Pain. The pain helps. Focus on the pain.
Leksander pumped his wings harder, sending fresh jolts through the tattered hole in his wing. The wind whipped the blood from the deep slashes in his back where his brother’s talons had sunk. The pain from those was nothing like the angel blade wound in his wing. It sliced something from him, a piece of him. His dragon nature. The demon entwined with it. The fury of both had been knocked down a notch when Erelah’s blade had pierced him.
Good. She should fight him.
Her fight, her touch, her blade… all of it welled up something deep inside him. Something human. It was enough to force his body to turn tail and run. Get away. It was all he could do, all he could focus on.
Pain. The pain helps.
He tucked his wings tight and dipped down into the long, winding canyon then pulled up sharp, causing enough strain in his wing to make him cry out. The screech of his wyvern echoed off the tall rock walls. He was flying blindly away away away from his beloved. His burning need to have her, to ravish her, to spill his seed inside her… no! He swerved into the rock wall, bashing his injured wing there. He screamed out again, lost altitude and tumbled, barely recovering before he splashed into the creek below.
Pain helps. Pain is good.
It distracted his wild wyvern mind. Kept its thoughts from… her. Turned his beast primal and afraid, willing to run away. Away. Away to where? Anywhere. But as he flew, he saw the outcroppings, the turns in the canyon, the singular bulbous rock that overhung the canyon just so…
His tomb.
He was heading to the rocky cave that every responsible dragon nearing the end of his life prepared just so he wouldn’t become a danger to others. After seeing his brother Lucian lock himself inside, waiting to die… after Leonidas retreated much the same… now, it was finally his turn. Somehow, miraculously, he was instinctively going there. And if the fates were truly with him, maybe he could lock himself inside before he lost this slim tether of control.
He limped faster through the air, using magic to boost his speed.
Up ahead. He could see it. A dark hole in the gathering shadows of the mountain as the sun sank. He pumped his wings harder, striving for more speed, driving straight toward it. If only he could bash himself senseless… or at least break a wing… maybe the pain would be enough to make his wyvern curl up and whimper and retreat.
Just long enough to lock himself inside.
He boosted more speed, then swerved at the last second, driving straight into the mouth of the cave, through the cool shadows and bashing into the wall in back.
He felt the impact. Something cracked.
Then everything went hazy.
Pain throbbed dully somewhere.
Slowly, his eyes registered light and dark again. He was slumped at the back of the cave, his wing tucked underneath his body, trapped and awkward. He rolled over it, and fresh jolts of pain stabbed him. He rolled again until he was on his belly, scrabbling with his talons along the dirt floor. He just needed to reach the mouth of the cave, to lay down the essential runes, the ones his wyvern wouldn’t be able to break, then he could conjure the rest of the wards from anywhere. Even if the pain had rendered him immobile on the floor of the cave.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of his labored breathing. The scritch-scratch of his talons as he got his feet under him. The low-keening groan as he hauled his wing, now dragging on the rocky floor behind him. Definitely broken. Right where the slash of Erelah’s blade had made his dragon nature weak.
He reached the front, but as he lifted his talon to start signing the runes on the rocky wall, he froze.
Erelah.
He gazed stupidly at her. His head must have gotten knocked harder than he thought. But as he stared and blinked, the vision of her remained. Floating on magic in the air just outside the cave, her blade held at her side, her pristine white clothes torn and dirtied.
He felt the rumblings of his wyvern. Aroused. Lust. Need. His cock swelled. His wyvern was awakening again, drawn away from nursing the pain of his wing to this insane vision of her.
No. He turned away, focusing on the rocky mouth of the cave. He had to work fast, paint the runes, raise the wards, get them complete… before his wyvern could gain control again of his mind and force him out of the tomb with a raging need to go after the vision, notwithstanding the broken wing. He might not get far… but he couldn’t take that chance.
His breathing became even more labored as he worked his way around the cave entrance. He focused on the rock in front of him, but halfway through, he couldn’t help glancing outside the cave...
