Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (23 page)

Shock hung in the air. Thaksin shook his head as the translators worked in overdrive, and the spirit beasts began to buck and throw their heads. Even Xiang’s eyes bulged, but he had no choice. He allowed me the floor. Slowly, before the living and the dead, I removed the Red Fang Necklace from around my neck.

The White Tiger’s voice thundered in my ears from long ago:

If you cannot complete something’s purpose, then give it to someone who can.

Rafael smiled at me and stepped forward. I returned his smile. Then, still smiling, I turned and bowed low, offering the Alpha necklace to Yu Li.

My eye was closed so I couldn’t see the uproar, but I certainly heard it. Goshawks erupted from the trees, flying off in all directions with the news. Everyone else rose to their feet, craning their heads to see.

“Ahn Yu Li,” I said formally, “I apologize I did not present you this symbol of leadership sooner as I should have, but we had our differences in the past. Forgive me, and accept your place as the rightful Alpha of the Seoul werewolves.”

I heard her crouch at my side. Eye still teary, I managed to meet her gaze. What I saw there was a warrior wolf, both regal and ruthless. Yu Li had always put the pack before herself. She had killed her former husband when he had threatened us. She had sided with me after the split despite our quarrels because she respected Jaehoon’s judgment and werewolf tradition.

And if one ex-girlfriend wasn’t enough to kick Rafael’s insubordinate ass, then maybe two were.

“It takes a strong person to hold power,” Yu Li told me softly, her dark eyes awhirl with the crystal blue of her inner Were. “It takes a stronger one to know when to let it go.”

Ahn Yu Li rose with the Red Fang Necklace gleaming against her collarbone. She stared down each wolf in our pack. Slowly, one by one, they came to her side. Bae and Kaelan bowed first, followed by Moon. Namkyu and Iseul hung back with Rafael, muttering.

“What?” Yu Li barked suddenly, causing all of us to jump. She bared her teeth and flattened her ears. “Speak up, so I will know the last words to write on your tombstone.”

Namkyu and Iseul winced as if physically struck. Glancing remorsefully at Rafael, they slunk over to our side.

Rafael remained in the center of the dais, alone and fuming. Yu Li helped me up and then approached him. Despite himself, Rafael took a step back.

Yu Li stopped a foot apart and regarded her former lover sadly. I remembered the days when Rafael had brought a light-hearted smile to her face. I remembered Young Soo calling him,
“Appa!”
I felt awful that I had put her in this position, but I had known for a while now that Yu Li was the only one who could put Rafael in his place. I had never defeated him in a fight before. Rafael had been my teacher, my older pack brother who had taught me everything I knew about my Were form. He would always use that against me.

But Rafael had once had a teacher as well: Yu Li.

“Rafael Dominguez,” Yu Li spoke abruptly, impaling him with words as sharp as glass. “You are hereby banished from the Seoul werewolves for plotting to overthrow the Alpha. Citlalli Alvarez may be a Triad. She may have come to us a stranger to our ways and uncommitted to becoming a wolf. But she is also our Were-sister who defeated the Vampyre Queen.” Yu Li glared at each dissenting werewolf in turn, and one by one, they hung their heads. “Alpha Alvarez sacrificed as much as any of us. Her decision not to pursue the remaining vampyre princes was to protect and grow the pack. If I choose differently or if I choose the same, then it will be along the same reasoning: by what is best for the pack. Not because of what is best for one wolf’s selfish revenge.”

Her dagger gaze returned to Rafael. This time she didn’t flinch even though his chocolate brown eyes begged.

“Go.”

Rafael glared at her and then padded off into the woods, a lone brown wolf hunting in the shadows alone. We watched him go, and Yu Li gave me a sad smile.

Then, one by one, we began to howl. Yu Li began first, shifting to a large white wolf, and I followed, my coat as pitch-black as the night. Eagerly, the other wolves brushed past Xiang to join us in the center of the dais. We howled to the moon, oblivious of the other Were tribes and their smiles or scowls. I saw Xiang pass across the face of the moon in his Elder Life Spirit form, that of a great redbird. Although he was terrible and frightening to behold in his phoenix shape, I felt a huge weight lift off my chest. Xiang had retreated. For now.

Joyously, we serenaded the night while spirits danced to our song, a pack whole and healed once more.

