Zion Valley. Libeus Country.
The same nation where a dragon queen sleeps in a cramped apartment, curled around her daughter and the mortal who refuses to let them go.
But across the city, in a luxury hotel where the lights never dim and the walls are thick enough to swallow screams—
Something else stirs.
---
The Royal Hotel towered above Zion Valley like a monument to excess. Glass and steel and arrogance, reaching toward a sky that didn't care. On the top floor, in a suite that cost more per night than most people earned in a year, a man stood before floor-to-ceiling windows.
He watched the city lights below.
His reflection watched him back.
Aaron Muru.
The name alone opened doors. The face launched magazines. The body—chiseled, perfect, almost unnatural in its symmetry—had graced more covers than any model in history. Brown hair, styled to careless perfection. Blue eyes that seemed to hold the sky itself. A jawline that could cut glass. Height that towered. Presence that commanded.
They called him the Perfect Gene.
The Muru Family had bred for beauty for generations. Their bloodline was currency. Their faces were art. Anime characters were designed after them. Fashion houses fought for their endorsement. Women—and men, and everyone in between—fell at their feet like petals from a dying flower.
If you see him, the magazines said, you will fall.
They weren't wrong.
But they didn't know the half of it.
Because underneath that perfect skin, beneath those sky-blue eyes and that charming smile—
A demon hid.
And tonight, the demon was hungry.
---
Aaron turned from the window.
His suite was ridiculous. That was the only word for it. A king-sized bed draped in silk. A bar stocked with things he couldn't pronounce. Art on the walls that cost more than most people's lives. Champagne chilling in a bucket, untouched.
He wasn't interested in champagne.
He checked his watch.
She's late.
The thought should have annoyed him. Instead, it excited him. Anticipation was its own pleasure. The waiting. The knowing. The moment when she walked through that door, unaware, unsuspecting, his.
The door opened.
His assistant entered first.
The man moved like liquid shadow—silent, graceful, wrong. Black suit, perfectly pressed. Golden pupils that caught the light like a cat's. His face held no expression beyond polite deference, but his eyes...
His eyes smiled.
He bowed. Deep and formal, the kind of bow reserved for royalty in old fantasy anime. The kind of bow that acknowledged not just status, but ownership.
"My master," he said softly. "I have come home."
Aaron's lips curved. "Do you even know how long I've been waiting? Where is she?"
His assistant straightened. With a gesture—elegant, almost theatrical—he indicated the door.
"She is here."
A woman stepped through.
Young. Beautiful. Desperate. The kind of desperate that made her easy to spot from across a room. She was an actress—or wanted to be. Small roles. Big dreams. The kind who believed that one night with the right person could change everything.
She'd been told Aaron Muru could be that person.
She'd been told wrong.
Aaron moved without speaking.
Crossed the room in three strides. Grabbed her arm—not hard enough to bruise, not yet—and pulled her toward the bed. She stumbled. Gasped. Her eyes widened with something that might have been fear, but was already softening, already submitting.
"Don't make me wait another second," he murmured.
His voice.
That voice.
Deep. Smooth. Wrapped in velvet and something darker. It carried a weight that had nothing to do with volume and everything to do with presence. When he spoke, women listened. When he commanded, they obeyed.
It wasn't just charm.
It wasn't just fame.
It was something in his blood. Something the Muru Family had cultivated for generations. A scent, some said. An aura, others whispered. Whatever it was, it made women yield.
She yielded now.
Her resistance crumbled like sand. Her body softened. Her eyes glazed with something that wasn't quite consciousness.
And Aaron took what he wanted.
---
Hours passed.
The city lights dimmed outside. The suite grew darker. On the silk sheets, two bodies lay tangled—Aaron and the woman, both sleeping now, their breathing slow and even.
The door opened.
His assistant entered.
He stood at the foot of the bed, golden pupils gleaming in the darkness. His smile spread slowly—too wide, too sharp, too pleased.
"What a fool," he murmured. "What a perfect, beautiful fool."
He walked toward them. Silent. Gliding. His footsteps made no sound on the expensive carpet.
He stopped beside the bed.
Looked down at his master.
At Aaron's sleeping face—perfect, peaceful, ignorant.
The assistant raised one hand.
Placed it gently on Aaron's forehead.
And whispered.
---
"Subharshi..."
The name curled through the darkness like smoke.
"Subharshi... do more heinous sins, my tool. Break her. Use her. Act now—but this time, don't show mercy. Don't hold back. Don't pretend to be human."
His golden pupils glowed.
"Be what you really are."
Aaron's brow furrowed in sleep.
His lips moved.
"...I will."
The assistant smiled.
Wider now. Sharper. His teeth caught the light—too many, too pointed, nothing human in that grin.
"Good boy."
He withdrew his hand.
Turned.
Walked toward the door.
Behind him, in the bed, Aaron's eyes opened.
Not fully. Not consciously. But his body moved—rolled toward the woman beside him. His hand found her shoulder. Shook her awake.
She stirred. Murmured. Opened confused eyes.
"Again," Aaron said.
His voice was different now. Hollow. Hungry.
"What—"
"Again."
And in the darkness of the Royal Hotel, in a suite that cost more than lives, the demon wearing Aaron Muru's face did what demons do.
He broke something beautiful.
---
At the door, the assistant paused.
Looked back.
Watched.
"Yes," he breathed. "More sin. More darkness. More fuel for what's coming."
His golden pupils reflected the scene—the struggle, the tears, the breaking—and drank it like wine.
"O Primordial Founder of Zani, mark me as yours — and free me from the shackles of this blood-bound covenant."
He laughed softly.
"They don't know what's waking up."
The door closed behind him.
Silence fell.
