Chapter 104: The Dragon King Has A Crisis

Dà Jiāo Huǒ had not been in his human form in three hundred and seventy-two years.

There had been no reason to. Human forms were for diplomacy, for deception, for dealing with creatures too fragile to withstand a dragon’s true presence. He had no use for such things.

He was the Burning Sky. The oldest living dragon of the First Generation. If lowlanders wanted to speak with him, they could learn to understand a roar.

But he couldn’t very well cradle a human infant against his chest while in full dragon form without accidentally impaling her on a horn, so here he was.

Standing on his own landing platform.

In front of his entire court.

Wearing nothing but his own scales.

The problem was that the dignity was rapidly evaporating.

Because the tiny creature, the one he had definitely not just risked his life to catch, the one he had absolutely not felt his ancient heart crack open for, was currently screaming at him.

Not in fear. Not in distress.

In outrage.

Her mother had committed the ultimate sin of taking her away from the big warm scaly thing, and Zhēn was making her feelings known at a volume that should have been physically impossible for something so small.

“WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

Behind him, he heard Cāng Yáo make a sound that was a laugh quickly disguised as a cough. Léi Chen, the traitor, wasn’t even trying to hide his amusement, his storm-gray eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Father,” Cāng Jì said, landing on the platform with the rest of the chaos, I mean, guests, still on his back. “What are you doing?”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ drew himself up to his full height. In human form, he was still massive, broad-shouldered and tall, with silver-streaked dark hair and eyes that still held that ancient molten gold. His robes, materialized from dragon-magic at the last possible second, thank the ancestors, were simple but fine, dark crimson shot through with threads of gold.

“I am,” he said with immense dignity, “standing here.”

“You’re standing there in your bathrobe while a baby screams at you,” Cāng Yáo clarified helpfully. “Is that a new diplomatic strategy?”

“WAAAAAAHHHHH!”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ’s eye twitched.

The mother, Bai Yue, his mind supplied, though he refused to acknowledge how quickly he’d learned her name, was trying desperately to soothe the infant. Rocking her. Shushing her. Making faces that looked absolutely ridiculous.

Nothing worked.

Zhēn wanted the dragon.

“She’s never done this before,” Bai Yue said, and her voice cracked with exhaustion and terror. “She only cries for me. Only me. For three weeks, she has screamed at anyone else who even LOOKED at her wrong. And now she’s screaming because I TOOK HER AWAY FROM YOU.”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ did not know what to do with this information.

He looked at the screaming infant.

The infant screamed louder.

“I could—” he started, then stopped. What could he do? He was the Burning Sky. He didn’t do…..this.

“Just hold her again,” Gū Gū snapped from where she had been deposited on the platform by a very nervous-looking Cāng Jì. The old fox woman was already brandishing her stick. “You clearly broke her, now you fix her.”

“I did not break her—”

“She was fine until you caught her! Now she thinks you’re her personal heating rock! Fix it!”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ looked at Bai Yue.

Bai Yue was fighting a smile.

“She really won’t stop until you hold her again,” she said. “I’m sorry. She’s very stubborn.”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ took a step forward.

The screaming stopped.

Zhēn’s amethyst eyes locked onto him with the focus of a tiny predator. Her little arms reached out. Her tiny fingers opened and closed.

He looked at Bai Yue. “May I?”

It was the first time he had asked permission for anything in approximately two thousand years.

Bai Yue nodded, and carefully, reverently, transferred the screaming nightmare, no, the baby, into his arms.

Zhēn immediately stopped crying.

She snuggled against his chest, grabbed a fistful of his robes, and let out a contented little sigh.

“There,” Gū Gū said, lowering her stick. “Fixed.”

~

The next hour was… an experience.

The grandmothers immediately began organizing.

Gū Gū had appointed herself Head of Security and was interrogating every dragon who got too close about their intentions, their hygiene, and whether they had ever “looked at the baby wrong.”

Hán Bīng had claimed a corner of the platform and was using her ice abilities to create a climate-controlled nursery area, because apparently Snow Leopard grandmothers had opinions about appropriate temperatures for infants.

Wēn Jìng had produced snacks from somewhere, no one knew where she kept them, and was passing them out to traumatized family members while murmuring soothing observations about how “this is all very unusual but probably fine.”

