by Alisa Woods
He would have Leksander there to stop him if he lost it… but still. He didn’t like the risk. But his brother was right—he had to at least try.
Leksander came to a stop outside the guest apartment where Rosalyn was staying. He held up a hand for Leonidas to wait while he pulled out his phone and dialed. Leonidas measured the door frame with his eyes. Would he even fit? It would be tight.
“I’ve got him,” Leksander said into his phone, flicking a look at Leonidas. “No, nothing like that. I’ve brought him back to the keep.” Leksander pulled the phone away from his ear, and it was easy to hear Lucian yelling on the other end. Harder to tell what he was saying between the dragontongue cursing and the roaring. “Lucian! It’s fine. Your mate is safe.” Leksander waited a beat, scowling but listening. “Yes, I know. But he’s in his right mind, at least for now. I’m handling this.” Then Leksander swiped off the phone, cutting off their brother mid-roar.
Took it well, did he? Leonidas just shook his head and hoped they wouldn’t regret this. Then again, a lot of chaos would reign throughout the mortal and immortal worlds if the treaty fell. If there was any chance…
“Let’s do this before he gets back,” Leksander said with a grimace. He swiped open the door.
Leonidas followed his brother inside the apartment, consciously trying to keep his tail from swishing side-to-side and taking out the small table in the entryway. Stepping out into the great room was like a breath of fresh air—the narrow hallways of the keep were feeling claustrophobic, and he’d only been here a few minutes.
The place was empty.
Leonidas stretched his wings and stood upright.
“Rosalyn?” Leksander called, hiking toward the kitchen.
There was no answer. The place had no sign of her—she and her mother had moved in, but they hadn’t had time to bring much with them from the shop.
“She’s not here,” a feminine voice called from the hallway toward the back bedroom. It was opposite of the direction Leksander had gone.
Leonidas shuffled away from the voice, across the great room and toward the windows, putting distance between him and what sounded like Rosalyn’s mother coming down the hall. He swept the apartment with his fae senses, but she was right. Rosalyn was gone. He reached out to quickly search the keep, but she wasn’t anywhere. What the fuck? Cinaed must have moved her to a safer location.
Agitation rustled through Leonidas’s body, and his tail swished again, nearly knocking over a lamp.
“She left to go—” Rosalyn’s mother stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Leonidas. He was next to the two-story windows, as far as he could be from the woman, but her hand flew up to cover her mouth and stifle her gasp anyway.
Leksander hurried back from the kitchen. “It’s okay, Ms. Thorne!” He crossed the great room to go stand by her, then threw a pinched look at Leonidas.
I didn’t do anything, he complained, pushing the thought just to his brother. Except look scary as fuck.
Leksander scowled and turned back to Rosalyn’s mother.
Her eyes were wide, but she seemed to take a cue from Leksander’s lack of panic. “That’s him, isn’t it?” Her voice was shaking, and it ripped into Leonidas. She looked just like Rosalyn, only older—beautiful porcelain skin, long waves of red hair, only hers had streaks of silver through them. Isadora Thorne’s eyes were green, unlike Rosalyn’s brilliant blue, but that look of horror on her face wasn’t anything Leonidas wanted to see on either of them. Especially her daughter… would the woman he loved look at him with fear? Disgust?
This is a fucking bad idea, Leonidas sent to his brother.
Leksander ignored him and put a reassuring hand on Isadora’s elbow. “Yes, it’s Leonidas. That’s not his normal dragon form—it’s his wyvern—but it’s still him inside. He hasn’t lost his mind as we expected, so he’s in control. There’s nothing to worry about.” He turned to face Leonidas. “Tell her,” he called across the room.
Leonidas could telepathically link to any human or dragon—or witch for that matter—when in his dragon form. Actually doing it freaked humans straight out. He’d only done it a few times with women he’d brought to the keep, just for laughs. It rarely turned out well.
But he would not get anywhere without being able to communicate.
