RETURN OF THE LEGENDARY NORTHERN DRAGON

BLOOD ON GRAVE

No one would believe Grayson had just spent fifty thousand dollars on roadside flowers—especially not for a grave.

He clutched them as he drove through sheets of rain toward Clearwater Cemetery, windshield wipers barely keeping pace with the storm. The old burial ground sat on the city's edge—abandoned for years, overgrown with weeds, forgotten by everyone except those with ghosts to visit.

Grayson parked near the rusted gates and walked through mud and darkness until he found the weathered tombstone half-hidden by wild grass.

Sarah Wells. Beloved Mother.

He knelt in the mud and placed the flowers against the stone. Rain hammered his shoulders, soaked through his clothes, but he didn't move.

"I failed you, Mom."

The words came out raw. Three years of holding them back, and now they spilled like blood from a wound.

"Even when you were dying, you kept telling me about her. The girl with the butterfly birthmark who saved us fifteen years ago." His voice cracked. "I came back from the borders three years ago just to find her. I only married Vanessa to fulfill your dying wish."

Thunder rolled overhead. Lightning briefly illuminated the graveyard's twisted trees and broken monuments.

"But Vanessa isn't kind like you said. She never was." Grayson's fists clenched in the mud. "She cheated on me. Threw divorce papers in my face like I was garbage. Her whole family did. I served them for three years, honored your wish, and they treated me like dirt under their shoes."

He'd been twelve when it happened—beaten bloody by loan sharks in an alley, his mother dying beside him from injuries she'd taken protecting him. Then a girl appeared. Maybe thirteen, skinny, with a pack of money and a piece of bread she split in half despite clearly being hungry herself.

His mother had grabbed the girl's wrist weakly, treasuring the small birthmark on the girl's left wrist, shaped like a butterfly's wings. And when his mother was finally dying, she whispered with her last breath. "Find her. Marry her. The butterfly girl... she lost everything because of us..."

Grayson had carried that promise for fifteen years. Through military training. Through war. Through rising to become the most feared commander in seven nations. And when peace finally came to the borders, he'd returned home to fulfill his mother's dying wish.

Vanessa had the birthmark. Same wrist. Same butterfly shape. He'd been so sure.

"I was going to tell her tonight," Grayson said to the tombstone. "Going to reveal who I really am—that I'm not some worthless delivery driver. That I'm the one who's been protecting her family from the shadows. But she didn't want me, Mom. She wanted Logan Stone. They all wanted me gone."

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Victor calling again. Grayson ignored it.

"So we're separated now. Divorced. And I don't know if I failed you or if I just failed myself by believing—"

He stopped. Something glistened on his mother's tombstone.

Fresh blood.

Grayson's hand shot out, fingers touching the crimson droplets. Still warm. Still liquid. Less than five minutes old.

His military instincts kicked in instantly. He scanned the graveyard, eyes adjusting to darkness between lightning flashes. There—a trail of blood leading toward the old chapel at the cemetery's far end.

Grayson stood and followed it.

The blood drops became more frequent, larger, like whoever was bleeding was getting weaker. He heard sounds ahead—muffled struggling, a woman's voice saying something defiant, male laughter.

Grayson rounded the chapel's crumbling corner and stopped.

Four men surrounded a woman backed against the stone wall. Her shirt was torn, face bloodied, one hand pressed against her side where something dark and wet spread between her fingers. A knife wound, still bleeding.

The largest thug—face scarred, arms covered in prison tattoos—had his hand wrapped in her hair, yanking her head back.

"Stealing sleep in our cemetery, pretty girl?" His voice rough and thick. "You'll pay rent with that body. Razor always collects."

The woman kicked at him weakly, but she was fading. "I'd rather die."

"That can be arranged." Razor raised a knife, light catching the blade's edge. "But first—"

Grayson's hand caught his wrist mid-swing.

The grip was iron. Unbreakable. Razor's eyes widened as he tried to pull free and couldn't move an inch.

"Leave," Grayson said quietly. "Now."

The four thugs turned to look at him—soaked delivery uniform, average height, nothing special. Then they burst out laughing.

"Another hero?" Razor sneered, still trying to yank his arm free. "Buddy, walk away or we'll gut you right next to her. This cemetery's got plenty of room for—"

Grayson moved.

Three seconds. That's all it took.

Razor's arm bent backward with a sickening CRACK. The knife clattered to the ground as he screamed. Grayson swept the legs out from under the thug to his left, drove an elbow into the second one's throat, and caught the third with a palm strike to the solar plexus that dropped him like a stone.

Two thugs unconscious on the ground. Razor clutching his shattered arm. The fourth already running, his footsteps fading into the storm.

Razor scrambled backward through mud and blood, eyes wild with terror. "You're dead! You hear me? My boss runs this whole district! You're a dead man!"

Grayson took one step forward.

Razor fled, disappearing into darkness with his screams echoing behind him.

Grayson turned back to the woman. She'd slid down the wall, hand still pressed to her wound, blood seeping between her fingers. Her eyes were glazing over, consciousness slipping.

"Hey." Grayson knelt beside her. "Stay with me. I'm getting you help."

She looked up at him, focusing with difficulty. Her lips moved, forming words he barely heard.

"Save... me..."

Then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed forward.

Grayson caught her before she hit the ground, cradling her against his chest. She was light—too light, like she hadn't eaten properly in weeks. Her breathing was shallow, pulse weak but steady.

He needed to get her to a hospital. Now.

Grayson shifted to lift her properly, and her torn sleeve fell away from her left arm.

He froze.

There, on her wrist, faded but unmistakable even in the darkness—a small birthmark shaped exactly like butterfly wings.

The same mark Vanessa had. The same mark his mother described fifteen years ago.

Grayson stared at it, his mind racing. Thunder crashed directly overhead, shaking the ground beneath his feet. Lightning illuminated the graveyard in harsh white light, and for that brief moment he could see the woman's face clearly—gaunt, bruised, but with the same kind eyes he remembered from that alley fifteen years ago.

Two women. Two butterfly birthmarks.

One who'd thrown him away like garbage.

One bleeding out in his arms in an abandoned cemetery.

Grayson looked down at the unconscious woman, then back at the birthmark on her wrist, and felt his entire world shift on its axis.

What the hell was going on?