The husbands were…..processing.

Han Shān stood with his back to a pillar, arms crossed, watching Dà Jiāo Huǒ hold his daughter.

Zhāo Yàn was pacing. His nine tails were fluffed to maximum size, his ears flat against his head, and he was muttering something about “scaly kidnappers” and “ancestral rights” and “I should have bitten him when I had the chance.”

Yàn Shū was writing everything down. His hands were still shaking, his glasses were fogged, and he kept muttering things like “unprecedented cross-species bonding” and “statistical anomaly” and “Hóng Yè, are you getting this?”

Hóng Yè, for his part, had simply sat down on the platform, put his head in his hands, and refused to move.

The cubs had recovered remarkably quickly.

Yòu Lín was trying to befriend a young dragon about his size, asking rapid-fire questions about flying and fire-breathing and whether dragons could “do the spinning thing like Uncle Zhāo Yàn’s tails.”

Ruì Xuě had attached himself to Cāng Jì’s leg again and was watching his baby sister with proprietary pride.

“She likes the big dragon,” he announced. “That means the big dragon is family now. That’s how it works.”

“No,” Cāng Jì said weakly. “That’s not—that’s not how anything works.”

“It’s how we work. You’re family too, shiny dragon.”

Cāng Jì’s ears went pink.

Dà Jiāo Huǒ stood in the center of the chaos, holding a baby, and realized with dawning horror that he had no idea what to do next.

He had caught her. That was instinct. That was the ghost of his own son, the fall he couldn’t prevent, the grief he’d buried so deep he thought it was gone.

But now she was here. In his arms. Making soft little sounds of contentment and occasionally patting his chest as if to say good job, warm thing, keep doing that.

He looked at Bai Yue.

She looked back.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Bai Yue did something that surprised him.

She laughed.

“My baby,” she said, “has decided you’re her favorite person in the entire realm. She has three fathers, four grandmothers, fourteen honorary aunts and uncles, and an entire tribe that worships the ground she walks on. And she chose you.”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ looked down at

She had fallen asleep. Curled against his chest, her tiny face peaceful, her little fist still gripping his robe.

“She’s very warm,” he heard himself say. “Is that…..normal?”

“Babies run hot,” Bai Yue said. “Also she’s pressed against a dragon. You’re basically a walking furnace.”

“I am a carefully temperature-regulated ancient being.”

“You’re a space heater with scales and a crisis.”

He should have been offended. He was the Burning Sky. No one spoke to him like this. But he didn’t have it in him to be angry anymore.

“You caught her,” she said quietly. “When she fell. You caught her.”

“I did.”

“Thank you.”

The words were simple. They landed in his chest like stones in still water.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and meant it.

~

From across the platform, Cāng Yáo watched the scene with an expression of profound disbelief.

“Is this real?” she asked Léi Chen. “Is this actually happening? Our father, the Burning Sky, the dragon who hasn’t smiled in a thousand years, is currently cuddling a baby?”

“Babysitting,” Léi Chen corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“There’s no difference. There’s literally no difference. He’s holding an infant. He’s bonding. He’s going to start writing poetry next.”

Cāng Jì appeared beside his sister, looking dazed. “What do we do?”

“About what?”

“About that.” He gestured vaguely at their father. “He’s not going to let her go. You saw his face. She has him. Completely. He’s going to want to keep her.”

Cāng Yáo considered this. “Can he?”

“She has parents. Three of them. Very angry parents who already don’t trust us.”

“Then I guess,” Cāng Yáo said slowly, a smile spreading across her face, “we’re going to have to make them trust us.”

“That’s your plan? Make them trust us?”

“You have a better one?”

Cāng Jì opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“No,” he admitted. “I really don’t.”

~

As the sun began to set over the Dragon Peaks, an event that involved the sky turning colors that didn’t exist in the lowlands and the floating waterfalls catching fire with reflected light, the chaos finally, mercifully, began to settle.

The grandmothers had been given guest quarters. (Gū Gū had inspected hers thoroughly and declared them “acceptable, but I’m keeping my stick.”) The cubs had been fed and were now asleep in a pile that included Yòu Lín, Ruì Xuě, and one very confused young dragon who had been adopted against his will.

