Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (12 page)

I bowed slightly. “Kamsahamnida.”
Thank you.

He snorted at my Korean and stalked off with his bowl, leaving me alone with the boy I vaguely remembered sleeping with.

Minho wasted no time. “You no call?” He pulled out his gleaming Smartphone and pointed, looking so adorably confuzzled that it was all I could do not to tackle him with hugs.

Yes. Pin him down. He’ll be most vulnerable,
Demon salivated.

Wolf! Where are you? Why do I have to listen to Her all the time?
I raged, but there was no answer.

“
Mian haeyo
,” I muttered.
I’m sorry
. “I was so drunk.”

To my surprise, Minho burst out laughing. “I know. Me, too.” He jabbed me in the shoulder. “But we had fun. Right?”

“So much fun.” I inched down the counter, mentally counting the steps to the doorway of freedom behind me.
But I’m a mentally unstable Triad who could turn into a Fire Wolf and rip your face off—if the vampyre princes don’t kill you first. That’d put a damper on our fun, eh?
“We should hang out again soon…as friends.”

Nothing could dampen his enthusiasm. Minho’s brown eyes sparkled, and my breath caught. “Ok, Citlalli. You call me and we will hang out…as friends. I am happy as long as I am part of your life.”

Oh, geez
. I blushed and nodded, but Demon was contemptuous.

What a weak sentimental fool.

Finally, Wolf returned, whining for me to flee. I obliged, jabbing a thumb over my shoulder. “I’m just gonna… The bathroom’s this way, right?” And then I bolted.

Instead of connecting back to the living room, the hallway looped around like the coils of a dragon. I felt like I was descending into the belly of a museum. Old, full-length body armor, a sixteenth century bow-and-arrow, and what looked like a bronze medallion of a three-legged crow were showcased within glass boxes backlit by a neon glow. I glanced nervously over my shoulder. For all I knew, I was going to end up in the National Museum of Korea instead of the bathroom, but I couldn’t face Minho again.

Then I saw the paintings. My mouth dropped, and I almost reached out to touch one before Wolf’s ears picked up the hum of a security field. The passage had been dipped in ink and stirred until it took the shape of five majestic dragons spinning between heaven and earth. The walls were their skin: rough, pebbly dragon scales emphasized with heavy black shadows. Between their claws, the earth burned sienna, ochre yellow, and rose.

It was the most unique family portrait I had ever seen. The first red dragon with his forelegs in the sea could be none other than the mighty Mun Mu, shooting gusts of scarlet flames into the mists. There they interlaced with dreamy clouds upon which a beautiful chrome dragon lay, her mane a snowy ripple and her three pairs of sightless eyes limitless. Mun Mu’s deceased mate, I realized, feeling guilty that I didn’t know her name.

Their three children danced upon the Korean peninsula. Sun Bin and Ankor were tethered to each other by the tail: She was Winter, ice gleaming in her draconic snarl and from the holes of her creaky, honeycomb wings. He was Autumn, an obsidian black dragon plunging into the earth as if sniffing for minerals, his copper eyes eager.

My eyes wandered over an empty lake blazing pink with azaleas before I found Heesu exploding up from her woodland garden, slants of sunlight playing across her feathery green wings. My gaze returned to the lake, and I gave a half-wave to where my sister was supposed to be. “Hey, sis.”

Raised voices floated from around the corner, shattering the timelessness of the painted hall. I padded forward, ears cocked. I’d recognize that warning tone anywhere. Mami used it on me regularly, as if she were ready to shift into a wolf herself:

“This dinner is for Raina. Don’t make me regret telling you about her, Mun
Mu.”

I peeked around the corner. The half-moon door was pulled back to reveal lavish sleeping quarters.
The dragon’s lair
,
I realized with a squeak. Mun Mu faced my mother from across a circular bed of wrinkled black sheets. Both of them were clad in silk bathrobes. I crinkled my nose in disgust. Now where was that bathroom again?

As the King of Dragon’s temper flared, so did the braziers lining the ledges. They sent hungry shadows dancing across the walls. Mami didn’t flinch, turning to adjust her hair in the mirror.

“You are her mother. Your position matters, Ileana. It is her future.” Mun Mu swept across the room and placed his strong hands on her shoulders. A moment later, his fingers slipped beneath her robe. Mami paused, and then resumed straightening her bobby pins.

