Loved by a Dragon (Fallen Immortals 7)-Paranormal Fairytale Romance

by Alisa Woods

  “Was it so horrible?” He was angry again, and that was where he should be. That was where she should have left it—his anger over Tajael’s kiss forcing them both on the righteous path. Not this… this way led to ruin. For both of them.

  “I cannot love you that way, Leksander! I took a vow.”

  He frowned, and perhaps she had never explained the details of that. It had never been relevant—she took her vow long ago, yet after she met him. After she’d been drawn into that alley by men who were not demon-possessed, just gripped by their own darker natures. She had liberated them, giving her first life kiss to heal a human heart of its base nature… and then she met a man different from all the rest. Strong in Virtue and magic. As noble in purpose as she was called to be. Leksander intrigued her and uplifted her. For if a man who was dragon and fae could be that good of heart, then surely she, a tarnished angeling, could rise up and do the same. That night in the alley convinced her to return to Markos, to take her vow. And now… now she had done wrong by Leksander, leading him on with a kiss. A kiss that promised something that could never be.

  “What vow?” he finally asked, his expression dark. He’d stepped back.

  “My faction is Chastity,” she said, drawing herself up and unfurling her wings. It was a declaration, and even the blood smear on her feathers couldn’t tarnish that. “My leader is Markos. My devotion is to them. I am angel of light, Leksander—”

  “Half angel,” he whispered, but she heard it like a strike across her heart.

  “Yes, half,” she cried out, raising her arms. “Half-breed. Half-formed. Conceived in Sin and forever tarnished. Yes, I am half!” Her voice had raised to angelsong.

  Leksander winced under its power.

  “Angels do not love as you do, dragon prince,” she rasped out, her voice dropping to human levels again. “I do not love as you do. I cannot. I would lay down my life for you, Leksander, prince of the House of Smoke, but do not ask of me something I cannot give!” She stepped back, moving away because the torment on his face was more than she could bear. “Markos said you needed to speak with me before you found a mate.” Her voice was half cry again. “Well, you have spoken, and so have I, and there is nothing more to be said. Go, then! Fulfill your duty. And I shall pay my Penance for what I’ve done all the days of my life.”

  His mouth fell open to say something more, but she turned her back and wrenched herself from his realm. The twisting of time and space brought her back to her cloister cell.

  Alone.

  And with that grace, that release, she fell to her knees and curled down until her forehead banged the floor. Her wings wrapped around her, holding her tight, and her arms gripped her belly as well. She felt as though she might tear apart. The fissure inside was cracked wide, and something had welled up from deep below. Primal and angry and irrepressible, it rose up and gushed out of her mouth in a screaming siren of angelsong. The sound tore at her, trapped with her in the cell, bouncing off the walls and slicing her mind and soul, scarring her like the strike on her body that Leksander had healed.

  And when the song was spent, she wept.

  Tears. Her first tears of pain and sorrow.

  They would not be her last.

  Pay her penance? For the love of all that’s magic, what did that mean?

  Leksander was tormented by Erelah’s final words before she disappeared in a flash of light. He’d tried and tried to summon her with the crystal but either she broke it when she left or she was refusing to answer or… or Markos might be blocking him. But even that didn’t make sense—he’d let her come the first time.

  But what was this vow she made? Leksander knew there were factions in the angel world, but it wasn’t like they were warring factions. It was more like teams the way Erelah had described it before, what little she’d ever said. He vaguely remembered that they even switched factions occasionally, so this idea that she was in a Chastity faction where she’d made a vow of… what? Swearing off sex forever?

  Why couldn’t she just switch teams if she found someone to love?

  But she hadn’t said that she loved him. Not in the least.

  In fact, she’d said the opposite. That she couldn’t love him. That she would die for him but not love him.

  He raked his fingers through his hair, but no matter how hard he tried to make sense of that, there just wasn’t any. He’d paced the throne room for an hour, trying to contact her with the crystal, then he’d been pacing his lair for two… and all he had to show for it was a headache.

  And the ghost of her kiss still on his lips.

  That kiss. If it weren’t for that, he’d probably be in Seattle by now, swiping right on the WildLove app and looking to get laid quickly by whoever was available… but that kiss. It was hot—dragonfire hot—and yet fumbling and innocent and beautiful. Like her. She’d let go for the tiniest moment, and his heart had soared. It was just one kiss, but it was easily better than all his fantasies combined. There was no way he was letting go of that. And he didn’t believe for a second that she couldn’t love him. More than that… he was well convinced that she fled, twisting away through space and time with her angel magic, precisely because she was afraid.

  Afraid she could love him.

  He didn’t understand why that frightened her so badly.

  And he needed help figuring this out. Plus some plan to get her to accept his crystal-calls.

  He checked the time on his phone—it was the middle of the day. So he quickly dialed Leonidas and hoped he wasn’t waking the baby or something. As it rang, Leksander hustled out of his lair, heading for his brother’s apartment. The keep was back to its normal daily operations, but the hallways were still empty.

  Leonidas picked up. “Hey, my brother. How are you holding up?”