She was still there.
Groaning as he dragged his wing and signed along the wall, painting it with magic runes, he forced himself on. As he traced the last three, down the wall, his vision began to blur. His reason was fading. Lust. Rut. Spill the seed. He staggered back from the mouth of the cave. He just needed to raise the final wards…
She was still there.
A vision in white. A beauty that called to his soul. Her blade hummed the air.
He could even smell her… that delicate angeling scent that was equal parts sunshine and musky earth. He roared, raising his hand to make the final signage—
She moved.
Like lightning, she was inside the cave with him, screaming angelsong and raising her blade. He tried to stagger away, but she was too fast, winging around, pushing off the cavern roof and walls and landing on his back.
The icy slip of her blade in the back of his neck was a relief.
He crumpled to the floor, splayed flat with her knees digging into his back, her hand grabbing the bony ridges of his head, and her blade searing his mind. He lost all sense of the world. There was no cave, no rocky floor underneath him. There was only the pain blasting through his soul, tearing him in two. His wyvern screamed and screamed, drowning him in sound. He had no idea if he was actually screaming or if it was trapped in his mind, but a bright light was cleaving him, shattering him, tearing into his being and carving it into chunks.
She was killing him.
The jolt of that rose above the agony. The surprise was subsumed immediately by the struggle. Light against dark. Wildness against sanity. The inky blackness that had stolen over his mind before and surged up his wyvern in defense was wrapping itself around spears of light in his mind. Not one but a multitude. The angel energy he’d carried since absorbing Markos’s blessing hummed and vibrated the spears, slashing back against the darkness. His wyvern howled and surged. Retreated then returned. It was a battle that felt like no side could win… that it would simple shatter and destroy everything he was. Then another howling started up in his mind, but it wasn’t him—not his dragon, not even its wild cousin, the wyvern—this was the dark and unholy howl of something dying. It rose and rose and then… quenched.
His sense of the world came flooding back.
He was face-down on the rough dirt floor of his tomb. The chill air swept over him from the mouth of the cave. But as he opened his eyes, he realized… not only was he alive, but he had also shifted human.
One dirtied hand on the ground in front of his face told him that. But as he attempted to move—to drag his face out of the dirt—the pain of his broken arm shot through him and made him gasp. Something clattered to the rocky floor next to him, and he had to blink twice to get his eyes to focus well enough to see it. Erelah’s blade. Only it was soiled with something that looked like tar. What?
He strained to twist to see her. She was standing next to him, wings extended, but a battle raged on them, light against dark. Her eyes were closed, her head tipped up, and a look of pain was twisting her face.
No! What had she done? He struggled to reach her, but all he could manage was turning on his side to face her, his broken arm hanging limp and useless across his chest. “Erelah,” he gasped.
Her eyes popped open. The inky darkness swam around in the whites of them as she gazed down at him.
“Holy magic, Erelah,” he sobbed. What had she done to save him? “My love…” He struggled again to reach for her, finally rolling on his back so he could free his good arm to cross the short distance between them… and just touch her bare foot.
She pulled in a sudden breath, as if she hadn’t breathed in forever, and a pulse of power emanated from her, pushing his hand away and stirring up dust from the floor of the cave, blowing it out into the canyon below. Leksander squinted against the blast of dirt, but when he looked again…
Her wings were pure white.
The agony was gone from her face, replaced by a radiant smile. She let out a long sigh, then she quickly dropped to his side. “My love,” she said, caressing his face and scanning his body. “You are injured.” Her smile fled, and she quickly straddled him, her torn and dirtied dress spilling over him as she grabbed his cheeks in both hands and kissed him.
No… not a kiss of passion or love. A life kiss.
She open-mouth breathed into him, and the energy flooding him immediately quashed the pain still wringing through his body from his broken arm. She lifted his head slightly off the ground, tilting it back and breathing even more into him. His entire body—bruised and broken and bloodied—renewed under her life-giving kiss. Her energy vibrated and hummed inside him, resonating with the angel blessing he still carried. By the time she finished, every part of him was energized and renewed, as if he’d never been hurt. Or wyvern. Or demon-infected.