Chapter 27: The Energy Dragon

~Citlalli~

The subway speaker called my stop. I stumbled into the sunlight, my insides a little raw and my eye red. However, I’d never felt stronger. A huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Maybe I would be Alpha someday. Maybe I wouldn’t. But the Seoul werewolves had rallied, and now we were ready to spearhead the operation to dismantle the vampyre princes in the East forever.

But on my walk to work this morning, I could finally relax and just be a normal girl heading to her job. It didn’t hurt that it was at a prestigious and mysterious futures company where anything was possible…including bringing down the Emerald Veil.

My morning walk bliss was shattered when the security guard in the lobby handed me back my ID Card with a single grunt: “Rejected.”

“Jamkkanman-yo!” I cried.
Wait!
The line grew behind me as my fellow co-workers grumbled over the delay. “I am a new hire! There must be a mistake with my identification verification.”

“No mistake,” the guard replied in low English.

I spotted a familiar black-haired Korean boy with a gleaming obsidian earring and a cobalt Brioni suit bypassing the security line.

“Wait! Kwajang-nim! There is something wrong with my ID card!” I called.

The Autumn Dragon paused beside the guard. He didn’t make eye contact, but I could feel the waves of hostility rolling off him, which made Wolf’s tail curl.

“Good work, Lee,” he told the security guard in Korean and then dropped my ID in the shredder.

“What the hell?” I vaulted the metal barrier before Lee could draw his stun baton and stood defiantly in Ankor’s way. “What’s going on? I thought we were past the pissing contests!”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Typical dog. Throwing a yapping fit in public with no regard as to how this will look to the employees.”

“Oh, you think this is yapping? Wait until I bark,” I snapped, and Ankor finally met my eye. He didn’t like what he saw there.

“I will take care of her,” he told Lee. “Have security standing by.”

Lee bowed. “Algesseumnida.”

Ankor grabbed me roughly by the elbow and towed me to the holding office. Inside, the guards watching security cameras stood to salute, but Ankor waved them down and shoved me roughly into a holding cell.

“What, am I your prisoner now?” I growled. “Never arrested someone before, Yong? Let me give you a hint: you have to say what crime they committed!”

Ankor slammed the door shut and then stood in front of it with his arms folded. “Your crime is one of moral repugnance.”

“Ooooooh! Been studying English through Downtown Abbey, have you?” I sneered. “From the stories Minho’s told me, you’re no saint yourself.”

That struck a nerve. Smoke poured from Ankor’s nostrils, and his inner Were flashed like sheets of white lightning in his eyes. “You dare talk about Minho? I requested one thing, waygook. I asked you not to take advantage of my best friend. But then you led him on and broke his heart, like he meant nothing to you!”

In an instant, all of my anger evaporated through a hole in my chest. “
That’s
why you revoked my ID card and started acting like a jerk? Because I ended things with Minho?”

Ankor glared at me balefully. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him. I begged you not to treat him like those other guys, and you swore you wouldn’t. You didn’t even warn me before dumping him. Does family mean nothing to you?”

“How is he?” I asked in a low voice.

The Autumn Dragon snorted and looked away. “He is a wreck. I have not seen him like this over a girl before. I should have never let him get involved with you.”

“What happened with Minho is unfortunate,” I said, “but it is better this way.”

“Better he got his heart broken by a girl who thinks all boys are passing amusements?”

“Better he isn’t dead!” I roared, my eye flaring golden yellow. Demon surged up, exuberant, and flames hissed from my fingertips before I could stop them. I tried to cover my hands before Ankor saw, but it was too late. He took a step back, his eyes widening. When I opened my fists, my palms were scorched black.

“I’m a Triad, Ankor,” I whispered brokenly. “Kumiho fire burned my soul into three. I can’t control what I want or who I’m with. Sometimes I don’t know who I am at all.”

All I heard was condemning silence. I couldn’t look up, choosing instead to address my brand new stilettos that I’d been so proud of: “With Minho, I really wanted to try. But the more I struggled to be normal for him, the more I knew…I’m more wolf than human.”

Finally, a sharp intake of breath. Looking up, I found Ankor gazing at me with the last thing I expected to see: excitement.

“Come with me, Citlalli.”

