No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished (Heartstrikers, #3)

by Rachel Aaron

But no storm can rage forever. After what felt like hours of going in circles, the heaving sea of Julius’s mind finally grew still enough for sleep to find him, and he passed out, curled in a ball beneath the oddly tiny egg sitting quiet and still in its case.

That’s what a clan needs: someone who will fight for all of us, not just themselves. You do that, so I fight for you.”

But while part of him was insulted beyond words that any of them had thought he could just forgive and forget the dragons who’d made his childhood hell, a surprisingly larger part of him already had. He was still angry about what they’d done, and probably always would be, but it was done. All of those childhood tortures were in the past,

drew the line at actually thanking them. It didn’t matter how they tried to spin it, he would never say thank you for those years of abuse.

True, it sounded like Ian had run Julius’s ideas through an evil overlord filter what with the new focus on power and taking, but at its heart, his message was the same one Julius had been pushing all along: a peaceful transition of power, the end of might-makes-right-rule, and a chance for all Heartstrikers to have a say in the leadership of their own clan. That was what he’d been fighting for this whole time, and after so long feeling like he was talking to himself, hearing those same ideas coming out of Ian’s mouth was nothing short of extraordinary, though not nearly as extraordinary as seeing an entire room of dragons agreeing with them.

“No,” Julius said, darting around to the top side of the balcony so the wall of stone stayed between them. “But I do think not every dragon has to be the same.

I’m saying that we’re all weak and strong in different ways, and that our clan as a whole is stronger when we work together to match those strengths and weaknesses in useful ways rather than throwing away any dragon who doesn’t fit our narrow definition of ‘strong’ at the time. It’s not that complicated.”

Admittedly, looking at the mess you made of our planet while we were asleep, I can’t blame them for thinking that way, but I’ve always felt humanity had to be taken as individuals rather than a whole.

“We’ve been told our whole lives that if we’re not violent, greedy, and ambitious, we’re not dragons, but anyone with eyes can see that’s ridiculous. Dragons come in all types, with all different personalities and dreams.

Those differences mean there will always be conflict, but that’s fine. We’re not trying to build a utopia.

I really don’t want my power to come from armies of angry ghosts. That’s some evil overlord stuff right there, and I prefer to think of us more as chaotic neutral.