She broke the kiss and leaned back.
His lips followed after. He reached for her with both hands—now fully healed—and pulled her down so he could kiss her for real. It was tender yet urgent, saying all the things he couldn’t put into words. She had come for him. She had believed in him. She’d risked everything—too much!—for him.
And most of all, she was in his arms, and he was a man once again.
Very much a man, as his achingly hard cock demanded to be made known.
He broke the kiss but held her close, whispering against her lips. “How is this even possible?”
She pulled back to gaze into his eyes. “As you said. If I could love you, then all things are possible.”
He wanted to laugh and cry all at once. Instead, he pulled her in for another kiss, letting his hand slide down her gorgeous body, nearly bare except for this tenuous angel gown she wore, held on mostly by golden threads and wishful thinking. He gripped her hip and nudged her to slide down his body, closer to his cock, which was dying for her touch.
But she resisted, pulling back from his kiss.
He groaned, deep in his chest. “I’ve never wanted you more than right at this moment. Don’t tease me, angeling.”
Her eyes flashed, and the triumphant smile on her face made him growl his frustration even more. That wild need for her—a pale echo of his wyvern, all lust but no violence—surged through him. He grabbed her by the hips so he could roll her onto her back and take her right there on the dirt floor, but she eluded his grip. Instead, she pulled him up to sitting as she magically lifted herself to her feet.
He scrambled to his feet as well and went to slip his arms around her again, but she danced back. He didn’t know what game this was, but he would chase her and pin her against the wall if that’s what it took to bury himself in her. It wasn’t the wyvern talking—although the edginess of his need was still there—but his severe and urgent desire to connect with her. Bond with her.
Mate with her.
“Erelah,” he said, his voice filled with warning that this chase would be very short.
Her smile dropped into earnestness even as she continued to back away from him, toward the mouth of the cave. “Seal the cave, Leksander.”
That pulled him out of the heavy-lidded lust consuming him. “What?”
“Seal us in,” she said, taking an arms-folded stance by the rocky edge. “And then seal me with your dragonfire.”
Those words… they sent another surge of lust straight to his cock. He growled, but even as he stalked to the front of the cave where she stood, his mind whirled. He frowned at the completed runes. He could quickly conjure the wards, and they would be protected from any immortal who might try to stop them. But that also meant she would be trapped in the cave with him.
He grimaced as he slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her close. “I can’t guarantee I won’t go wyvern again. If I do…”
“If you do, I will set you free once more.”
He frowned and glanced back at her blade, still inky and tarnished. He turned back to her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She put a hand to his cheek and gazed into his eyes. “Make me yours, dragon prince.”
Her command had magic in it, sending a shivering ripple of need surging through him. Need to possess her. Need to claim her. Need to put his mark on her and his child in her. This raging possessiveness came out as a rumbling growl deep in his chest. He held her tighter around her waist, her barely-clad body pressing deliciously up against his as he used his other hand to wave the final wards into being. The dress she was wearing barely contained her ample breasts, and he already knew she was bare underneath from when she straddled him. And the back was bare as well. All the things he needed to take her and seal her.
The instant he finished the wards, he turned to her and walked her back toward the wall of the cave. Her wings brushed the wall first, and he didn’t want to crush them or press any bit of her delicious skin against the rocky surface, so he stopped her with a tug on her waist just short of the wall. Then he shoved aside the ragged fabric that still hung between them, lifted one of her legs over his hip, and pressed his cock, throbbing with need, against her sex. He ground himself there, and her sharp intake of breath, plus the way he easily slid against her wet heat told him she was just as ready as he was.
“Put your hands back,” he commanded.
