The Runaway They Mocked Is The Protector Of Midgard

4

“Father, be careful!” Astrid’s voice trembled from behind his legs.

“Trust me, daughter.”

The word left a strange warmth on his tongue. Daughter. He got to call someone that now. It still felt unreal—almost as unreal as the stupidity of the woman across the yard, who had looked at what he was and decided to send men at it.

The warriors charged all at once, steel high, axes and spears meant to say this was no longer a warning.

The first axe came down where Kaedric had been standing half a heartbeat ago. Two fingers touched the axeman’s neck in passing, and the man folded like wet cloth. A spear thrust at his ribs—Kaedric caught the shaft one-handed, and its owner arrived a moment later, bending over his own weapon with a sound like a dropped bag of grain. Then Kaedric simply walked forward through the rest of them, unhurried, the way a man walks through tall grass, and wherever he passed, steel rang against the stones and hands went numb before their owners understood why.

Gunnhild blinked once.

That was all it took. When her eyes opened, weapons lay scattered across the courtyard, and two dozen of the household’s finest lay unconscious among them, folded into positions bodies were not designed for. The whole yard had gone silent. Not even a groan.

She should have understood, then, exactly what kind of man she was standing in front of. Instead, her body moved before her brain could vote—she swung a fist at his face.

Kaedric caught her wrist without looking at it. One twist, one push, and she was down on the stones among her own warriors.

“Don’t touch me!” Even trembling, her mouth outran her mind. “Touch me and you will face consequences you are not prepared to deal with!”

Kaedric stepped closer and crouched, curious, like a man leaning in to read fine print.

“Show me.”

The slap cracked across the courtyard like a whip. Her head snapped sideways; an earring skittered away over the stones. She tried to scramble back and his hand found her face again—measured, unhurried, almost polite. He was not in a rage. That was the part that finally frightened her. Somewhere past the ringing in her skull, she understood that this man had already left pity behind, in whatever place he had spent the last six years.

So she reached for the last thing she had. She bit her thumb, dragged the blood across the covenant crest on her bracelet, and screamed a summons.

The sky darkened. The family Guardian descended—a silver dragon the size of a war-hall, wind from its wings flattening the courtyard, its landing shaking dust from the estate walls.

“INCINERATE HIM!” Gunnhild shrieked.

Twenty minutes ago, Astrid would have been on her knees with dread. Not now. She had just watched her father put down an army the way other people shooed flies, and she had seen the aunt afraid—truly afraid—for the first time in her whole short life. Something hot and bright was racing through her instead of fear.

Mother never lied.

Mother never lied, Father really was the greatest man in the world, and now every single one of them was going to see it.

Then she remembered the last time she had seen this dragon: a visiting lord her mother had called respected, reduced to ash on this same courtyard for offending the clan. Her small hands tightened on her father’s leg.

Fire boiled up the dragon’s throat, orange light climbing between its fangs as it reared to its full, sky-blotting height—

Kaedric looked up at it, and his pupils slid into sharp vertical slits.

He was the Protector of Midgard. Within this realm, he was Alpha to every covenant dragon alive.

The fire died in the beast’s throat.

The great head came down—slowly, deliberately—and lowered itself before Kaedric in the deep bow of absolute submission. Gunnhild knew that posture. Every member of the clan knew it. The Guardian gave it to one man alone: the clan leader himself.

“INCINERATE HIM!” she screamed again, and this time her voice cracked with panic, because if the dragon would not listen, there was nothing left standing between her and this monster.

The dragon did not so much as glance at her. It flattened itself at Kaedric’s feet like a hound.

“Where is my fiancée?” Kaedric asked it, in the tone of a man who had never once needed to ask twice.

The beast answered—in the ancient dragon tongue, a sound like a glacier splitting, a language that chose its speakers and spoke only to those with the authority to command it.

Gunnhild went white.

“What trick did you use?!” she shouted—and then her brain finally caught up with her mouth, and the trembling reached her voice. “That’s impossible. Besides the clan leader, only… only the Protector of the Realm can override a covenant bond…”

The Protector of the Realm.

Standing in her courtyard. Wearing the face of the boy she had spent the whole morning calling trash.

She dropped to her knees among her scattered warriors.

“Spare me. Please, spare my life—I’ll tell you where your fiancée is! I’ll tell you everything!”

“Too late.”

The dragon had already told him everything. One swift blow, and Gunnhild crumpled unconscious onto the stones, next to the earring she had lost.

Kaedric turned to his daughter. Astrid was looking up at him with her chin high and her eyes blazing—the fiercest, proudest look a starving six-year-old had ever worn—and he felt something in his chest quietly give way.

He lifted her into his arms. The dragon lowered a wing for them like a bridge.

With a roar that rattled every window in the estate, the Guardian took to the sky—flying east, toward a small colosseum in the kingdom of Askheim.

The kingdom where Kaedric had been born. Where his parents had been murdered. And where, six years ago, he had fled with nothing but a silk sash and his life.