“Banished?” I stared at my father, the words ringing in my ears.

“Yes, if your bride can’t control herself, if she wants to make decisions for me, then she’s banished from this world, Henry. End of the discussion.” My father turned away from me and wrote something on a piece of paper at his desk in his bedchamber.

“Banished?”

“Yes, and if you choose to join, you’ll be banished right along with her. I’ll never be able to trust that the advice you give me, or the intelligence that you relay to me is not from her. Her actions have thrown everything into question, haven’t they?” He looked up at me, his brow raised over his right eye.

Banished. Fuck.

“You know we can’t be separated, Father. We’ll both die.”

“Of course you will. It’s your choice, die for your king, or be with your mate. I should warn you though, I will have you stripped of your dragon. You will have to live—” he paused to shudder, “—as a human.”

Somebody came in but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from my father to see who it was. “You’ll strip me of my dragon?”

“Yes, in a few hours the magicians will have erased her memory of this world, and of the dragons, and if you follow her, you’ll be stripped of your dragon, though not of your memories.” There was an evil gleam in my father’s eyes as he said that last part, as if the thought of me being tortured by memories pleased him. It was almost as if he wasn’t my father at all. “You have three hours to get her out of our world, if she’s still here, or both her and the child will be destroyed by fire.”

“What the fuck?” I kicked up out of my chair. The wood shattered into pieces as it flew out behind me hard enough to break against the wall. “You’ll have her and my daughter burned? You’re mad!”

“No, I’m fed up with you children and your hunters. Get out now, make your choice.” He waved me away from his desk, and I stared at him, anger on my face, hatred in my heart.

“Come on, Henry, let me help you.” It was Mary, and she led me from the room. Her own face was confused, hurt, and angry. “Willow isn’t here. She’s at your home in her world.”

“How?” I tried to slow my raging heart, but it wouldn’t listen. I was angry beyond words, and even the knowledge that Willow was safe in her world didn’t help. How dare he? How dare he threaten to destroy the life of my child? Of my mate? I could take my punishment, it would be hard, but I could take it. A death threat against my family though? That was more than even a son could stand.

“I took her there. What the fuck happened?” Mary stared up at me, her question on her face.

“Willow influenced Father to change his mind about the human women. I told him, like an asshole. I should have known better. That man isn’t our father, I don’t know who he is, but that’s not the man that raised us.”

“I think it’s the vampire blood. It can change who you are from what I’ve learned about it so far.” Mary had been researching the substance and its effects on humans and magicals. “It really is as addictive as the Alexanders said it was, and one tough drug to match.”

“That’s just great. A junkie for a ruler. Great.” I stalked away from the castle and to the flight pad. There was nothing I wanted to take with me and planned to leave immediately.

“Henry, wait. Stop. Don’t just leave. Think about what you might need if Father really does strip your dragon away. I don’t think he can, but if he’s found a way, then think. What will you need for your life with Willow and that baby?”

“I’ll need money in her world, more than anything else.” I changed directions and stalked to the house. I picked up a bag and started to fill it with jewelry and other valuables I might be able to sell. I had a rather large fortune in diamonds alone. They were dragon-made, but her world would not be able to tell the difference. I took the books about our history and added them to the bag. My child deserved to know where she came from. I also picked up a few weapons. If Father really did make me a mortal, I wanted to know I could defend my family.

I packed some of my clothes, things that I knew Willow liked.

“I’ll contact the fixer we have there, the one that is working on the papers you need there. I’ll light a fire under them to get those papers done.”

“What if this is the last time I see you, Mary? Or home?” The consequences of leaving weren’t lost on me.

“Then you’ll have made the right choice for you and your family, Henry. Go. I’ll try to come to you when I can.”

She turned me around and pushed me out of the door of my own home. I didn’t have time to waste, but I also couldn’t believe any of this had really happened. I flew to Willow, to her world, to a new life maybe. I hung in the air for a while, to feel the wind on my face as it screamed over my wings. I stretched my muscles as I climbed, then fell, only to climb again. If this is the last time I might fly, I wanted it to be memorable.

I’d give it all up, and gladly, for Willow, but I needed this one last moment of flight. Just in case. Wind tore at my armored leather skin, but it didn’t win, it never would against a dragon’s flesh. I blew a flame across the sky, perhaps the last flame I’d ever breathe out, and finally came to rest on a tree outside of our bedroom window. Willow had the shutters closed, but I knew she was there. I could feel her.

Would that change? I wondered. If Father actually managed to strip my dragon away, would I still be mated to her? Would I be magical at all? I felt the branch beneath my much smaller claws, and took one final breath before I let go, and shifted as I landed. It was a hard thing to give up, this being a dragon business, but if it meant I stayed with my mate and my child, then so be it. I could live without it. It wouldn’t be easy, I’d have to learn to drive, to let others fly me in planes, to do things that weren’t magical, but for Willow, I would do anything.

I saw my own mistake now, far too late to change what had happened. I went up to our room and sat on the bed gently so as to not wake her, watching her sleep. Dark lashes rested against her creamy skin, and I could see a hint of a dark circle beneath her eyelids. She was tired. Her face was stained with tears and my heart twinged. I’d hurt her. My stupidity had hurt her, and it might have just cost us dearly.