“I have my restaurant.”

“A lowly hole-in-the-wall down a nameless alleyway in Itaewon,” Mun Mu was quick to dismiss. “What happened to the woman I used to know, who persuaded me to revolutionize the way I thought about fine dining? Your fire once matched my own.”

“I gave my fire to my children, which you would know, too, if you bothered to notice them.”

Mun Mu’s nostrils flared. “I have built an empire for my children.”

She stopped and sighed, turning to smooth his sleeves. “I know. I used to think that would be enough. But you can’t build the right type of empire if you don’t
see
your daughters and son for who they are.”

Mun Mu shrugged out of her grasp. “So you will leave your children a little village to fight over. Why come to Korea, Ileana? Obviously it wasn’t to see me again. My daughter was kidnapped and tormented for months before you finally reached out to me.”

She stared at him, her weary eyes reflecting something troubling: fear. My mother was never afraid. I strained to hear her reply. Finally, I caught a whisper so light it wouldn’t disturb a candle flame: “Here they will be safe. We can never return to America.
They are looking for them
.”

Wolf barked a warning. Suddenly, a hand grabbed me roughly by the shoulder and spun me around. I almost fell into the alarm-triggered paintings.

“
Yah!
Keh! Mweo haeyo?”
Ankor’s dark eyes clouded with suspicion. His inner Were flashed, and I blinked. His Weresoul wasn’t coppery-colored like in the painting, but a dazzling star-storm, as if the night sky were crashing into the earth.

“Mian,”
I muttered a brief apology and scooted past him. I didn’t want Mami or Mun Mu to know I’d seen them
together
, and I didn’t want to destroy priceless paintings by making a lizard-sized hole in the wall with the boy who’d just called me “dog.” What the hell was his problem, anyway?

I glanced back. Ankor was inspecting every brushstroke of the mural as if convinced I’d peed on it. Beyond the bend, I heard a bedroom door slide shut.

Chapter 14: Jaehoon’s Farewell

~Citlalli~

Wolves watched us from the hills. Wolves dead and gone, wolves made of stone. The number of wolf headstones matched the number of people in the black-and-white photograph in my hand. I smoothed back the dog-eared flaps from where it had been crinkled numerous times. The date on the back read July 30, 1950. The Korean War had just begun, then. All thirty pack members had been alive.

My good eye feasted on the tall, young man laughing with his arm draped over the Alpha’s shoulder in the heart of the photograph: Seu Jaehoon. The Alpha before me. It always took me a moment to recognize him. He came from another time. Another generation. His country had survived a horrific Japanese occupation and World War II. They still had hope, then. They had still eagerly waited in the mountains with teeth bared, ready to fight. What a sight his pack must have been, streaking through the forest like wisps of silvery smoke in the dead of night.

However, their allies began to look and sound the same as their enemies. And as the wolves began to circle each other on the brink of the Korean War, the vampyres preyed on them from the dark. Jaehoon had been the last of his pack to see the new generation of Seoul werewolves.

Now he completed the ring of headstones on the hill. Thirty fallen and gone. They were halfway between the heavens, which called their human spirits, and the dark of the wood, where their wolf souls ran free. Yet the long shadows cast by their tombs were a somber reminder to the living, and I felt the Red Fang Necklace grow heavy around my neck. In the dark of my mind, fire ignited in the eyes of the stone wolves, burning me with its ferocity. I gasped for breath.

“Are you feeling well, Alpha?” Yu Li’s hand caught my elbow.

I caught the urgency in her voice. Xu Xiang, leader of the International Were Council, watched me from across the casket, his yellow eyes round and full like his inner goshawk’s. Miao stood at his side, equally suspicious. I drew another breath and calmed the fluttering in my stomach.

“Kamsahamnida, sunsaeng-nim.” I fell to my knees before the casket and bowed low. With my nose buried in the earth, I could block out all of the strange and unfamiliar scents of the visiting Were dignitaries and just focus on him. I chased Jaehoon’s fading scent of gunmetal and blood, of soil and ginseng, until it throbbed uncomfortably bright in my mind.

Voice shaking, I whispered: “I will remember the photograph you honored me with, Seu Jaehoon
juin-nim
, teacher, friend. I will remember those who came before me. I
will
make you proud.”

At my back, they emerged from the shadows: the Seoul werewolves. We were still fractured, with Rafael’s followers on one side and mine on the other. But just this once, we howled in unison.

