Drake Elfreost had spent twenty-six years hiding from the throne his family lost. He lived alone in a hut past the tree line, chopping wood and speaking to no one. His two swords, one black and one white, hung above the door where he could pretend they were only decoration. The Elfreost name meant nothing here. That was the point. His parents had ruled once, before the crown was stolen, and Drake had decided a quiet death was better than a public one. He was splitting a log when the ground shook. A shape dropped from the clouds and crushed the fence. It was a serpent the size of a barn, its scales dark green, its head crowned with a lion's mane. Red eyes fixed on him. Drake ran for his swords. He wasn't fast enough. The creature struck. Its fangs tore into his shoulder before he reached the door. Drake screamed and swung the black blade. He hit scale, and the serpent recoiled, hissing. It did not attack again. It watched him, as if it had come only to bite. Then it coiled, rose, and flew back into the sky. Drake fell against the doorframe. Blood soaked his shirt. But the wound did not feel like poison. It felt like fire spreading under his skin, into his bones. His hands trembled. The nails darkened and thickened. Pain crawled up his arms and down his spine. He staggered from the hut and dropped to his knees in the mud. His body changed. Black scales pushed through his skin. His shoulders cracked wider. Wings tore from his back and snapped open. He tried to scream and heard a roar instead. Where a man had knelt, a black dragon now filled the clearing, its tail flattening what was left of the fence. Drake did not understand it. He only knew the truth arrived with the change, sudden and complete. The Elfreost bloodline had once been dragons. That was why they ruled. That was why they were driven out. The bite had woken blood his family had buried. He held the shape until the sun dropped, then felt it slip. Scales folded back into skin. Wings shrank to nothing. He lay naked and shaking in the ruined clearing, human again, the wound on his shoulder already closed to a scar. Drake sat up. He looked at his hands and made a fist. He had run from the throne because he had nothing to fight with. Now he had this. But the power came and went on its own, and he could not call it or hold it. A dragon he could not control was no crown. It was a danger to himself and anyone near him. He went inside and took down both swords. He would not hide anymore. He would learn to master the beast in his blood, then he would take back what was stolen. First he had to survive the thing he had become.