He ducked his head and pulled his wings back in, hopefully looking less intimidating. Then he pushed a thought to Rosalyn’s mother. It’s me, Ms. Thorne.
She jolted, wrenching out of Leksander’s slight, reassuring hold. “Holy shit!” The words escaped her lips before she covered her mouth with her hand once more.
Leksander reached for her again. “It’s okay—”
She shirked away. “He’s reading my mind.” The tremble in her voice wrenched Leonidas’s heart. How could this ever work with Rosalyn?
“No, he’s not,” Leksander reassured her. “In fact, he can’t—he can only put thoughts there to tell you what he’s thinking. If you want him to know what you’re thinking, you’ll have to tell him out loud.”
She looked at Leksander like he was crazy, but then she did something that startled Leonidas. She stepped away from his brother and edged toward Leonidas. He shuffled away again, closer against the glass, leaving her room. She crept up to the couch set in the room between them, then she gripped the back. Her gaze was wandering all over his body, from his pointed snout—even more stuffed with razor-sharp teeth than his normal dragon—down past his leathery wings to the talons he couldn’t retract, not in wyvern form. He was getting more control over his tail, but the little flick of it caught her eye.
“I never thought I’d see…” Her voice was a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Are you really in control of that beast?”
He dipped his head. No need to freak her out with more mindtalk for a simple answer.
“They said…” She glanced at Leksander, then looked back to Leonidas. “They told me you were going to try to kill Rosalyn.”
He shook his head, but it felt like a punch to the gut. Rosalyn had to be scared out of her mind, thinking his beast was out to kill her. I’m in love with your daughter. He pushed that thought to Isadora, and she tensed when he did, her eyes widening a little, but she didn’t cry out or back away. I would never hurt her. Which was true as long as he was in control.
She frowned. “Why have you come back?”
I want to help her become the witch she’s meant to be. Would the mother understand this? Or would the fact that she loved a shifter—and that had gotten them both thrown out of their coven—be forever held against shifters like him, just as Rosalyn had vowed? I don’t know how much time I have left, but this is something I can do for her. Something I want to do.
Isadora was scowling at him, but she was no longer twitching when he placed thoughts in her mind. He only wished he knew what she was thinking.
“You truly love her?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
Leonidas’s tail lashed against the glass of the windows, sudden and sharp.
Isadora jumped, and Leksander rushed out, “My brother would not be wyvern right now if he didn’t love Rosalyn. If there’s anything you can be certain of, it’s that.”
She scowled at Leksander, but when she turned back to Leonidas, her expression had opened. “That’s what she said, too.” She shook her head a little. “I don’t know how she feels about you, Leonidas.”
That doesn’t matter. All I want is to give her this before I die.
It was a lie that also contained the truth. It mattered a great deal—to him, to the treaty—if he could somehow win Rosalyn’s love. But it mattered not in his desire to do this thing for her. She was an amazing person who’d gotten a raw deal from life. He loved her, and he could fix it. And that mattered. He’d spent hundreds of years just existing, in and out of the arms of an endless parade of faceless, nameless women, all because he’d failed to love a witch as he should. He already loved Rosalyn—now he could save her from a life without magic as well.
&nbs
Leonidas waited, his wings restless on his back, wanting to spread and fly and find his mate… or at least the woman he wished he could have.
Finally, Isadora said, “You shifters…” Then she stopped.
Leonidas felt like everything in his body stilled, even the wild flicking tip of his tail, waiting for her judgment.
She smiled a little. “You have a way of saying things. It’s a wonder my daughter hasn’t fallen in love with you already.”
Relief warred with an aching need for that, both wrenching him inside out. Rosalyn’s not so easily swept away by my charms. He already knew he had utterly failed to win her—she didn’t have the same apparently rosy glasses as her mother when it came to shifters. Then again, Rosalyn had a right to that. A shifter had stolen her mother and her away from her coven. Or something like that. He didn’t know the full story.
Isadora released the couch then slowly strolled around the end and headed toward him.