He grabbed my arm again, but this time it was with the intensity of a boy determined to share something secret with me, something marvelously dangerous. We departed the holding cell, passed the curious security guards, and then headed for the upper floors. To the laboratories.

“In here. This is my private lab.”

The small door opened with a hiss, and I had to duck my head to enter. Inside, Ankor’s laboratory opened up exponentially to a domed ceiling. This wasn’t the sanitary white paneling of the main lab, but a jagged black crystal lair. It was dimly lit by fluorescent tubes and glowing specimens of unknown substances I couldn’t begin to guess—except for one tank. I recognized the Hangeul characters for “water bear;” I had looked it up after Ankor’s obnoxious lecture to make sure he wasn’t pulling my leg.

Ankor released my arm and knocked on a pipe. “Platinum paneling. My father and I mined for years to find enough, but it was the only way he would let me have my own lab inside Yong Enterprises.”

“I’ll say. It’s so fortified that it would keep an army of Spooks out,” I said, circling a table containing canisters of expanding and retracting jelly.

“More importantly, it keeps me in,” Ankor’s voice echoed. I whirled around, trying to spot him in the dim light. A roar rang out, and the walls shuddered. Abruptly, all of the bioluminescent cylinders fell dark and cold. I froze in the sudden black-out, Wolf’s senses on high alert.

A dark shroud of a dragon unfolded in the back of the laboratory, two shadowy wings smeared against his back. A hint of a beard grew from his snout, and he breathed heavily, as if the transformation were physically hurting him. When his hooded eyes blinked at me, I fell over backwards with a gasp. Ankor’s irises had been swallowed up by pulsing energy, the color of eventide.

Then I realized that flashes of neon color were shooting through his body like sparks. They sizzled down his horns to his spine, to his claws, to the tip of his tail as he shifted restlessly. And his wings—neon energy arched through them like cosmic wave blasts. When he took a step, the energy surges went crazy, like strobe lights advertising a once-in-a-lifetime sale:
Hey, come see the giant electric dragon
!
We have solar-powered units coming soon!

“You’re beautiful,” I said. I had never seen anything like him. Somehow his Were felt
right
and so
Ankor
—an amalgam of the techno-powered cityscape he loved beating like a heart within his traditional dragon frame.

No
. Ankor’s voice tore through my mind, tart with bitterness.
I am a star ready to collapse.
His wings beat quicker in agitation. Energy sparked at the end of one, catching flame to the upper rafter. He whirled around in dismay just as the galaxy of energy coiled in his chest flared. Roaring in pain, the Autumn Dragon tore through two overhanging lights and then collapsed on his forelegs in anguish.

“Shit!” I ran to hit the fire alarm. I stood tensely in the darkness as the overhead sprinklers went off, my chest heaving. Finally, a wet, forlorn Korean boy dragged himself over to my side, the shard of obsidian glowing violet in his ear.

I whispered, “You’re a Triad like me.”

Ankor nodded. “Like you, Citlalli.”

“Except you’re an energy dragon about to spontaneously combust lasers out of your ass. Dude, you’re waaay worse.”

“Shut up.” But I swore he smiled.

Chapter 28: The Yeouiju’s Curse

~Citlalli~

“It happened when I was a child.”

We’d relocated to the Yongs’ lavish villa overlooking the Gangnam District after the laboratory technicians had politely suggested we get out. Our legs swung from the balcony above the pool. I was happily lapping away at my second bowl of
patbingsu
dessert, watching the alternating color of windows tint the water pink, orange, and green.

The technological glamor rolled right off Ankor, who looked more impressed that I was reaching over to finish his untouched sweet bean shaved ice.

“Sun Bin had bested me again in a science fair competition,” he said, his lip curling whenever he spoke about his twin. “Everyone gave me a hard time about it, either seriously or jokingly. ‘Guess we know who CEO Yong will pass the reins to,’ they’d laugh. I broke into the lab to work on a secret project that would make my parents proud. It was these rechargeable wings, operated by harnessing the energy of these special black gemstones that only I could find.

“I was originally an ore dragon, you see. I could
sense
the different kinds of metals in the earth, and I was particularly drawn to ones that carried magical energy. However, what I didn’t know was that I was playing with the shards of a broken yeouiju, the Dragon’s Pearl of omnipotent power.”