"He’s a bad man! He hit Nana, and he’s making Mommy cry!"
The cry pierced the heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the VIP suite. Lemon Faulkner had been watching from the bed, her small body trembling beneath the thin hospital sheets. She didn't dare call the man standing in the doorway "Daddy"—not yet. The fear of her mother’s potential anger, the years of being told her father was a ghost on the Northern Front, and the crushing weight of their poverty held her tongue.
But in the secret, hopeful places of her heart, she knew. She had seen the way this man looked at her. She had felt the warmth of his hand, a warmth that didn't just heat her skin but seemed to stir her very life force. In the stories her mother told her, the Supreme Warlord was a man who protected his family from dragons an