  “I kissed Erelah.” He felt foolish just blurting it out, like a young dragon before his first bedding. It was silly. And yet his heart trembled with it.

  There was silence on the other end. Then, “You… did?”

  “I need to talk to your mate.” Rosalyn had been badgering him to confess his feelings. Well, now he had. And everything was in flames.

  “Um… okay.”

  Leksander had reached their lair. “Good. I’m at your door.” He hung up and knocked softly, just in case baby Thorn was sleeping.

  It took a moment, but Rosalyn opened up. “Get straight out! You kissed her?”

  Leksander grinned. “Yes.”

  She scowled. “What the hell are you doing at my door?”

  His grin crumbled. “She vowed she could never love me and left.”

  Her expression softened. “Oh.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” She hustled back, opening the door wide. “Leonidas has the baby upstairs.” She led him into the apartment and around the corner to the kitchen. “This sounds like a conversation that requires tea.”

  “What I need is your advice.”

  Rosalyn stopped and turned to face him, arms folded. “Okay. So, you kissed her. Did you tell her, you know, that you love her?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She unlocked her arms in exasperation. “Oh, for the love of magic! Leksander.”

  He held up his hands. “I tried. That’s not where this went wrong.”

  She scowled and crossed her arms again. “I’m listening.”

  “She’s convinced that she can’t love me.” He lifted his hands and shrugged because he wasn’t sure about any of this. “Because she’s angeling and somehow angelings can’t love. Or at least she can’t because she took some vow of chastity for her faction or some damn thing. I don’t… is this just bullshit, Rosalyn? Is this what women say when what they really mean is fuck you, go away, I hate you? Because I can’t figure this out, and she won’t return my calls.” The exasperation in his voice was making it hike up, so he stopped.

  “Well, damn.” She bit her lip. “But you kissed her. I mean… was it, you know, a weird kiss? It has been a whil
e for you, dragon prince. Maybe it was just awkward?” She had a strange grimace, and it was making him uncomfortable just to watch.

  “No.” And he was emphatic about that. “The kiss was not the problem. Or maybe…” How to say this? “I think she’s afraid of it. I think she’s just… very new at the whole kissing thing.”

  Rosalyn raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Like she’s never…” She vaguely gestured to Leksander.

  “Never. Pretty certain about that.” He grimaced. “But just being a virgin doesn’t explain it either. It seems like… I don’t know, like she’s afraid of loving me. Only that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Rosalyn rubbed her chin and looked thoughtful. “Maybe it’s not so much loving you, but what it might cost her.”

  He frowned. “You think she’s afraid of the mating?” He supposed that could be it. Erelah had been present at both births, and she knew the struggles of Rosalyn’s pregnancy and Arabella’s. He shook his head. “I can’t really see that.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it,” Rosalyn agreed. “Erelah is a serious badass. So if she’s afraid… it has to be something worse than dying. If that makes sense.”

  In a strange way, it did. “She said she would lay down her life for me. But that she couldn’t love me.”

  “So let’s say she did.” Rosalyn shuffled over to the cupboard to pull out a mug. “Sorry, I need tea for this conversation. Baby-sleep-deprived.”

  Leksander took the cup from her and filled it with water then popped it in the microwave. Rosalyn rifled through another cupboard and came out with a tin of tea bags. They wafted a strong lemon scent through the air. She pulled out a foil bag and tapped the counter with it.

  “So she falls in love with you,” Rosalyn continued. “You make mad dragon love, you seal her with your mark, and she has a dragon-angel-baby with you. What happens then?”

  Leksander couldn’t help the small skip in his heart. Were they really talking about this like it was possible? Because he hadn’t even let his own mind go there yet. “Then we live happily ever after?” Where was she going with this?

  The microwave beeped, so he hurriedly extracted the cup and took the tea bag from her, carefully ripping the package and dunking the bag.

  Rosalyn counted off on her fingers. “First, she’s probably kicked out of the chastity club, am I right? How big of a deal is that for angelings?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, so you need to find that out.”

  “All right.”

  She tapped another finger. “Second, can you even make a baby with an angel? I mean, how does that work with your hot dragon-and-fae blood?”

  “I don’t know.” His frown felt like it was carving into his face.

  She scowled. “Has anyone crossed dragons and angels before?”

  His heart was sinking. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “All right,” she said with a sigh, like she couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought these things through. He was wondering himself. “So, maybe she gets kicked out of angel land. Maybe the baby isn’t even viable. I guarantee she’s got all this on her mind. Then third…” She tapped another finger. “Say you make the baby. Does it fulfill the treaty? Because you know she’s all about the treaty.”

  “That’s true.” Dread was crowding in on his heart.

  “So how do we know if this angeling-dragonling would fulfill the treaty?”

  “I… I guess we would know when the baby was born,” he said reluctantly. This wasn’t good. “The treaty magic would renew. Everyone with immortal blood, bound by the treaty, would feel it.”

  “So… what if it doesn’t work?” Rosalyn hiked her eyebrows up again. “You’re going to run out and mate with someone else? Make a baby with a human?”

  He grimaced. “You think all this is holding her back.”

