Page 25 of Born in Fire (Dragonblood Dynasty #2)

Chapter 25

D orian

Cold, pristine, lifeless. Caleb’s penthouse fits him like a second skin—filled with clean lines and calculated emptiness. Nothing out of place. Nothing with a goddamn pulse.

Except now there’s a leather jacket thrown over his designer chair. Scuffed at the elbows, worn thin at the collar. Elena’s. The kind of jacket that’s seen shit, survived it, and kept its owner warm through the worst of it.

I pace the length of the living room, my boots too loud against the polished floor. The Heartstone pulses on Caleb’s desk, locked in its transparent prison. It looks different since Caleb met Elena: more radiant, more complete. Its pulse is stronger. Even from here, I feel its pull—ancient, hungry. The dragon in me stirs, drawn to power like a junkie to a fix.

“Sit down, Dorian.” Caleb doesn’t look up from the documents spread across his desk. “You’re making the place feel small.”

“Your place is small.” I keep moving. “All this space, and you’ve given it the personality of a fucking hotel room.”

He ignores me, used to my shit. Elena doesn’t. She looks up from her mother’s journal, eyes tracking my movement like I’m a grenade with the pin pulled.

“How long have you been awake?” she asks.

“What day is it?”

She exchanges a look with Caleb. That little silent conversation thing they’ve started doing. It makes my teeth ache.

“Thursday,” she says.

“Then three days. I think.” I shrug. Sleep means dreams. Dreams mean Juno’s face, her laugh echoing through my head before dissolving into the sound of concrete crushing bone. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Caleb says.

I stop at the window, staring at the city below. Somewhere down there, Malakai is moving pieces on a board we can’t fully see. Somewhere down there, the people who killed Juno are breathing, planning, living their fucking lives while she’s nothing but dirt and memory.

“Did you find anything useful in that?” I nod toward the journal in Elena’s hands. Battered leather, pages swollen from years of handling. The spine cracked in multiple places.

“Maybe.” Elena turns it toward me. “My mother wrote about the Heartstone. I’ve read this journal a hundred times but never understood what she meant. Look at this entry.”

I move closer, not because I care about witch scribblings, but because standing still hurts worse than moving.

The Stone burns brightest when broken. What was one becomes two, but the connection remains eternal. The Shard calls to its source, a beacon in darkness.

“Poetic,” I mutter. “What’s it mean?”

“Actually, I always thought that’s all it was. Poetry,” says Elena. “It’s only now that I have some context that it’s starting to make sense. Though, to be honest, there’s still so much I don’t know.”

“It’s dragon history.” Caleb leans forward. “The Heartstone wasn’t always as we know it now. During the reign of our ancestor Kael Craven, the dragon king, there was a battle. Lyria Rossewyn—Kael’s lover and your ancestor—fought against Vaelric, a traitor to the clan. During that fight, a piece of the Heartstone broke off.”

“Right. The Shard,” I say. “Vaelric escaped with it.” My tone is sharp because my patience is threadbare. I need action, not history lessons.

“Precisely,” Caleb says with the forced calm that means he’s irritated. Probably because I’m snapping at his mate. “As you learned during the clan meeting, that Shard still exists. And if someone has it they can access the Heartstone. The Shard is drawn to its power. Like a compass.”

Elena looks at him sharply. “So whoever has it could be tracking us right now.”

“If they have the Shard, yes.” Caleb stands, moving to the Heartstone. Its glow reflects in his eyes, turning them molten. “But the Shard isn’t just a tracker. It contains power of its own. Not enough to control dragons like the Heartstone, but enough to influence them. Weaken their resolve.”

“You mean it can control you?” Her eyes are wide.

“Yep,” I interject. “We’re looking for a magical dragon roofie that doubles as a GPS.”

Elena’s lips twitch, almost a smile. Almost. “Then it’s good that we’re working on this thing together.”

I glance at Caleb before looking back at her. “How much do you know about dragon politics?”

“Enough.” She shrugs. “Caleb has filled me in, and I had a conversation with Lydia to get more detail. The Syndicate is a group of clanless dragons who’ve banded together to take over as many existing clans as possible. They want power over your entire species. The Circle of Fire is a group of traditionalists who want to go back to the old ways of when dragons ruled humanity.” She tilts her head. “Right?”

I give a reluctant nod. “In a nutshell. But there’s more to it than that. You haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”

“I’ll pick it up as we go, Dorian. I’m pretty smart for a girl.” She aims a level stare at me.

