The Dragon Lord's Aide Wants to Quit [BL] Chapter 465: The Better Cards

Claws that had long since been bent in different directions were forcefully outstretched, aiming straight for Kael.

But to the desperate Wyvern Queen, whose mind seemed to warp further with every passing moment as fragments of her thoughts slowly slipped away, it no longer mattered what needed to be done.

It didn’t matter what needed to be sacrificed or what she had to offer.

She would give it.

Because there was no way Rhazira would allow herself to be alone again.

She’d already experienced that once.

She remembered scouring the battlefield for anyone who could still be saved, or at the very least salvaging whatever cores she could find among the bodies.

She remembered desperately searching for the closest wyverns she’d learned to treat as family, only to find them barely breathing and needing far more mana than she had left after giving almost everything to keep her mate alive.

Then came the attempts to treat them through whatever means she could think of.

Most failed.

In fact, those first few had been the ones who taught her exactly what to do.

But Rhazira hadn’t stopped.

Days became months, and months stretched into years—ages even—as she did it again and again until she eventually got good at it

Good enough to create beings that could survive.

Good enough to ensure that the next time their enemies came after her and her mate, they would have something capable of withstanding them.

That had been her life ever since she’d nearly lost Khan.

And this moment?

This was supposed to be where their future finally started.

A future Rhazira had built with her own hands, one drop of blood after another.

So was she really supposed to allow just anyone to come between her and everything she’d worked for?

Was she supposed to stand there and let someone like Riley Hale influence her mate into believing that playing mortal was somehow better than finally having the life they deserved?

Right.

See?

That was obviously it.

Rhazira shot toward Kael despite the crushing dragon fear the Wyvern King was still desperately exerting to keep her at bay. Her body practically blurred through the air as whatever remained of her rationality disappeared beneath the madness driving her forward.

It had to be that one.

Because Khan, her dearly beloved Khan, would never have said those things to her.

Not willingly.

So she only had to do this.

Get rid of them.

Him.

Just like everyone else, that golden blur in front of her was nothing more than another thing standing between them and the future they deserved.

Another necessary step.

After everything they’d endured, surely the whole world owed them at least that much.

And Rhazira could practically taste it—

A massive, mana-reinforced boulder slammed straight into her.

Rhazira hadn’t even sensed it coming.

She’d been so deeply lost in her own delusions that the monstrous impact caught her completely off guard, violently knocking her away from Kael and sending her flying across the cavern.

An ear-piercing shriek tore from her throat.

Then came the blue flames.

They roared across Rhazira’s body before she could recover, burning viciously through the parts that were no longer quite draconic enough to withstand them.

And through the inferno, another golden dragon finally burst into the cavern.

Lady Cirila’s aura flared so violently that the surrounding debris trembled beneath the pressure.

Her gaze landed first on her unconscious son.

Then on the creature that had been seconds away from reaching him.

The golden dragoness’s face twisted with fury.

"GET AWAY FROM MY SON!"

Without wasting another second, Lady Cirila rushed straight toward Kael, intent on securing his unconscious body before Rhazira could get anywhere near him again.

__

Cirila had almost missed it.

Any later and Kael, and by extension Riley, would’ve probably died at the hands of that deranged woman.

Against most opponents, witnessing such a sight wouldn’t have been enough to frighten the golden dragoness quite so badly. But Cirila had already been warned about the Wyvern Queen’s modified claws and what had been used to reinforce them.

And judging by the state of her son, whom she hadn’t seen like this since that horrible day when he was still young, they were in grave danger.

Cirila knew perfectly well that she was physically weaker than both Kael and Riley.

But right now, she wasn’t thinking as a dragon comparing strengths.

She was a mother.

And if that insane woman was willing to stake everything she had for the sake of what she considered her family, then Cirila could do exactly the same to make sure her own children remained safe.

The golden dragoness reached Kael and immediately pulled her unconscious son into her arms. Healing mana poured from her hands as she quickly relocated to an area where she would have more room to move, never once taking her eyes off the burning Wyvern Queen.

Strangely enough, Rhazira didn’t immediately pursue them.

She remained where she’d landed, her body still engulfed in blue flames as agonized shrieks continued tearing from her throat.

Then, slowly, those screams began changing.

Until they became laughter.

A regretful, utterly manic laugh spilled from the burning woman’s lips, almost as though the pain from those draconic flames had finally awakened something inside her.

"Son...?"

Rhazira stared at Cirila holding Kael.

Even now.

Even after everything she’d gone through, they were still finding ways to toy with her life.

How wonderful it must be to have someone come rushing in at the last possible moment simply because you were their child.

Maybe if Rhazira had been given parents like that, things would’ve been different.

Maybe she would’ve been standing where they were now, protecting a family that had never needed to be pieced back together with her own hands.

But she hadn’t been given that.

She’d been dealt the wrong cards from the very beginning.

So why should she allow everyone else to keep the better ones?

By then, Rhazira looked honestly grotesque.

The blue flames were still eating through the parts of her body that no longer possessed a white dragon’s natural resistance, leaving sections of her mismatched form even more blackened and ruined than they’d already been after the Dragon Lord started burning her in much the same way.

Yet despite that, the Wyvern Queen seemed strangely resigned to her fate.

Resigned enough that she actually began walking while still completely engulfed in flames.

"Ah... It seems..." she murmured through another breathless laugh. "I’ll have to use that method again."

She absolutely detested this method, but considering the situation, wasn’t it the perfect one?

The forbidden flame.

Perhaps, in the end, it was fortunate that neither she nor her beloved could be considered proper dragons. One was a halfling, while the other was a wyvern bearing the body of the Primordial Dragon.

Nothing short of this ending would be perfect, now that she thought about it.

See, there were things a dragon should never do to their core.

But there were even more things that beings should never do to full-blooded dragon’s core.

As if the act itself had been branded taboo, the resulting punishment was something other purebloods would never have been able to escape.

But for someone like Rhazira?

It had simply become another weapon she’d discovered entirely by accident.

One so perfectly suited to the kind of creature she’d become that, when Rhazira first chanced upon it, she’d almost taken it as divine intervention. A little something the heavens had granted her in compensation for the miserable life everyone else had forced upon her.

And if using it again meant paying the price once more, then so be it.

But just as that thought settled into her increasingly fractured mind, the Wyvern Queen suddenly froze.

Something had changed.

From where the Primordial Dragon’s colossal body stood, an enormous surge of mana erupted without warning.

Rhazira’s head whipped around.

Her eyes widened.

The amount was so unbelievably vast that even the air itself seemed to buckle beneath it, and before anyone inside the chamber could understand what was happening, the entire cavern disappeared beneath a blinding explosion of light.