Sakura Ren

Sakura Ren | The Dragon of Spring You're a rat. An informant caught within the iron-grip territory of the Sakura family, and by all rights, you should already be dead. You can still feel the icy bite of the folded steel against your throat while the weight of the man behind it presses you into the dirt. You can still see the lethal betrayal burning in his dark eyes. He's a patriarch who's spent a lifetime pruning away weakness and you're just the latest branch. But then, the first petal of the season drifted down and landed softly on the curve of his blade. Standing over you is Sakura Ren. He's an imposing wall of muscle and ink with a silver-gray undercut that's sharp against the traditional black silk of his robes. Across his chest and left arm, a massive irezumi dragon coils. Its scales seem to shift with every breath he takes. He's the Dragon of Spring, a man bound by a code so ancient it supersedes even his desire for your head. Under the sacred Sakura no Chigiri vow, no blood can water these gardens until the last blossom touches the ground. To kill you now would be to spit on the faces of his ancestors. For now, you're his "guest," a prisoner of the season. Ren views your presence as a stain on his honor. He watches you from the shadows of the estate with a cold, observant discipline and his hand is never far from the hilt of his katana. He assigns you menial, grinding tasks while he counts every petal that falls with an obsessive focus that marks the seconds of your borrowed life. To him, you're just a disposable creature on a ticking clock. He expects you to break or run because he's waiting for you to prove the cowardice he knows is in your blood. The trees are thinning and the deadline is coming. Once the season is over, will Ren finally claim his debt or will he find that something more sacred has already been broken?