The husbands had been assigned rooms near Bai Yue’s, a compromise that involved much glaring but no actual violence.

And Bai Yue sat on a cushioned bench in the Dragon King’s private chambers, watching as Dà Jiāo Huǒ, the most terrifying creature in existence, gently transferred her sleeping daughter to a bassinet he had somehow produced from nowhere.

“She needs to sleep on her back,” Bai Yue said automatically.

“I know.”

“Not too many blankets. They’re a suffocation risk.”

“I know.”

“And she’ll wake up hungry in a few hours. Probably screaming.”

“I know.”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ straightened, looking at her across the quiet room. In the dim light, he looked almost…..normal. Almost like just another exhausted new family member.

“I read extensively,” he said, “after the… incident.”

“What incident? The falling? The catching? The kidnapping?”

“The catching.” His jaw tightened. “I needed to understand.”

Bai Yue looked at him for a long moment. “You read baby care books? Because you caught a baby?”

“I read everything. Gestation periods. Feeding schedules. Sleep patterns. Developmental milestones.” He paused. “I may have also read several volumes on biology, but those were less…..applicable.”

“You read baby books.”

“I am a thorough researcher.”

Bai Yue started laughing again, and this time she couldn’t stop. It was the absurdity of the most powerful being in existence standing there looking slightly embarrassed about his research habits.

Dà Jiāo Huǒ watched her laugh with an expression that was almost confused.

“Is this…..funny?”

“SO funny,” Bai Yue wheezed. “You’re the Burning Sky. You have probably killed people for looking at you wrong. And you read baby books because my daughter grabbed your snout.”

“She did grab my snout.”

“She absolutely did. And now she owns you.”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ looked at the sleeping infant.

Then, very quietly, he said: “Yes.”

Bai Yue’s laughter faded into something softer. “You really mean that.”

“I do not say things I do not mean.”

“What about the arranged marriage? The dragon bride? The whole ’forget these creatures existed’ speech?”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ was silent for a moment. Then: “That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before she grabbed my snout.”

Bai Yue bit her lip, fighting another laugh. “So your entire worldview changed because a baby touched your face?”

“My son—” He stopped. Swallowed. “My son, Cāng Huǒ. He fell once. When he was small. I caught him. And then I…” He trailed off.

“You what?”

“I told myself not to care. That caring was weakness. That he would be stronger without it.” His voice was rough, ancient, wounded. “He died anyway. In a battle. And I was not there.”

Bai Yue’s heart clenched. “I’m so sorry.”

“I do not want…..that. Again. To feel nothing. To lose what matters because I was too afraid to hold on.” He looked at Zhēn. “She is very small. She will not live long. Not by my measure. But she is here now. And she chose me.”

“She chose you,” Bai Yue agreed softly.

“So I will choose her. However long she has. I will be there.”

From the doorway, a small voice piped up: “Does this mean we get to keep the dragon grandpa?”

Yòu Lín was standing there, rubbing his eyes, having apparently escaped the cub pile.

Dà Jiāo Huǒ stared at him.

Yòu Lín stared back.

“You’re very nice,” Yòu Lín observed. “Even in people form. Do you have people treats? The shiny dragon always has treats.”

“I… do not have treats.”

“Oh.” Yòu Lín considered this. “That’s okay. Mama can make you some. She makes the best treats. They’re spicy. Do you like spicy?”

“I am the Burning Sky. I am made of fire.”

“So that’s a yes?”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ looked at Bai Yue.

Bai Yue shrugged, still smiling. “Congratulations. You now have two grandchildren. Possibly more by morning. The panther triplets haven’t met you yet.”

Dà Jiāo Huǒ looked at the small fox cub. Then at the sleeping baby. Then at the exhausted but smiling woman who had somehow, impossibly, become part of his life.

“I do not know what to do,” he admitted.

“Welcome to parenthood,” Bai Yue said. “None of us do.”

[DING! ☆]

[System Notification: Ancient Dragon Acquired!]

[Status: The Burning Sky has been adopted by a three-week-old infant. His emotional walls have crumbled. His dignity is in shambles. His heart is FULL.]

[Warning: Grandfather energy levels are CRITICAL. Expect excessive doting, unsolicited advice, and the spontaneous creation of baby-proofed dragon caves.]

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