Page 71 of Dragon 7

“You’re correct.” I lifted my hands. "I'm not a boss."

“Get away from me—”

My hands closed around her throat.

I sneered as I choked her. "I'm a fucking queen."

She didn't have time for a scream. All that came was this wet, broken little sound at the back of her tongue—a huk—as my thumbs pressed in over the soft place under her jaw and the rest of my fingers locked behind her neck.

Her hands came up fast and she began clawing at my forearms. Her nails were long. They were painted a glossy red. They tore long burning red lines down my brown skin.

But I kept that hold on her fucking neck and thought again about all the memories of my baby girl and how she had smiled at me in those visions.

Kiko’s eyes bulged as she scratched at my arms and kicked the bed.

“You’re definitely a boss, Kiko.” I stared into those bulging eyes filling with tears and terror. “And now you get to die like a boss, by a furious queen’s hands. Be lucky I came off my throne to do it, bitch.”

The whites of her eyes swelled. Those brown pupils drowned. Red spread fast through the whites in tiny burst lines, branching outward from the corners.

“Protected? You think I’m going to let you raise Hiro’s twins?”

Her mouth opened, and her tongue pushed forward. Air rasped out of her in a dry, sick scrape and did not come back in.

“I’m going to tell them that you fucking died during childbirth, bitch.”

Her nails dug deeper.

Blood welled up on my forearms in beaded lines and slid down.

“And you’ll just be a footnote in their lives. That’s the difference between a boss and a queen.” I felt all of it. The wet warmth on my skin. The bones of her neck under my thumbs. The tendons. The cord of her windpipe, the wrong shape now, crushed into a flatter shape than it was meant to be.

The way her shoulders started to twist as her body figured out what was happening to it and tried to throw me off one final time.

But, I held on.

I was stronger than her now.

Stronger than ever before.

The sacrifice and Kenji’s blood had given me a new body, mind, and soul.

She thrashed some more. Her legs kicked under the sheet. The bed banged against the wall once, twice.

A thin red line of blood ran out of her left nostril.

“That’s right.” I watched it and smiled. “I won’t be the only woman on this island to bleed tonight. You’ll bleed too.”

The blood ran down the curve of her lip. It pooled in the corner of her mouth where her tongue still pushed at the air she could not catch.

And then. . .her hands left my forearms. They went up to my face. She tried to scratch at my eyes. Her nails scrabbled across my cheekbone and missed. She tried for my throat.

Her hand was too weak now. It slid off my collarbone, bumped against the soul pin, and fell back.

I leaned harder. The bones under my thumbs gave a little.

Her tongue came farther out of her mouth.

The red in her eyes had taken over almost all of the whites.