Leonidas reared up, leaning back against the glass. What was she doing? He flicked a look to Leksander, who appeared likewise alarmed. He hustled over to follow right behind Isadora as she approached. She stopped just a handful of feet away. Leksander was right there if anything went wrong, but it was still unsettling.
A gentle smile graced Isadora’s face. “Did she tell you I loved a shifter?”
He dipped his head once and held his breath.
“Did she tell you why?”
Leonidas shook his bony wyvern snout.
Isadora squared her shoulders. “I come from a long line of powerful witches. As you know, witches are primarily female, and we often take a mate from the human or shifter populations. But my family is purebred for five generations now. It’s a point of pride for my mother and father, not to mention the coven they ran. Like dragons, where females are seldom born, male witches are rare creatures. Highly prized. Valuable almost beyond measure. So when a powerful male witch came courting my coven, everyone assumed we would mate. And I was as yet unattached. Silas was powerful and, with the help of who knew how much magic, he was the picture of masculine beauty. But he was cold inside. Like a frozen magical fire had encased his heart.”
Leonidas was transfixed by her story, even his wayward tail settling onto the carpet. This was Rosalyn’s father she was speaking of—it had to be. But he knew how this story ended.
You didn’t love him? This male witch. He peered at her, only recently understanding the full power of love and how it could wreck your heart and still set you free. Did you object to the mating?
She laughed, lightly, like it was half a cry wishing to be released. “Oh, hell yes, I objected. Strenuously. I even ran away for a while, determined to strike out on my own rather than be forced into a loveless mating with a cold-hearted witch.” Then all pretend mirth fled. “But it didn’t last. A witch without her coven? Her sisters?” She peered up at him with those green eyes he could imagine once captured hearts. “If you had to leave all your brothers and fellow dragons behind, just to escape your duty, would you do it?”
His duty couldn’t be escaped, only in death, so he had no answer for that.
She closed her eyes, pulled in a breath, then opened them again. “I returned. I mated. I let that man into my bed, but the only good thing that ever came out of it was my sweet Rose.”
Leonidas nodded. A loveless mating. It was the horror that his House had always fought against, not just because the treaty had woven a deep respect for True Love into their very blood, but because it was the only decent thing to contemplate. All else was barbarism.
So when Love came, you didn’t expect it. Something that all too easily described his own situation.
She huffed a light laugh again. “Didn’t expect it. Was wholly unprepared for it. Completely annihilated by the wonder of it? Yes. All of that.” Her expression pinched in. “It feels selfish to want such a thing, now that I know the cost. But at the time, I couldn’t see anything else.” She looked up at him. “You shifters are hot blooded and tender of heart. It’s a devastating combination for someone who was never allowed either one.”
But you were found out. Turmoil churned inside him. Isadora looked too much like her daughter. The pain etched on her face was too close to being Rosalyn’s—and, in fact, was Rosalyn’s. This was the source of all she’d lost.
“Found out. Thrown out. Hexed into never performing magic again.” She straightened her shoulders again. “I betrayed everything the coven held dear, so they were all behind him. But they revealed their true nature when they tossed my beautiful daughter—his daughter—into the street with me.”
Is she cursed as well? That would make this more difficult.
“No, merely rejected. Ostracized. Nothing could be allowed to remind them of the witch who had chosen a lowly shifter over their own favored son.”
“And what happened to the shifter?” Leksander asked, breaking his quiet listening.
“He was destroyed before my feet hit the pavement.” She said this stoically, but Leonidas could see the heartbreak.
You were mated to him.
“I was.” Her lips trembled as she smiled. “It was the best week of my life.”
One week. And a lifetime to pay. Anger seethed inside of Leonidas, not at the broken woman before him, but at a coven of ice-tempered witches who would turn out a child to the streets because of the mating drama of her parents. Although he couldn’t avoid the sour comparison to the ten-thousand-year-old treaty binding him, even now—that too had been a powerfully magical woman, in this case the Queen of the Summer Fae, falling inexorably in love with a shifter, in that case a dragon.