And across the city, in a cramped apartment where a mortal slept in a chair and a dragon queen dreamed beside her daughter—
No one stirred.
No one sensed the darkness coiling in their own city.
No one knew that the game had already changed.
--------------------+--+------
The night deepened over Zion Valley.
In the cramped apartment, silence settled like a blanket. The city's distant hum faded into white noise. Moonlight shifted across the floor, painting slow-moving patterns on the walls.
Three bodies breathed in rhythm.
Two slept deeply—the mortal in his chair, the child in the center of the bed.
But the third...
The third had never slept at all.
---
Erza's eyes opened.
Slowly. Carefully. Not a flicker of movement, not a change in breathing, not the slightest indication that the Dragon Queen had been awake for hours.
She had felt everything.
Every moment Yuuta stood over her in the living room. Every second of hesitation before he leaned down to whisper in her ear. The warmth of his arms when he lifted her—arms that had trembled under her weight but never faltered. The care in his touch as he placed her on the bed. The gentleness of his fingers tucking the blanket around her and Elena.
She had felt it all.
And her face—beneath the moonlight, beneath the pretense of sleep—
Burned.
Not from fever.
Not from stress.
From embarrassment.
Foolish girl, she cursed herself. You could have stopped him at any moment. You could have frozen him solid the second he touched you. You could have—
But she hadn't.
She'd waited.
Waited to see what he would do. Waited to catch him in some act of dishonor, some proof that he was exactly the disgusting mortal she'd convinced herself he must be. Waited for his hands to wander where they shouldn't, for his breath to quicken with something other than effort, for the mask of kindness to slip and reveal the monster underneath.
She'd waited.
And instead—
He'd whispered in her ear.
"My Queen... please forgive me. I'm going to lift you now. To shift you to a comfortable bed."
The words replayed in her mind for the hundredth time.
My Queen.
Not woman. Not hey you. Not some crude address from a mortal who saw only her body.
My Queen.
As if he understood. As if he saw her. Not just the Dragon Queen, not just the threat, not just the mother of his child—but her. The weight she carried. The dignity she clung to. The pride that was all she had left after a year of scandal and whispers and running.
He'd asked permission.
A sleeping woman who couldn't possibly grant it.
He'd asked anyway.
And then—
"I can't let my family sleep on the cold floor."
Erza's chest tightened.
Family.
He'd called them family.
Not the dragon and the child. Not the problem and the proof. Not the woman who wants to kill me and the kid she brought along.
Family.
Her eyes opened fully now.
She turned her head—slowly, silently—toward the corner of the room.
Toward the chair.
Toward him.
Yuuta slept there.
Curled in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable. His head tilted at an angle that would guarantee neck pain in the morning. His arms crossed over his chest like he'd tried to make himself small, to take up less space, to leave the bed for them.
The chair was old. Worn. His study desk loomed beside him, covered in books and papers she hadn't bothered to examine. He'd chosen this—this hard, uncomfortable, lonely spot—while she and Elena slept in silk-warm comfort.
For them.
For strangers who'd invaded his home, threatened his life, turned his world inside out.
He'd given them his bed.
And asked for nothing in return.
Erza stared at him.
The moonlight caught his face differently now. She could see the exhaustion etched into his features—the shadows beneath his eyes, the slight pallor of his skin, the way his lips parted slightly in sleep. He looked young. Too young to be a father. Too young to carry whatever weight had shaped the man who'd lifted her like she was precious.
He must be doing this to gain favor, she told herself firmly. So that I'll spare him. There's no other reason. No mortal acts without expectation of reward.
But the thought rang hollow.
Even to her.
Because she'd felt it. In his arms. The way he held her—not like a prize, not like a threat, not like something to be used. He'd held her like she mattered. Like her comfort was worth his pain. Like her dignity was worth preserving even at cost to himself.
No mortal had ever...
No one had ever...
Erza pressed her lips together.
Why do I feel this?
The question burned in her chest.
This feeling—every time I try to harm him, my own heart aches. Every time I tell myself he's worthless, something inside me rebels. Every time I look at him, I see...
She didn't know what she saw.
Couldn't name it.
Wouldn't name it.
But it was there. Growing. Taking root in places she'd thought long dead.
A century, she reminded herself. A century of ruling. A century of solitude. A century of trusting no one, needing no one, being enough alone.
And now this mortal.
This child.
This father of her daughter who looked at her like she was something more than a queen.
Erza closed her eyes.
Not to sleep—though sleep would come eventually. But to think. To process. To push down the feelings she couldn't afford to examine.
One year.
She had one year.
One year in this world, in this apartment, with this man. One year to decide his fate—and hers. One year to determine whether the father of her child would live or die, stand beside her or be discarded.
One year.
And already, after a single night—
He'd made her feel something she couldn't explain.
Erza's hand moved without conscious thought. Found Elena's small fingers in the dark. Squeezed gently.
Her daughter stirred, murmured something unintelligible, and settled deeper into sleep.
Safe, Elena's body language said. Warm. Loved.
Because of him.
Because of the mortal in the chair.
Because of Yuuta.
Erza opened her eyes one last time.
Looked at him across the room—at his sleeping form, his peaceful face, his absolute vulnerability in a world where she could end him with a thought.
And for the first time in a century—
The Dragon Queen let herself feel something other than ice.
---
That's how the Yuuta family began.
Not with ceremony.
Not with vows.
Not with anything official or acknowledged or even spoken aloud.
It began in silence.
In moonlight.
In a cramped apartment where a mortal gave up his bed and a queen pretended to sleep and a child dreamed of her father's cooking.
It began with three people who had no idea what they were becoming.
But would spend the rest of their lives finding out.
---
To be continued...