cold knot in my stomach only pulled tighter.

​Kael's survival was never the real question. The attack itself was what terrified me. Someone was altering the timeline years ahead of schedule, aggressively moving pieces across the board before they were ever meant to enter play.

​"Several royal guards were wounded," the messenger added grimly. "The prince has ordered an immediate lockdown and investigation."

​Of course he had. Kael was a predator; he didn't ignore threats.

​Sooner or later, his scouts would uncover the Crimson Dragon sigil—the same emblem hidden beneath his official correspondence, and the exact tattoo I had just spotted behind a fake servant's ear in my own garden.

​The threads were connecting, but the full tapestry remained hidden in the dark.

​Beside me, Vivienne released a slow, theatrical breath, pressing a manicured hand to her heart. "Thank the Moon Goddess."

​I kept my profile carved from stone. A far more insidious thought had just taken root in my mind.

​The second ambush had occurred after my confrontation with Kael. After the strange mark had burned into my wrist. After someone had witnessed the anomaly.

​The timing was too precise to be coincidence.

​A chill crept beneath my skin, turning my blood to ice.

​What if I wasn't simply altering the future? What if the future was actively hunting me down for changing it?

​The rest of the afternoon dragged like a slow execution.

​Vivienne lingered far longer than necessary, circling me, fishing for details about my private exchange with Kael. Every question came wrapped in sweet concern and sisterly affection, but I knew an interrogation when I was on the rack.

​She walked away empty-handed.

​I measured every word, giving her vague, polite non-answers that tested her composure more than she cared to admit.

​Good. For once, I wasn't walking blindly into her traps.

​As dusk fell, I retreated to the estate library.

​The room had always been my sanctuary. Towering shelves stretched toward the high ceiling, weighed down by ancient volumes smelling of dried ink, leather, and decay. Amber light filtered through the stained glass, casting blood-red hues across the floorboards.

​Normally, the quiet settled my nerve. Today, the room felt like a command tent on the eve of battle.

​Heavy tomes lay open across the oak table as I scoured every text for answers. Dragon Queens. Lost bloodlines. Erased kingdoms. Forbidden binding magic. Anything that matched the recurring nightmare. Anything tied to the creature in the flames.

​Hours slipped away into the dark.

​The deeper I searched, the more disturbing the omissions became. Every historical record mentioned dragons only in passing, brushing them off as long-extinct relics of a forgotten era. The narrative was too clean, the phrasing too synchronized.

​It didn't read like natural history. It read like deliberate erasure, as if someone had spent centuries systematically purging them from the records.

​Frustration finally got the better of me. I slammed a heavy leather codex shut, the sharp crack echoing off the high rafters.

​A loose slip of parchment fluttered out from between the binding and drifted to the floor.

​Frowning, I reached down and picked it up. The paper was brittle, yellowed with age, and crumbling at the margins. Most of the ink had faded into faint grey smudges, save for a single illustration drawn in aged oxblood ink.

​My lungs froze.

​A dragon stared back at me from the page.

​It wasn't a stylized heraldic crest or a vague artistic interpretation. It was the exact creature from my dreams: the same ruby-red scales, the ancient golden eyes, and the jagged, crown-like horn structure carved into its brow.

​My pulse hammered against my ears.

​Beneath the drawing, a single line of script remained crisp:

​When the Dragon Queen awakens, the Black Gate shall bleed once more.

​My throat went bone-dry.

​The Gate.

​The colossal, rune-carved barrier standing in the middle of the inferno. The seal the dragon kept showing me in my sleep.

​Before I could process the find, a sharp, metallic knock rattled the library door.

​I flinched, my hand instantly dropping over the ancient parchment. Nobody interrupted me in the library.

​The knock sounded again, heavier this time. Authoritative.

​I slid the parchment into my bodice, crossed the room, and pulled the heavy oak door open.

​A royal guard stood in the corridor, clad in the polished black armor and silver crest of the palace elite. Blackwood Palace.

​My stomach sank into my boots. "What is it?"

​The guard offered a crisp, formal bow, his expression rigid. "Lady Seraphina. His Highness requires your presence at the palace immediately."

