“How fucking long does it take for you to do a search? What is wrong with you? Was it not you, Lord Ellandra, who told me that they were just ‘puny humans, not even worth the shit on the bottom of your shoe’?” The loud voice boomed across the throne room.

It was only five weeks ago that a festive attitude had filled the grand hall. The throne room had felt warm, vibrant even, as the King waited for the good news. There was a child that had been formed, the royal family was going to expand.

The dragons had been busy rejoicing. Any good news for the King was good news for his people. Babies in the royal family were few and far between. Even the King was an only child. The Mother had been tucked away for safety. Dragon pregnancies were anything but normal, but the King had been blushing when he had spoken about his future Queen then.

Now? It felt like a funeral parlour.

The King had barely rested in the time since his most recent partner had been killed and his precious egg stolen. He was a shell of the kind dragon he had been before. Lord Ellandra trembled below him, bent at the knee, his head bowed.

He, of all people, felt the rage of the King wash over him.

“I have no excuse, my liege. I am a failure. I…I underestimated the humans. They must have someone assisting them. An enemy. There is no way they would be able to hide your egg otherwise. We, all of us, would have felt it.” Lord Ellandra spoke. The King heard him, but wasn’t listening.

He didn’t want to hear Lord Ellandra’s excuses, he didn’t want to hear anyone’s excuses. He wanted action. Hard. Cold. Merciless.

How dare they?

How dare they spit in the face of his kindness?! His charity? Did they not know how he had fought for them? Stood up for them only 250 years ago against a council of his peers that were discussing wiping them from the face of their planet? How had they not realised the kindness he had given them? That they were even allowed to live because of his leniency?

The King rumbled, the castle walls shaking with the heaviness of his anger. The sky outside of the castle hadn’t seen proper sunlight since the King’s egg had disappeared and his partner was murdered.

Lord Ellandra bent further, dipping his head until his horns touched the tiles. It was a sign of fealty, of devotion, but the King didn’t care for it.

Instead, he sat back in his throne, waving a dismissive hand with a look of disgust on his face. His eyes glowed in the darkness of the room. No candle flame dared to light up his features.

“Go, Lord Ellandra. Find my egg. Don’t come back until you do.” The King ordered and the Lord swallowed, nodded, and backed out of the room. He didn’t dare to get up off his knees when his King was like this.

While he was normally a reasonable dragon, someone that Lord Ellandra had laughed with before, shoulder to shoulder…now was not the time to be reminded of those moments.

The King was experiencing two losses. The loss of his potential Queen, and the loss of his child. His egg. At the hands of a group he had shown mercy to.

It was a terrible time for the dragon race.

Even the previous King didn’t take this time to rub his own warnings into the face of his son, instead holding his tongue and joining the other dragons in the search for their grandegg.

There was a reason for this well of rage. It was rare that dragons procreated. Very, very rare. It was because it took so much out of both of the parents.

The father was supposed to provide all of the magic needed to produce the egg on top of the sperm. The mother was in charge of carrying the egg for 20 days before pushing it out and continuing to care for it for another 6 months to 2 years after the egg came out.

The problem came from the simple fact that most bodies could not handle the sheer weight of the dragon royal family. They asked for a lot. The new King had lost over a dozen potential mates and Queens so far. The fact that this partner had survived only to be killed by humans simply proved how dangerous of a job it was to be the bearer of the royal family’s egg.

The old King knew that the new King was probably tearing himself up about that, so it was a moot point to poke at such an open wound. Instead, he would focus his anger on those who had done this. Praying that would quell the anger of his normally gentle son. It hurt him to see him this angered.

It would break him, turn him into a true beast if it dragged on for too long, or if the egg turned up, but it was damaged in some way. The former King didn’t even want to think about what his son would do then. He was sure that the council that had formed at that time would criticize him, but they would do nothing.

How could they?

The humans had crossed a line.

They needed to be punished. The former King wasn’t the one who brought up annihilation of the race when they had held their original meeting all that time ago, but he hadn’t been one of the beasts against it. His son was the reason he had stayed his vote, and now…

It was in the past. They could only look towards the future.

