Chapter 303: Illegitimate Dragon’s Daughter

The sun was already brushing the horizon, staining the sky in warm golds and burning oranges. The river mirrored the spectacle in rippling fragments while a cool breeze drifted out of the nearby woods. In the distance, the castle rose like a silent shadow, its ancient towers carving austere lines into the sky. The whole scene was as beautiful as it was solemn, like a secret waiting to be uncovered.

Luke sat at the very edge of the bank, his boots pressed into the damp soil. His gaze stayed locked on the current, hiding a flicker of unease. A few meters behind him, Allison stood poised, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of her katana. Her eyes swept the area with the kind of vigilance that didn’t break.

“Are you sure I have to keep sitting here?” Luke muttered without turning around. “You know, some giant river-octopus could pop up out of nowhere and drag me under, like Jack said.”

Allison didn’t answer right away. The dying light caught her face, sharpening her features and deepening her focus. Finally, she said, “You’re staying put until I’m sure the potion’s worn off.”

Luke let out a theatrical sigh, lifting his hands in defeat. “That was hours ago. I swear you’re keeping me here just to punish me.”

“You earned it,” she replied matter-of-factly, eyes still on the horizon.

He gave up arguing. It was enough that she’d promised not to tell anyone about the libido potion—as long as he kept quiet about her drinking it too. Half-dragon or not, Allison had absurd natural resistances. The potion should have lasted twelve hours but barely held an hour in her system.

At least I know I created a potion that can even affect a half-dragon, but… the effect isn’t exactly something that would win a battle… I think. I mean, it depends on the type of battle. And why am I even thinking about this kind of thing?

A thick silence settled between them. The breeze stirred the leaves at the water’s edge, the current whispered by, and the castle behind them loomed like a watcher.

Allison broke the silence at last, her voice softer now, carrying a weight it usually didn’t. “I’m not exactly welcome in my family.”

Luke glanced up. The words hung there, heavy. He’d heard bits and pieces before but never with this kind of gravity. Her stance had shifted; she was no longer the vigilant warrior but someone bearing old scars.

“I’ve told you pieces of it,” she went on, “but I never told you why.”

Luke leaned back a little, trying to see her face. “Why wouldn’t your family like you? All my life I’ve never stopped loving my mother. I couldn’t imagine hating my own family.”

Allison stayed quiet. Her eyes remained fixed on the distant castle. When she finally spoke, it was a murmur. “Because I wasn’t supposed to be born.”

A chill crawled up Luke’s spine at the way she said it, the words sounding like a confession held for years. Allison drew a breath and continued.

“My father had an affair with a woman who worked for our family,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “Not at the castle in the New World, but in the modern world… your society.”

The words were spoken with weight, and Luke’s attention caught on the word castle. She really did come from a society completely different from his.

“She was a servant. She got pregnant… and then I was born.” Allison’s eyes stayed on the river, as if speaking more to herself than to him. “She was my mother.”

Luke turned fully toward her now. The sun had sunk deeper, the orange glow casting a shadowed edge across Allison’s expression, making the truth she’d spoken feel even heavier.

“The name Rhiannon carries an old lineage, bound to traditions and its own unyielding laws. My father was a nobleman, married, and my existence as his illegitimate daughter was a stain no one could scrub away. My mother died giving birth to me. That left just me… and a problem the family couldn’t ignore.”

She tore a handful of grass from the ground and let it slip from her fingers.

“My father’s wife wanted me dead. But they told her Rhiannon blood can’t be spilled so easily. It didn’t matter how much she hated me, there were rules. Cold, merciless rules.”

Luke stayed quiet, absorbing it all. He’d never imagined Allison’s childhood had been carved from stone like this.

“I was just a kid,” she went on. “I couldn’t understand why nobody liked me, why I was punished for calling my father’s wife ‘mother,’ why I lived locked away in a tower. It was a prison high above the castle. I only left for public events, and even then I had to stay silent, unmoving, like I didn’t exist.”

Luke glanced toward the distant castle, trying and failing to picture himself in her place.

“I never truly knew my mother,” Allison whispered. “She was just a tragic story to me. But one day, through the single window in that tower, I saw something slicing through the sky—a winged creature. A dragon.”

Her eyes flicked open again, and for a heartbeat something like light glimmered there, a spark of the past breaking through.

“That dragon was an ancient member of my bloodline. A real Rhiannon dragon from another universe. Everyone revered her. Everyone feared her. My grandfather had children with her… not out of love, but through an arranged marriage decreed by our divine order. She was Rank A, almost a god herself, and yet she bound herself to a human for the sake of a contract.”

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Allison picked up a stone and tossed it into the river, watching the ripples widen and fold in on themselves.

“She found out how I was being treated. And she came for me. Appeared as a stunning woman and took me away. We went so far I couldn’t tell you where, maybe another universe, maybe just some forgotten corner.”

She said softly, eyes still on the water. “There was a cabin in a forest, just us. For a while I believed she was my real mother. I called her that… and she never corrected me. She cared for me. Fed me. Washed my clothes. Told me stories before I slept.”

Her voice shook, but there was warmth in it now, the first flicker of tenderness in the whole confession.

“But one day she took me somewhere different,” Allison said, her gaze hardening again. “Told me to stay silent. I saw a woman as beautiful as her but… I could feel it wasn’t the same. It was the goddess my family served.”

Luke didn’t dare interrupt.

“That day branded me,” she continued. “Because I also met another god. A huge black panther the size of a dragon, who turned into a man dressed in dark clothes, black hair, feline eyes. You know who it was.”

“Lakarion,” Luke said at once. “The God of Assassination.”

Allison nodded, her stare fixed on nothing, as if she were still standing in that place.