A curse lasting thousands of years had resulted from that ill-fated True Love.
Let me fix this, Isadora. Tell me where Rosalyn is. Surely her mother would approve of him at least trying to restore Rosalyn to her proper status in the covens.
“She’ll be back soon,” Rosalyn’s mother said. “She just went for a walk with Cinaed around the keep.”
Leonidas’s head whipped up. He and Leksander exchanged a look, but Leonidas didn’t bother asking, he just reached out and swept the keep with his fae senses again. Had he missed her before? But no—he couldn’t find her unique lavender scent anywhere.
She’s not in the keep, Leonidas pushed to both Leksander and Rosalyn’s mother.
“She’s not?” Rosalyn’s mother asked with a frown, but Leksander was already on the phone, presumably calling Cinaed. He marched angrily from the room, hissing under his breath.
How long since she left? Leonidas asked Isadora, his body restless again.
“A while. Maybe an hour.” Her frown worsened, and she flicked a look down the hall after Leksander. “What’s wrong?”
Where would she go? Leonidas had to restrain himself from unfurling his wings and smashing through the thin glass that separated him from the outside… and launching an immediate search for Rosalyn, even if he didn’t know where she’d gone. That was his wyvern speaking, wishing to send him on a headlong hunt after her.
“I don’t know,” Isadora said.
Leksander stalked back into the room, anger a slash across his brow. “Cinaed says they’re headed to Seattle. Something about a coven of powerful witches and someone she knows. And Leonidas—they’re trying to undo the curse.”
Leonidas’s tail swished across the carpet and clanked hard enough against the glass to make the entire two-storied panel rattle. He swung his rough snout to face Isadora again. Where is she going? Which coven?
Isadora’s mouth hung open. She gaped a moment then closed it. “There’s only one that might…” She turned to face Leonidas. “She’s going to see her father. Silas Damon of the Damon coven.”
Leonidas exhaled his growl, and wisps of dragonfire went with it. Rosalyn was off doing something foolish. Something headstrong. Something that would no doubt endanger her… and she only had Cinaed for protection. The blue dragon was loyal to a fault, but he was no prince of the House of Smoke with fae blood. Leonidas unfolded his wings and half leaped, half flew across the apartment, landing with great, loping stomps of talons-on-granite toward the door of the apartment.
He had no idea what Rosalyn was thinking with this, not really. But one thing was certain—he had to reach that coven before she did.
Rosalyn stood in front of the door of Urban Damon Design, hesitating.
“What’s wrong?” Cinaed asked. The hulking dragon shifter at her side gave her a pinched look of concern. Bringing a shifter to meet a bunch of powerful witches might not be the best idea, but the last time she cruised into a coven with a purse full of dragon blood on offer, she’d been captured and magically drugged.
But this was her father’s coven. He wouldn’t do that to her. Would he?
“I just need a minute,” she said.
The logo of Urban Damon was etched on the glass entrance. Rosalyn had stalked the graphic design company online just like every other coven in the city, following the ups and downs of the business, the mergers and acquisitions, especially the ones that involved her family members. Urban Damon was one of the largest design firms, serving all the cutting-edge startups in Seattle. Their beautiful designs were preternaturally hip… or maybe they just used magic to land all those big contracts. Rosalyn didn’t know, but her father was the ostensible head of the coven now.
It hadn’t started out that way.
Silas Damon was born into the Damon coven, but he left to mate with Rosalyn’s purebred mother and join the Thorne coven. They were small but powerful, with purebred witches going back three generations. The coven operated a boutique consulting firm, powerful in magic but not very prestigious in the real world. When Rosalyn’s mother fell in love with a shifter and betrayed her coven, her father returned to Urban Damon, given it was bigger and more powerful in the human world. Supposedly, he’d taken a new mate, and there were children from that union. Rosalyn’s half-siblings, she guessed.
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