Exactly one week after the encounter in the lounge, I sat in the clinic as the doctor stared at my X-rays, his jaw practically on the floor.

"I... I don’t understand, Stephanie. The bone density is completely restored. The fracture lines are entirely gone. This is an absolute miracle."

"Yeah," I muttered, pulling my boot back over a perfectly healed leg. "A miracle."

The moment I stepped out of the hospital, I didn’t hesitate. I pulled out my phone, dialed the scrawled numbers from the paper, and braced myself.

Honestly, I expected to be dragged into some mystical mountain cave to get the transaction over with the moment we met.

Instead, the Dragon god met me in front of a quaint, high-end cafe downtown, still wearing his sharp gray coat and dark sunglasses.

"What is going on?" I asked, looking around the bustling sidewalk as he held the door open for me. "Weren’t we supposed to... get this over with?"

"A deity does not rush his pleasures, Stephanie," he murmured, pulling out a chair for me near the window. "Sit. Eat."

To my absolute bewilderment, he took me on a date.

He didn’t mention the beastworld. He didn’t mention how he planned to hold me and possibly dismantle my body.

Instead, he bought me a hot latte and a plate of actual, beautifully made pastries. Something no one had ever bought for me.

I stared at the pastries and gulped. I never really had money to spoil myself either, so this was a first.

I scooped the first spoon and as soon as it touched my lips, I felt an intense emotion swirl up in my chest.

He simply stared at me and asked,

"Is it good?"

I’m not going to lie but it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I nodded, and continued until my plate was empty.

Afterward, he walked me through a scenic city park where the autumn leaves were falling like gold coins. It was pretty and I found myself smiling.

Then, he took me to a quiet terrace for lunch.

Lunch was equally amazing. I stared out into the city that hated me, the city that never gave me any fond memories, and I was seeing it in a new light for the first time.

The city was... beautiful.

As we walked, I felt my heart racing—not with Arinya’s feral instincts, but with Stephanie’s fragile, deeply buried human emotions.

This gesture... It meant something to her.

The invisible girl who had spent twenty-one years being ignored, who had never been looked at by a guy, was finally experiencing a normal, beautiful afternoon out on a date.

At one point beneath a brilliant orange maple tree, he pulled out a vintage camera and aimed it at me.

"Smile, protagonist," he said smoothly, which took me off guard.

The shutter clicked. I blinked, a little breathless. It was as if he wanted me to have at least one happy, tangible memory in this world before my soul was permanently ripped away to the next.

He wanted to make sure that when he finally claimed his price, I wouldn’t be staring up at a terrifying stranger.

"You know," he remarked casually as we walked down the stone path, "in the old days, the maidens offered to my peaks were treated with the highest honor. I was incredibly good to them. They wanted for nothing."

I stopped, crossing my arms and giving him a massive, judgmental side-eye. "So what you’re saying is... you’re just a massive pervert who happens to highly value consent?"

The Dragon God froze for a fraction of a second, and then he let out a loud, genuine laugh that echoed beautifully through the trees.

"A sharp tongue. You’re truly something, little bird."

I laughed too, a genuine, light sound. It was strange.

He wasn’t entirely a bad person—just an ancient force of nature with a very specific set of rules. It was still going to be incredibly awkward, but the suffocating terror of it had completely melted away.

I think I’ll be fine.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long, purple shadows across the city, the air turned brutally cold. We stood in a private, luxurious apartment overlooking the skyline—his personal sanctuary in the human realm.

He turned to me, the sunglasses finally sliding down to reveal those piercing, golden vertical slits. "Have you done everything you needed to do in this world, Stephanie?"

I paused, a bitter, faint smile touching my lips. I remembered trying to tell my parents goodbye before I left today.

I had stood in the doorway, stumbling over my words, but they hadn’t even looked up from their tablets to spare me a glance.

"Yeah," I whispered, looking up into his ancient eyes. "I have no regrets. Let’s go home."

The Dragon God stepped closer, his presence instantly wrapping around me like a heavy, suffocating blanket of heat.

His long, elegant fingers reached up, catching the hem of my oversized hoodie. He began to strip the heavy layers away from my body, his touch surprisingly careful, almost reverent, as the final countdown to the West Way began to tick down to zero.

He took the hoodie first, pulling it over my head with a slow, deliberate care that made my breath catch in my throat. I stood there in just my thin tank top and shorts, goosebumps breaking out over my pale skin. Not from the chill of the room—because the apartment was rapidly heating up with a thick, heavy warmth—but from the sheer, staggering reality of what was about to happen.

This wasn’t my tiger body. I didn’t have five protective mating marks to anchor me, no thick fur to shield my vulnerability, and no fierce, instinctual heat to drive away the nerves. I was just Stephanie. Small, frail, and completely exposed under the unblinking gaze of an ancient entity.

The Dragon God dropped the hoodie to the floor. His eyes, burning like molten gold, never left mine as his hands moved to my shoulders.

"You are shaking, little bird," he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, resonant frequency that vibrated right through my collarbones.

"I’m... I’m fine," I lied, my voice cracking slightly. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, my hands instinctively curling into fists at my sides. "Just... don’t be weird about it. And don’t make me look at your snake tongue if you have one."