~

Maharo was a good dragon. He made an even better King, and would be a great husband, eventually. What he wanted to be was a spectacular Father, but some fucking assholes had made his plans go awry.

Was he mad at himself? Of course. He was the one who had tucked them away in a ‘safe’ place. The problem being that ‘safe’ also meant away from his side. He was a fool. An absolute idiot.

While he did blame those who had killed his future Queen and stolen his egg, he also carried a lot of that guilt and grief. If he hadn’t worried about how it would disrupt him while he worked, they wouldn’t even be in this situation. He wouldn’t be suffering like this, worrying over his unborn child, if he hadn’t been so full of himself.

Fear and panic filled him, wondering what his small baby was feeling. He remembered his time in his egg. How full of love and safety that time had been for him. He had grown up in a time that had been peaceful, like he had thought this time had been. He was wrong, obviously, and now every time he closed his eyes he was plagued by what his child must be experiencing.

Alone. Without a dragon around. No one to comfort them. No one to sing to them and tell them how wanted they were. No one to touch them, or infuse them with magic. Starving.

His child was starving, and he couldn’t even do anything about it.

Maharo was torn up inside, and it was only made worse as he lashed out at the dragons who cared for him the most. He knew that this wasn’t like him, and he hated seeing the fear in their gaze when they dropped their eyes from his own.

Maharo had never ruled with an iron fist like his Father had. Never. Not that what his Father had done hadn’t been necessary. The humans had been out of control, as had several of the other races shortly after Maharo had been born.

They had mistaken his Father’s transfer into fatherhood as a time of weakness. That had not been the case.

Maharo hated how their stories were mimicking each other. It was painful, and frustrating. He just wanted to be a good father, to raise a child well enough. He had so much love to give, and he worried that if the child didn’t come back in one piece….

Maharo swallowed thickly, a slow keening wail building up in his chest. He let it out, in his own chambers at this point. He had no reason to hold it in. Grief was a knife in his chest, rage choking him at all points in the day.

He was sure he wouldn’t have anything left in him if his child didn’t turn up. He felt that any love he had would have dried up. He could tell it was drying up even now.

It was a terrible thing to know about one’s self. To know that you had limits. He wanted to speak to others about it, but he’d sent everyone he trusted to the ends of the planet. Searching for his child. Searching for his egg.

Maharo bent in half, his wings exploding out of his back as he gripped his head in his hands, shaking, trembling. The keen wail left his lips, making his whole body tremble as his wings wrapped around him, trying to offer comfort. Trying to soothe him.

He was so angry, so filled with rage.

His Father had once explained the rage that dragons could feel. How sometimes, one felt an anger so deep, so all consuming, that they never got over it. It had happened to one of his Father’s best friends. He had gone on a mission and had come back to find out that another man had forced his wife to carry his egg.

His wife had died in the process.

The dragon had lost himself, bent on revenge and anger. The other dragon had been wiped from the face of the planet but that had not quelled his anger.

He missed his wife. He missed her so terribly that he had never recovered. His own Father, his best friend, had to put him down.

It had been a terrible day for his Father, a day that he was sure his Father had never fully recovered from either. Maharo didn’t blame him either. Maharo hadn’t had to do it yet, but he knew it would only be a matter of time. If he got over his own rage and anger.

It was a secret, something that not many knew of. Dragons were prone to that kind of all-consuming rage. Prone to intense feelings, both good and bad. Some Dragons fell into lust and love so heavily that they never came back out, while others fell into gluttony, or sloth. They felt things so intensely for what could be hundreds of years.

Maharo knew that was his destiny as well. He had thought it would be fatherhood for him. Something softer, kinder. His Father had fallen into the desire to rule. It was only in the last 50 years of his rule that he had finally calmed down enough that he could take a step back.

Maharo let out another wail, his body shaking as he cried.

He just hoped that he was able to get out of this rage. He didn’t want to force anyone to have to remove him from this planet. Rage like this would corrupt anyone.

Maharo didn’t want anyone else to experience this.