BURNING FATE

The One I Shouldn't Want

Raegan's POV

A year ago, she walked into my office. A bundle of nerves wrapped in ambition, her resume clutched in fingers that trembled but didn't fold.

Her name was Ember Wren.

She wore a simple white blouse and a charcoal skirt. Her posture was tight, controlled, but her eyes met mine without hesitation. Shoulder-length chestnut hair framed her face; delicate, soft cheekbones, a small, stubborn mouth, and eyes the color of dusk before a storm. Not quite brown. Not quite amber. Something in between. Something alive.

Her beauty wasn't the kind that stopped conversations. It was the kind that lingered. That made you look again, then again, unsure of what you missed the first time. Subtle. Unpolished. Unintentional. But what held me was more than her face.

It was the way she felt.

Her presence shifted the room. The air thickened, charged, as though reality bent slightly around her.

Not with magic... not one I could name, but something more ancient. Something raw. Something mine.

She didn't know it, but I felt it the moment she stepped in. A spark deep in my bones. A tug in the back of my mind. An awareness I hadn't known in over a century.

And yet, she was entirely human.

It was intentional, the moment I walked into that interview board. I needed to see her for myself.

Five of us sat across from her. My legal head, PR director, two board members, and me. She didn't flinch. Not once. Every move of hers was deliberate, careful, but not rehearsed. I recognized that kind of control. The kind built through survival.

"Why do you want this job?" I asked, my voice deliberately flat.

She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Because I want to learn from the best. And I've heard that working under you is like surviving a war. I intend to survive."

The board member beside me coughed, stifling a chuckle. I didn't move. I leaned forward.

"You think you're built for war, Ms. Wren?"

"No," she said, her chin lifting, "but I think I can adapt. Fast."

She wasn't the most qualified, or the most polished. But she didn't lie. Didn't fawn. She didn't need to impress me. She simply meant every word she spoke.

And then, when the others had left, I asked her the final question.

"If I give you this job, you'll be handling things people twice your age can't manage. You'll be tested. Relentlessly."

Her answer?

"Good. I don't want comfort. I want something that matters."

That was it.

That was when I knew.

I hired her the same evening.

Officially, I called it a gut decision.

The truth? It was something far older than instinct.

I didn't expect her to last a week.

I've broken seasoned executives with a glance. Men tremble under my silence. I'm not known for second chances or soft words. I'm known for precision. Power. Ruthlessness.

Because I have to be.

Not just because I run an empire, but because of what I am.

Dragon.

Born of molten blood and ancient breath. A royal bloodline, cursed to remain hidden in a world too fragile for our truth. We walk among humans now, ruling from the shadows through banks, governments, corporations.

And Ember Wren, all of twenty-three, walked into that world like she belonged.

She didn't know what I was. Couldn't. But my dragon sensed her. Not with hunger. Not with rage. But with stillness. With awe.

Like a king watching the return of a queen.

It terrified me.

There was a story. A century-old prophecy. A queen would be born to unite the fractured magical realms... fae, dragons, vampires, shifters, and more. A child of flame and light, powerful enough to end the wars. And I... I was fated to be her mate.

But she vanished.

Stolen before the age of five.

No one found her. No trace. No hope.

My father destroyed the prophecy to protect us all from spiraling into obsession. But I'd seen enough to remember. Enough to wonder.

And then came Ember.

Born in Oregon. Orphaned at six. Raised in foster homes. No magical record. No lineage.

Just... a feeling.

A pull.

And a silence in my dragon that I didn't understand.

She shouldn't be the one. She couldn't be. But that didn't stop my instincts from circling her like a hawk watching a flame it couldn't put out.

"Coffee," I said into the intercom. I didn't need it. I needed her.

She brought it within sixty seconds, calm and quiet. I didn't look up. I couldn't. My dragon pressed behind my skin, not growling, not claiming. Just watching.

Waiting.

I handed her the Mitchell file the same day, ripping it from Bianca's clawed hands. That file wasn't just important. It was the future of a billion-dollar merger.

Ember accepted it without hesitation, delivered results within hours, and stood beside me in the boardroom like she'd been forged in it.

I almost reached for her then.

Not physically. Not yet.

But I felt the shift.

The ache.

The warmth.

And the fear.

Because Ember Wren isn't mine.

She can't be.

She's too human. My world would eat her alive. And yet... she walks through it untouched.

She is the only one who doesn't flinch around me. Doesn't play the game. Doesn't bend. And that makes her the most dangerous creature I've ever known.

If she isn't the queen from prophecy... then I'm already losing control of something I can't explain.

But if she is... then everything I've built is standing on the edge of a storm.

And gods help me...

I don't think I'd stop it even if I could.