  Rosalyn frowned, took the mug of tea from him, blew on it and took a sip. Finally, she said, “No, probably not.”

  Leksander’s shoulders relaxed.

  “It has to be something much worse than all that.”

  “Worse?” Okay, he was officially in over his head. “Rosalyn, I don’t know what to do.”

  “You still love her, right?” She peered at him over the mug, sipping as the steam rose into her face.

  “Yes.” That much he knew.

  “And this kiss… it was a good kiss, right?”

  “Yes.” He had to rein an explosion of fantasies crowding his mind. If a simple kiss with her had awoken every part of him so thoroughly, bringing new life to his heart most of all, what would making love be like? Much less sealing? His mind stalled out at mated sex because he was legitimately wondering if that was even possible now.

  “Then, no matter what,” Rosalyn said, nailing him with her brilliant blue eyes. “You go after that girl until you get her.”

  Relief washed through his body. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “You begin by finding out the answers to those questions,” she said, nodding then sipping her tea again. “Because she’s thought about all this, guaranteed. And something in there is scaring the crap out of a girl who’s never even taken a man to bed, Leksander.”

  “You’re right. Of course.” He scowled, but it was for himself. How had he known Erelah for all these years and yet not know her mind at all? Or her life in the Dominion? It was as if he and Erelah had created their own little bubble where just the two of them existed. He knew that she loved flying through cool air the best, even better at night. He knew she preferred slaying demons on a full stomach, but she required little food because of her angel nature. But he had no idea she’d made this vow or what any of that meant.

  Rosalyn was watching him, waiting.

  He spread his hands wide. “She won’t return my calls.”

  Her response was swift. “Then you find another way to reach her.”

  Leksander nodded.

  A shuffle at the door to the kitchen drew their attention. Leonidas stood with a sleeping baby Thorn in his arms. He held out his other arm—his runes were in a frenzy. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Leksander scowled. “What’s that?”

  Rosalyn set down her mug and hurried over to take baby Thorn from her mate.

  “Nyssa is coming to visit,” Leonidas said grimly.

  Leksander nearly choked. “What? When?”

  “About five minutes. Come on.” Leonidas was already heading out of the kitchen.

  Leksander hurried after him, giving a grateful smile to Rosalyn on the way. Then he faced his brother as he slid open the door to his lair. “Why the hell is Nyssa coming here?”

  “She didn’t say,” Leonidas said tightly. “But I got the sense she was pissed.”

  Leksander swallowed. “Do we have some kind of weapons we can use against the fae? If it comes to that?”

  Leonidas shook his head. “Just the wards. Which is why we’re meeting her in the throne room and, under no circumstances are we dropping the wards on the rest of the keep.” He gave Leksander a sideways look. “Do you want to sit this out? She won’t be able to get to you through the wards.”

  Leksander scoffed. “I’m not hiding while my brothers take on the Queen of the Summer Court.”

  Leonidas smirked. “Oh, no, it’ll just be me. Lucian’s the king—I’m not even telling him until she’s gone—and the young princes stay safely behind the wards. And I’m not too excited about you being there, even though she insisted. I’m not letting Nyssa take down our chance to renew the treaty. I know she can’t kill you outright, my brother—”

  Leksander gave him a skeptical look as they strode through the corridor. “Are you sure about that?”

  Leonidas drew away from him. “Yes?”

  “She is summer fae.” Leksander frowned.

  Leonidas shook his head. “No, that doesn’t matter. Remember, the original treaty was protecting the queen’s bastard child from her king. And her previous children. Nyssa was one of those, right? She’s absolu
tely bound by the treaty. If not, the House of Smoke would have been dead ten thousand years ago.”

  Leksander nodded. That made sense. It also reminded him that Nyssa was really fucking old, even though her beauty was eternal. “Then let me handle this. It’s me she’s angry with.”

  “Be my guest.” Leonidas pulled open the door to the throne room and gestured him inside. “Just don’t get yourself dead, okay? You’ve got business left to attend to.”

  Leksander nodded and strode into the throne room. He was surprised to see half the House had hastily assembled. How Leonidas managed to keep Lucian in the dark, he had no idea, but his brother would probably pay for that later. Cinaed was up front, and he probably had something to do with it. Strangely, Rachel was by his side, arguing with him. Their whispers ceased as soon as Leksander was within earshot.

  Leksander tipped his head to Cinaed. “You needn’t bring your mate to this,” he said, then winced because he’d forgotten that they hadn’t yet mated.

  “Tell him he doesn’t need to be here either,” Rachel shot back.

  Cinaed glared at her. “My place is defending the House and its prince.”

  Leksander raised his eyebrows and glanced at Leonidas, but he just shook his head. To Cinaed, Leksander said, “You needn’t be here, Cinaed. This is my screw-up to fix.”

  “No, my liege,” Cinaed said, holding his head high. “Your House stands with you.”

  All the House’s dragons combined would be nothing against the fae queen if she arrived deciding to wreak vengeance. The treaty protected the royalty of the House of Smoke, but not its members.

  Leksander swung back to Leonidas, who had taken a stance in front of the throne chairs. “Maybe we shouldn’t have assembled half the House here.”