Caleb rests a hand on her shoulder, his eyes glowing slightly as he looks at me. “Stop being an asshole, Dorian.”

I scowl at him but don’t interrupt when Elena goes on.

“When I spoke to Lydia, she gave me a bit of background about locations of known operatives of the Syndicate and the Circle. I’ve been tracking unusual movement patterns since the attack. There’s something strange happening.”

She moves to Caleb’s laptop, pulling up a map marked with red and blue dots.

“Red is Circle of Fire activity. Blue is what I believe to be Syndicate.” Her finger traces a pattern. “They’re moving the same areas, sometimes within hours of each other, but never intersecting. It’s like they’re both hunting the Shard but actively avoiding each other.”

Caleb studies the map. “They’re working at cross-purposes.”

“But both want the same thing,” I say. “The Circle wants dragon supremacy over humankind. The Syndicate wants to control all dragons… and take over the world.”

“Different methods, same result—we’re fucked.” Elena closes the laptop. “Unless we find the Shard first.”

The room falls silent. I resume pacing, the pressure building in my chest. Two days since Juno’s funeral pyre. Two days of nothing but plans and theories while her killers walk free.

“I’ll keep the Heartstone with Elena and me,” Caleb announces. “It’s safest here.”

I stop. “You’re making yourselves targets.”

“Controlled targets,” he counters. “We know they’ll come for it, eventually. Better to choose the battlefield.”

“And what about the Shard?” I ask.

Caleb looks into Elena’s eyes. “You will lead us to it, my love.”

She smiles back at him. “And then we’ll take ‘em out. Fire and brimstone.”

He chuckles. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

“God.” I look away. “Do I have to watch you play sex games with your witch through this whole thing?” The words are sharp. Elena flinches.

“Watch your tone,” Caleb says, voice dropping to that dangerous register that means I’m pushing limits.

“I’m sorry.” I hike a shoulder into an apologetic shrug. “So, how do you plan to protect the Heartstone as well as track down the Shard?”

“Elena’s powers are growing. She can help defend the Stone. The three of us make a formidable team, Dorian.”

I don’t respond. It’s the first time my brother has ever spoken to me as an equal. I turn to Elena. “And you’re comfortable with this?”

“I’m still learning,” she admits, “but I’m stronger than I look.”

I believe her. There’s something different about her since I first met her—a quiet confidence beneath the uncertainty. The Rossewyn blood awakening.

“Fine.” I move to the desk, staring down at the Heartstone. Its light pulses in time with my heartbeat. “But when we find the Shard, I’m going after Malakai.”

“Dorian—” Caleb starts.

“Don’t.” Heat flares under my skin, the dragon pushing against human constraints. I feel the shift beginning—scales rippling beneath the surface, eyes changing. “Don’t tell me to be patient. Don’t tell me to be strategic. They killed her, Caleb. They killed her because of us.”

The room temperature rises. Elena steps back, instinctively wary of a dragon losing control.

Caleb doesn’t move. “And we’ll make them pay. But getting yourself killed won’t bring her back.”

“Nothing will bring her back.” My voice breaks on the last word. I close my eyes, forcing the dragon down. When I open them again, the room has stopped wavering with heat. “But I’m going to make sure they remember her name when they die.”

Silence stretches between us. Caleb and I have had three centuries of arguments, but this feels different. There’s a chasm opening that even brotherhood might not bridge.

“Follow the plan, Dorian,” he finally says. “Find the Shard. Then we decide our next move together.”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. My gaze falls on a small framed photo on the side table—another of Elena’s touches in Caleb’s sterile space. She and her mother, both smiling, arms wrapped around each other. The kind of moment frozen in time that Juno will never have.

“I’ll find it,” I say, turning away from the photo, from the reminder of what’s been lost. “But when this is over, someone’s paying in blood.”

I head for the door, already calculating where to start hunting. Behind me, I hear Caleb’s sigh, heavy with concern. He thinks I’m being reckless, emotional. He’s right.

But he’s never watched someone he loved die saving him. He’s never held their cooling body while buildings crumbled around him. He’s never carried that weight.

I pray he never does.

I step into the elevator, the doors sliding shut on Caleb’s pristine world. One thought keeps spinning around in my head as the floor sinks beneath me.

Find the Shard. Find Malakai. End this.

Three simple steps. A plan even Caleb would approve of.

What he doesn’t need to know is the fourth step: Make them suffer. Make them burn. Make them wish they’d never heard the name Juno Ashford.