She did so, reaching under her wings to grasp the jutting rock wall behind her. He groaned as that naturally made her arch into him. Her sex opened wider, and her breasts lifted and strained against the white fabric of her dress. He slid his cock along her sex, grinding her sensitive nub, reveling in the way her lips parted, and her eyes grew hooded. Her leg—the one hooked over his hip—clamped harder against him, urging him on. He decided the dress had to go after all, at least partially. His one hand was busy holding her tight at the small of her back, but the other was free to caress her body and shove aside the fabric containing her breasts. With the fabric so tight to the sides and the golden chain underneath, her breasts nearly stood at attention. Her nipples perked, begging for his hands and his mouth. He teased them with his fingertips and licked his lips, vowing to give that lovely part of her body his full attention later, once their mating—this act he had dreamed of and fantasized about endlessly over the decades—was finally consummated.
“Oh, God, Erelah,” he breathed. “I’m going to fuck you. So hard.”
Her body just shuddered in response.
He dragged his hand away from tormenting her nipples and caressed his way down to between her legs. He teased her nub, and she writhed against him. Then he took his cock in his hand and used that to torment her a little more. But as much as he loved the squirming and the lip biting, and he wished he could just tease her through a few orgasms before they got serious, he literally couldn’t wait any longer.
He pulled back and thrust hard into her, all in one stroke.
She cried out, and one hand left the rock wall to grasp onto his shoulder. He had one hand still on the small of her back, but he likewise grabbed the back of her knee to hold on as he thrust again. And again. And harder. The angle was brutal, and she was so damn tight to begin with, he had to put real power into his thrust, shoving harder and faster the longer it went. The wildness of it was racing him to his peak. Her whimpers and cries and the digging into his shoulder with her fingers said she was right there with him.
“Fuck! Erelah,” he ground out as he impaled her again and again. His cock felt like it had never been so swollen and so hard. She had never felt so tight, even that first time. He growled and thrust harder, lifting her off her feet with each pounding, her wings scraping the walls, their feathery sounds making his balls tight and aching.
“Yes!” she cried out. “Yes, my love, take me!”
And he was fucking done. Those words drove him right over the edge, and he exploded inside her, still pumping and surging and thrusting. She came undone, singing out in angelsong, her power pulsing and ricocheting off the nearby wards at the cave’s mouth. Her body squeezed down on his cock in waves, milking every last ounce of orgasm from him, like it was greedy for it. Her mouth was open, her head tipped back and nearly touching the wall with each of his thrusts, which were now slowing, as they eased past their peaks. But the flush across her tightly puckered nipples… the full blossom of her sex… the way her chest heaved, still breathless…
Now was the time.
He hated the idea of leaving her body. He loathed the idea of causing her pain.
But now was the time to seal her with his mark.
He pulled out, turned her around, held her from behind for a moment, caressing her breasts and enjoying the brush of her wings against his chest. Then he pulled her down to the rocky floor of the cave with him, kneeling first, then laying her face down, one hand on the back of her neck, pressing her cheek into the dirt, the other holding her hip down. His knee pushed down on the small of her back. He couldn’t hold her if she didn’t want to be held—she had the power to blast him across the cave—but he needed her in the correct position to mark her.
She didn’t resist, just lay her hands flat on the ground by her head, wings spread wide, even her legs spread slightly, waiting for him.
He started above her shoulder blades, right where her wings met her back. He reached down deep for his magic, conjuring the special mating fire to well forth from within him. Then he pressed his lips to her flesh, kissing it first, then open-mouthed breathing searing dragonfire upon her flesh.
She didn’t even flinch.
Didn’t cry out.
As he carved his mark, infusing her body with his dragon magic, she didn’t make a sound or any motion at all. Except for the slow digging of her fingers into the dirt by her head—and the smoldering of the feathers closest to her back—you wouldn’t know she was enduring the pain of being singed with eternal fire.
He moved as quickly as he could, up and down her back, infusing her with the magic she would need to carry their child. And when it was done, he traced the same route again, up and down, with the healing touch of his wet kisses and all the fae magic he could muster.
His tears fell in the wake of his lips…
One more healing touch before he was through.