The goods in the bag I’d left downstairs would provide us with anything we could ever possibly want, but we were about to be denied a multitude of worlds and experiences. My fingers itched to stroke her hair and I couldn’t resist. I brushed a finger through her silky hair and felt love stir in my chest.

I’d spend the rest of my life making up for this mistake. I wouldn’t let anything else stand in the way. Never again would I doubt her, or her decisions. She was a smart woman and had seen what the rest of us couldn’t. Father had to be stopped before he destroyed us all. There was nothing he could do to take away her powers, he was a dragon and she was a hunter, after all, but he could make her forget that world. That didn’t mean she’d forget the people there, or that my father had turned into a tyrannical madman.

We had a king. As such, he could be whatever he wanted to be, but we also had the ability to overthrow him if need be. Malcolm would make a much better king, and Arista an excellent queen. I would help however I could, to make sure that my home would be safe and continue to prosper. Whether we were meant to survive as a world remained to be seen, but our history showed that we must have a purpose. We’d survived millennia, we’d populated other realms on this planet, or the parallel universes as Willow called them. Worlds just beside each other, different in a variety of ways.

Each world had its own rules, its own magic, but my world was special to me because it was mine. Perhaps it had outlived its time. We didn’t even have electricity in our world. Some might say we could live without radios, phones, and instant communications across the globe, but how much easier would it make life if we did have those things?

I sighed and stretched out beside my wife. We’d only been married for a couple of days now, and our lives had been turned upside down again. It wasn’t fair to either of us, and I’d make this next transition as easy on Willow as I could. I left the bed as quietly as I came and started one of her favorite meals, spaghetti with her family’s version of veggie-laden sauce. It was chunky style that I liked.

She came down about the time the garlic bread was ready to come out of the oven and just stared at me.

“You came back.” I saw her gulp and her eyes were round.

“Did you think I wouldn’t, princess?” I saw her eyes brighten at the endearment. She had thought I wouldn’t come! “Oh, my little love, I wouldn’t leave you. Come, eat with me and then we’ll talk about what’s happened.”

I led her to the table in the kitchen because we both found the dining room far too formal for our shared meals. I put a salad down on the table, her favorite salad dressing, and the rest of her food on a plate.

“You’re spoiling me,” she teased, her eyes happy and rarely leaving my face.

“I’ll have to as that baby grows. Pregnant women need to be loved and cared for. I think, for a while, we’d almost forgotten about that baby. It’s on the way though.”

“At least I’ve missed morning sickness so far.” She took a hefty bite of garlic bread and wrapped her spaghetti around her fork with a spoon as a base. I never understood why she did and used the edge of the fork to cut the noodles up into more manageable and far less messy pieces.

“That’s something dragons usually don’t have. Shifters either. It seems to be a human affliction.”

“All I can say is, I’m glad I missed it. I’ve heard some horror stories and I have to admit, it was one of the reasons I didn’t want to have a baby.” She took another bite of her food as if she hadn’t said something surprising.

“You didn’t want children?” I couldn’t fathom that, even the men in our world wanted children.

“Not really. My world is overpopulated and filled with unwanted children already. I didn’t plan to marry or have children. It wasn’t on my list of things to do.”

“What did you want to do?”

“I wanted to compose, I wanted to play music, I wanted to experience life. I didn’t want to have the same experience as my mother and aunts. Their men left them, right or wrong, and left them to raise their children on their own. It wasn’t an easy life for any of us. I didn’t want to do that to a child.”

“I can see your reasons. Are you afraid I’ll leave you on your own with our child?”

“I’m not afraid you’d choose to leave, no. Life isn’t easy for women in my family.” She looked like she wanted to say more but stopped.

“Mal’s still with Arista and Galen.” I pointed out.

“Yes, but will he always be? What if something happens? What if he dies?” Tears stung her eyes.

“Then the chain will continue. Would you rather not know the love we have, or what it’s like to have Marya inside of you, with her precocious ways?”

“Oh, you should have heard her philosophizing to me earlier!” She looked so pleased and happy at the same time. “You took the right path, Willow, she said to me. Then she explained her existence, and what would happen after she was born. It was all sweet and enlightening really.”

“That’s just... breathtaking.” I watched her as she talked about the baby and their conversation, seeing how happy it all made her. Yeah, I’d made the right decision, in the end.

“It is, really. She’s so…” she squeezed her fists together for a minute, as if looking for a word but couldn’t think of it.

“Enlightening?”

“Yes! That’s the word.”

“Do you still think life would be better without a child in it?” I asked, just to prolong the conversation. I was about to drop a bomb on her, but I wanted her to finish eating first.

“I think it’s fine for some people. That’s not my fate. My fate is to have this baby and be your wife,” she answered soberly, but honestly.

“I can deal with that. So long as you don’t regret anything that’s happened?”

“I do regret influencing your father—”

I held a hand up. “No, we’ll talk about that after dinner, princess. For now, eat.”

We finished our meal then and cleaned up the kitchen. I took her by the hand and lit a fire outside, my dragon ability to light fire with a fingertip was still there, at least.

I waited, throughout dinner, throughout the cleanup, for the earth to tilt or to fall to the floor in pain, but nothing happened. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t, so I pulled Willow down to a lounger with me.

“I have to tell you a few things, darling. None of them will be easy to listen to, but you’re my mate, and deserve nothing but the truth.” I brushed her hair beneath my chin and rested my head on top of her head as I cradled her body. “Our world is about to change again.”