​I stared at him, my jaw tightening. Not again.

​"For what reason?"

​"I am not authorized to discuss palace security matters, my lady."

​Of course he wasn't.

​For one glorious second, I considered shutting the door in his face. But Kael Blackwood wasn't a man who accepted refusal—he would simply march into my home with a squad of enforcers and tear the answers out of me himself.

​The guard hesitated, lowering his voice slightly. "His Highness stated that it concerns the northern road incident."

​I closed my eyes, taking a slow, steadying breath.

​Wonderful.

​Night had fully claimed the capital by the time my carriage reached Blackwood Palace.

​The atmosphere was suffocating. The relaxed elegance of the previous evening had vanished, replaced by an armed encampment. Iron-clad sentries lined every portico, paired patrols roamed the corridors with heavy crossbows drawn, and servants hurried through the halls in hushed, terrified silence.

​The second attack had shattered the illusion of royal invincibility.

​An escort led me straight past the formal reception rooms to Kael’s private study deep within the inner keep.

​"He is waiting," the guard said, pulling the heavy door open.

​I stepped inside. Kael stood by a grand mahogany desk at the far end of the room, staring out a tall window into the dark.

​The moment the heavy door clicked shut behind me, leaving us alone, my irritation surged past my anxiety.

​"Do you make a habit of summoning noblewomen like house servants?" I asked coldly.

​Kael turned around slowly. "Only the ones who seem to occupy the center of every security breach in the city."

​"Then perhaps you should improve your security."

​One corner of his mouth twitched, but the dark fatigue in his eyes killed the humor before it reached his face. Without another word, he reached into his tunic and tossed a scrap of material onto the desk between us.

​It landed with a soft, heavy thud.

​A piece of scorched black silk. Embroidered into the weave with crimson thread was the coiled dragon.

​The same mark. The same nightmare.

​Kael watched my face, his golden eyes narrowing like a hawk’s. "You recognize the weave."

​It wasn't a question.

​My breath caught in my chest. I had missed the tell. "I've seen the symbol before."

​"Where?" he demanded, taking a step toward me.

​Every survival instinct screamed at me to lie, to weave a story and run. But the timeline was collapsing around my ears, and playing blind was going to get me killed twice.

​"On my family's grounds," I said, my voice steady. "This afternoon. A man dressed in our house livery had that exact mark tattooed behind his left ear."

​A rare, unmistakable flash of shock crossed Kael's face. "Inside the estate?"

​"He passed within five feet of me and Lady Vivienne."

​His jaw clenched, a dangerous light igniting in his eyes. "Describe him. Every detail."

​I gave it to him—the deliberate gait, the deliberate avoidance of eye contact, the precise size and color of the ink behind his ear.

​When I finished, silence descended on the study, heavy and oppressive. Kael didn't rage. He stood motionless, calculating, his face hardening into a grim, unreadable mask.

​The quiet unsettled me far more than his anger would have.

​"What are you not telling me, Kael?" I asked quietly. "The messenger said they attacked your carriage. What happened on the north road?"

​His jaw worked. For a long second, I thought he would throw me out. Instead, he pulled a key from his vest, unlocked a heavy iron box on his desk, and withdrew a rolled parchment.

​He unrolled it across the dark wood.

​My blood ran cold.

​The parchment was covered in jagged, ancient runes—the exact glowing symbols carved into the stone gate of my visions.

​"They didn't strike the carriage to assassinate me, Seraphina," Kael said softly, his voice cutting through the quiet room like a winter wind.

​My stomach churned. "Then why?"

​He looked up, his golden eyes locking onto mine with terrifying intensity. "They pulled back the moment they realized I was traveling alone. They were sweeping the convoy for a specific passenger."

​The room seemed to shrink, the air turning thin and cold.

​"They weren't hunting the future Alpha," Kael said, leaning over the desk toward me. "They were looking for you."

​The realization hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath straight from my lungs.

​Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. Neither of us blinked. Neither of us moved.

​Kael took a step closer, his voice dropping into a low, deadly register that vibrated through the floorboards.

​"Now tell me the truth, Seraphina," he whispered, his gaze locking onto my soul. "What exactly are you?"