"I told you a little bit about it when we all in the room theh," Roxy began softly, her small fingers idly tracing the thick, raised edge of a faded battle scar near his collarbone. "Earth is... completely different. There is absolutely no magic. No shifters, no beasts, no glowing stones or systemic interfaces. Just billions of fragile humans living in towering structures made of concrete and glass, driving cars across paved roads."

Zarek listened with focus. Even if he had thousands of questions. His hand continued to stroke her dark curls, offering a silent, grounding anchor.

"It was a loud, crowded world, but it was incredibly easy to disappear in it," Roxy murmured, her green eyes staring distantly at the blue crystals. "When my parents died, they left me a very large inheritance. Enough that I didn’t actually need to struggle, but the grief made me restless. I needed to move. I needed to figure out who I was without them. So, I worked."

She shifted slightly, looking up at his sharp jawline. "I didn’t start in noble professions. My first real job... I was a stripper."

Zarek’s thick brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "A what?"

"I danced," Roxy explained, a faint, wry smile pulling at the corner of her lips. "In a dark, crowded room filled with men. I took my clothes off to music, and they threw paper money at me just to look at my body."

A low, vibrating, completely feral growl ripped from the very bottom of Zarek’s chest, rumbling so violently it shook her against his side.

The Dragon Alpha’s golden eyes snapped wide open, flashing with a sudden, unholy, and intensely possessive hellfire. His arm tightened around her waist like an iron vice.

"They paid to look at my woman?" Zarek snarled, his aura flaring with jealousy. "If I had been in this world of yours, I would have burned the entire structure to the ground and ripped their eyes from their skulls."

Roxy let out a soft, melodic laugh, patting his chest to soothe the sudden spike of Alpha aggression. "Down, boy. It was a long time ago. And nobody touched me. But I eventually left that place. I worked at a grocery store, a massive building where food is just sitting in neat rows on shelves. Then I worked in a restaurant, carrying heavy plates of cooked meals to strangers. After that, I became an assistant, organizing papers and schedules for a man in a uncomfortable suit."

She let out a long, shuddering sigh, the exhaustion of her old life washing over her.

"But eventually, I realized I was just running in circles," Roxy confessed, her voice dropping to a quiet, vulnerable whisper. "I had saved up so much cash from working, combined with my parents’ inheritance... I had enough money to last me an entire decade without lifting a finger. So, I stopped working entirely. I locked myself in my house. I made a little extra cash reviewing items on my laptop, but mostly, I just existed. I was comfortable, Zarek. But I was so incredibly, devastatingly lonely."

Zarek’s anger instantly evaporated. The towering warlord shifted, rolling slightly to pull her completely on top of him, wrapping both of his massive arms around her back.

He buried his face in her dark hair, breathing in the sweet scent of vanilla that belonged entirely to him.

"You will never be lonely again," Zarek swore, his voice a thick, gravelly vow. "I don’t care how the minor gods brought you to my forest, or what strings the Architect pulled. I am fiercely glad they did. You belong in the Iron-Wood."

Roxy smiled, pressing a soft kiss to the center of his chest. The heavy, lingering shadows of Earth completely dissolved in the overwhelming heat of his love.

However, as her transmigrated soul settled, the fiercely protective instincts of a Beastworld mother began to rapidly reboot in her brain. She had been separated from her newborn and her teenage drake for entirely too long.

Roxy pushed herself up slightly, resting her forearms on Zarek’s chest. "So... are we going to see Drax now?"

Zarek groaned, his head falling back against the stone floor in pure, unadulterated defeat. "Roxy, my beautiful, relentless Queen. Didn’t you just see him yesterday? Can we not simply lay here in the quiet for a little longer?"

"Technically, I saw him hours ago before he flew off," Roxy corrected, her brilliant green eyes narrowing with maternal determination. She began to untangle herself from the furs, reaching for her discarded clothes. "But I didn’t see where they arranged him. You told me it was a stone house, but I need to see it with my own eyes. What if the roof leaks? What if the hearth doesn’t vent the smoke properly?"

Zarek sat up, his massive, bare shoulders catching the sapphire light. He crossed his arms, raising a single, challenging dark eyebrow. "Don’t you trust me?"

Roxy paused, one arm halfway through the sleeve of her tunic. She slowly turned her head, leveling a completely flat, terrifyingly unimpressed glare directly at the Apex predator.

"Do not attempt to emotionally manipulate me, lizard," Roxy warned smoothly, pointing a finger at his nose. "It will absolutely not work. I am the Matriarch. Now put your pants on and fly me to my son."

Zarek let out a booming laugh, completely surrendering to her unyielding authority. He stood up, stretching his massive frame before efficiently dressing.

Within minutes, the colossal black dragon was once again airborne, carrying Roxy out of the hidden sapphire ravine and soaring directly up toward the jagged, snow-swept upper ridges of the Dragon Peaks territory.

When they crested the final cliff face, Roxy let out a small sigh of relief. Zarek had not lied. Nestled securely against the mountain was a beautifully constructed, thick-walled stone manor. It wasn’t nearly as grand as the Iron-Wood, but it was sturdy, heavily insulated, and smoke was already curling happily from the chimney. It was the perfect, rugged outpost for a training Vanguard heir.

Zarek landed silently in the deep snow just at the edge of the tree line, shifting back into his humanoid form and wrapping his dark fur cloak around Roxy’s shoulders.

They walked quietly toward the stone manor, intending to surprise the young drake.

However, as they approached the heavy wooden porch, the sound of voices drifted through the crisp mountain air. Zarek and Roxy instinctively paused behind a thick cluster of snow-covered pines.

Sitting on the steps of the porch was Drax, looking incredibly intense and academically focused. Standing before him, sweating profusely despite the sub-zero temperatures, was Vorian, the elite dragon guard.

"So, let me get this straight," Drax was saying, his teenage voice echoing with clinical, horrifyingly formal curiosity. "You are saying that the male’s... physically enlarges due to blood flow, and then must be forcefully inserted into the female?"

Roxy froze dead in her tracks. Her jaw literally dropped.

Beside her, Zarek’s golden eyes widened in sheer, catastrophic horror. The Dragon King slapped his massive hand directly over his own face, realizing exactly what conversation was currently taking place on that porch.

"Well, ’forcefully’ is a very poor choice of words, young Prince," Vorian stammered, wiping a thick sheen of sweat from his scarred forehead. The legendary warrior looked as though he would rather be fighting a thousand rogue beasts naked. "It is a consensual act of passion. It requires friction, and rhythm, and—by the ancestors, Drax, it is how we are bonded!"

"But where is the advantage?" Drax demanded, crossing his arms, completely unbothered by the guard’s panic. "If the male is entirely distracted by this ’friction’, does that not leave the pack completely open to an ambush? Is there defensive armor involved in the mating process?"

"No! There is no armor!" Vorian groaned loudly, throwing his hands into the freezing air. "You are completely naked! That is the entire point of the vulnerability!"

"Naked in a combat zone?!" Drax gasped, genuinely scandalized by the severe lack of military protocol. "That is incredibly reckless!"

Roxy could not take another second of it. The sheer, overwhelming combination of second-hand embarrassment and horror violently short-circuited her brain.

The fact that her son was currently treating the act of conception like a battlefield was too much.

She stepped out from behind the pine trees, her face burning a brilliant, furious shade of scarlet.

"Drax!"