Page 87 of Dragon 7

There was no more waiting.

No more wondering.

No more strategizing.

There was a moment in every man's life where he stopped becoming and simply was. Where all the years of preparation collapsed into a single point and what he built himself into either held or it didn't.

I had built myself into the Dragon.

Tonight, I would find out if being that beast was enough.

My mother's face flashed in my head. Then Jobon. Then Nura, though she was Hiro's grief more than mine. Then Hiroko. Then the faces of the dead I could not name—newly rotting in the Tokyo streets, the wedding hall, the man carrying a child who would not wake.

I would not waste them.

“Akiro’s plane is about to land.” I scanned all of them. “Get ready to make all of them bleed.”

Then, out of the dark behind us, hooded red figures arrived.

The Silent Ones.

Yes. Our brother was close with that name. They are Mugon no Ke. The Voiceless Blood.

Silently, they came from the trees the way smoke came from fire, filling the spaces between the trunks until the spaces were gone and there was only red. Dozens of them. Hooded. Faces swallowed by shadow so complete that the moonlight found nothing inside those hoods but dark.

The Silent Ones moved to the edges of our position and stopped, and the stillness they held was the stillness of people who had practiced it for generations.

Their weapons came out next. Blades. Bows. Things I had no name for that caught the moonlight in ways that suggested they had been forged for purposes older than this war.

Somewhere among them the Death Guardian was watching. I could feel it the way I felt Nyomi in my chest—a fixed point, a certainty, a presence that did not announce itself because it had no need to.

Every Claw, every Fang, every Scale at the tree line turned to look at them.

The forest held its breath.

Hiro's eyes swept the nearest hooded figures and his jaw set. Cold fury moved across his face.

The Silent Ones closest to him registered it and took one step back without a word.

The ones behind them did not move at all.

Kaoru tilted his Kuchisake mask toward me. "Are they with us?"

"Yes."

“Good.” Kaoru nodded once and looked back at the red figures.

Then, to probably all of our shock, Yoichi stepped out of the dark and held a gold kitsune mask in his hand. As he headed forward, his gaze moved to the twins and their matching black kitsune masks with the golden teeth and the silver whiskers swept back along the cheeks.

A dark groan of annoyance left Yoichi.

I blinked.

And the frown that crossed Yoichi’s face was so deep and so full of a specific aggravation that it ceased to be a frown and became a promise to beat their asses later.

Kaoru looked at Yoichi. "Brother. We fight together tonight."

Yoichi held the twins in his gaze for one more beat before he turned to Kaoru. "Always. I gave you a promise to always be at your side."