THE PRIESTESS'S WORTHLESS HUSBAND IS A DRAGON

CHAPTER 4: DRAGON SPIRIT PART 1

Ethan's eyes opened to darkness. The basement ceiling stared back at him like the inside of a coffin. His body felt like someone had scooped out his insides and packed the empty space with acid and broken glass. Every breath burned. Every heartbeat felt wrong, hollow, like a drum with a hole punched through the center.

He pressed his hand to his chest.

The space where his Bloodline Core used to sit was empty. Not just empty. Gutted. Like someone had reached into his ribcage and ripped out the one thing that made him more than ordinary, and left nothing behind but a wound that didn't bleed on the outside.

Gone.

Then he heard it.

A voice. Not from the room. Not from the walls. From inside his skull, low and gravelly, dripping with sarcasm like a man who had been sleeping for a thousand years and woke up annoyed.

"Well, well, well. Took you long enough to get robbed."

Ethan's eyes went wide. He shot upright despite the pain screaming through his back and chest and looked around the dark basement. Nothing. No one. Just stone walls and moonlight.

"Down here, kid. Or up here. Or everywhere, really. I'm inside you. Try not to make that weird."

"Who... what are you?" Ethan's voice cracked, barely above a whisper, his eyes darting around the room like a trapped animal searching for the exit.

"I'm the thing your idiot father accidentally set free when he stole your bloodline. Name's not important. What's important is that the bloodline they ripped out of you? That was the lock on my cage. Ordinary dragon blood. Strong, sure. Pretty, absolutely. But ordinary. Like putting a padlock on a nuclear warhead."

Ethan pressed both palms against his temples. His head was splitting open, and now there was a voice inside it with an attitude problem.

"I am the True Dragon Spirit. I've been sealed inside your bloodline since the day you were born. Sleeping under that garbage awakening like a king stuffed under a mattress. I've been listening to your pathetic little thoughts for eighteen years. 'Why don't they love me?' 'What did I do wrong?' Kid, you didn't do anything wrong. You were born in a house full of roaches who can't tell a diamond from a bottle cap."

Ethan's mouth opened but no words came. His mind was still stuck on the hollow in his chest, on the memory of waking up with his body screaming and his Core already gone, taken while he was unconscious.

"You're... you're inside me?"

"Inside your bones, technically. Your body is a True Dragon Body. The rarest physical vessel in existence. That bloodline they stole? A candle. You? You're the sun. But right now, you're a sun that's been kicked in the teeth and left in a basement, so we've got some work to do."

Before Ethan could process a single word of what this voice was telling him, the basement door swung open. Bright light poured down the stone steps like a flood, and Ethan squinted against it as four figures appeared in the doorway.

Richard came down first, his posture straight, his chin high, his expression carrying all the warmth of a marble statue. Patricia followed with her hand resting lightly on Derek's shoulder, guiding him forward like she was presenting a prince. Derek practically glowed. There was a new energy radiating from his body, a warmth in his skin, a brightness in his eyes that hadn't been there yesterday. The stolen bloodline sat inside him like a torch lit with someone else's fire.

Jessica stood at the top of the stairs. She didn't come down. She just watched.

"Good. You're awake." Richard looked down at Ethan the way a man looks at a dog that got hit by a car but somehow survived. No guilt. No softness. Just mild inconvenience. "It's done. The Core is in Derek now, where it belongs. It's just losing a Bloodline Core, Ethan. What's the big deal? It's not like you lost a leg. When your brother becomes successful, he can casually arrange a desk job for you somewhere. You can live the rest of your life in peace, nice and quiet, the way you've always been."

"Look at this clown." The Spirit's voice growled inside Ethan's skull, sharp with contempt. "He just handed his favorite son a bottle rocket and thinks he gave him the moon. Kid, that bloodline they put in your brother? Give it five years. It'll peak at mid tier and stall. They stole the wrapper, not the candy."

Patricia crouched down in front of Ethan. Her perfume filled the air between them, thick and sweet, the same perfume she wore when she kissed Derek goodnight. She had never once come to Ethan's room at night.

"Sweetheart, don't be dramatic." Her voice was soft, the kind of soft that coats poison in sugar. "You never had the temperament for greatness. You're too quiet, too stubborn, too closed off. Derek will carry the Morrison name forward. The pressure is off your shoulders now. Isn't that what you always wanted? To be free from all of this?"

"I want to bite her," the Spirit said flatly. "Is that an option? Can I bite her?"