My eye hardened as I remembered the Lady of Eve’s words:
You are not tigers. Wolves do not hunt alone.

I had work to do.

***

After the burial ceremony, the Weres and our families gathered in the memorial. Shrines had been set up for Jaehoon, Ae Cha, and Weres from other nations who had fallen in the last Seorak San battle. I saw Miao comforting a weeping goshawk widow by the photograph of her fallen mate, and my heart softened.

“Why does each nation have a different Were animal?” Raina asked me.

I shrugged. “From what Jaehoon told me, it’s not so much each nation as it is geographical territories that have strains of a particular Were virus infecting us, or whatever it is. Korea used to have tigers and wolves, but the tiger clans kept to the north and sided with the revolutionary soldiers during the war. As for how these spirit animal viruses originated…” I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “That is part of the lore the juin-nim didn’t have time to tell.”

A commotion broke out at the back table in front of Ae Cha’s shrine. I broke through the crowds to see Ae Cha’s elderly parents standing defensively in front of their two surviving grandchildren, while a large balding man in his forties shouted at them in Korean. Yu Li was in the midst of it all.

“What’s going on?” I asked Moon.

She bared her teeth in the shouting man’s direction. “That is Kang. He is bad man who hurt Ae Cha many time. He also father of her children.”

“The grandparents don’t seem to think that’s a reason to let his children go with him,” I observed. Kang was full-on roaring in the face of the elderly
harabeoji
, but the grandfather resolutely held his ground.

Across the aisle, Ae Cha’s close pack mate Iseul moaned for Yu Li’s help. Dark eyes sharp and unforgiving, Yu Li stepped between Kang and the grandfather. She spoke in short, crisp sentences. I caught something about “custody,” “unmarried,” and “in court.”

Kang sneered at Yu Li. He caught my brother watching and made a derogatory motion toward him before gesturing obscenely at Yu Li. The word “devil foreigner” was being thrown around, as well as “single mother,” and I doubted Ae Cha’s ex meant anything nice by it.

Yu Li stayed remarkably calm. However, I spotted the tension seizing her muscles, especially when Kang’s smirk fell upon Young Soo. I caught her eye, and she gave a quick shake of her head. With Kang’s obvious distaste for foreigners, I would only add fuel to the fire if I stepped in. However, we had to quell this dispute soon. Heads were turning on all ends of the hall.

“Rafael. Namkyu. Kaelan. Bae. Escort this man from the memorial,” Yu Li suddenly spoke in English. “He is disturbing the dead’s rest.”

Kang’s sneer faltered as the four formidable fighters stepped forward. Selfishly, I realized it couldn’t have been a better display of pack unity. Our pack men didn’t hesitate to answer Yu Li’s command. Kang spit at Miguel’s feet as he exited.

“Hey.” I put a hand on my brother’s arm. He was shaking. “Are you okay?”

“What a dick,” Miguel spluttered. “At a memorial, of all places! Ae Cha’s parents better win custody.”

Yu Li gripped Young Soo’s shoulders. “They will. Even if I have to represent them myself.”

Across the way, Iseul and Moon hesitated, and then inclined their heads to Yu Li. She smiled in return, and for a moment I felt the distance between our pack mates shorten. However, the moment Yu Li made the effort to walk across the aisle, Iseul and Moon busied themselves in prayer.

“Your pack handled that man well.”

I turned to see Xiang approach me, alone. I straightened despite myself. I’d always found Xiang’s hawk-like stare intense, but now I knew he was one of the Elder Life Spirits of Eve. The White Tiger Herself had named him “Fastest Wings in the East.” I’d always resented Xiang’s appointment as leader of the International Were Alliance over Jaehoon, but I couldn’t deny he knew what he was doing. In his presence, no one had one hair—or feather—out of place.

“I apologize your flock had to witness such an event during our time of mourning,” I replied stiffly.

Xiang shrugged and gestured for us to step outside. “Many times, the Werefolk come from broken places,” he said, opening a silver tin with a pair of wings inscribed on the lid. “One usually does not become Were by walking the straight and narrow path. Cigar?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“They say you always smell like smoke,” Xiang observed, his yellow eyes trained on me as he stuck one in his mouth. I hurried to help him light it but kept silent. I wasn’t about to confirm anything he’d heard about the fractured state of my soul.