by Rhea Watson
“You wear the scars of battle, little brother,” Rollo thundered, booming it like he wanted everyone to know. Rafe snorted, and I poked him sharply in the side, a warning to let them have their moment. The vampire’s brows shot up again as he threw his arm around my shoulders and tucked me against him, that smirk daring me to reprimand him out loud.
Fintan, meanwhile, scratched at the back of his neck with a chuckle. “Ah, yes, well—”
“How did you damage your nose?”
“Naturally, it was defending my lady’s honor,” the fae crowed, motioning back to me dramatically. The whole garrison glanced my way, some smirking, others whispering. Rollo, meanwhile, folded his arms over his broad chest, lips twitching like he was fighting back another smile.
“Is that so?”
Fintan scoffed. “Don’t you believe me? Of course. Would you not defend such a fetching creature, brother? Surely in all your time alive, you’ve experienced that moment when you must choose between your life and that of your heart’s—”
“They gassed us this afternoon during the riot,” Rafe said dryly, loud enough to stop what was shaping up to be a very long, overwrought Fintan monologue. “He fell on his face when he passed out and broke his own nose.”
“Ah,” Rollo murmured, smirking, his nod implying he had expected as much.
Which rubbed me the wrong way. Fintan had been brave time and time again in here. He had stood up for me. He deserved recognition.
My fae just snorted and took a good-natured swipe at Rafe. “Well, we were gassed defending her, you fangless fuck.”
Much to my surprise, Rafe flipped him off with a grin. No angst. No brooding. No self-conscious covering of his mouth. I hadn’t been apart from my guys for all that long, but when had everyone gotten so comfortable chatting about their raging insecurities? Had I missed something big?
Now, however, wasn’t the time to pry into it. As Fintan introduced Rafe to the future king of the Midnight Court, Rollo’s entourage loitering in the background like they had nothing better to do, I did a quick sweep of the foyer. Former inmates continued to stand around, whispering frantically, all wrapped up in their collars. Uncertainty rippled through the clusters of gathered supers, and I hated to see it—but I wasn’t exactly obligated to step up and take charge, was I?
“Took you bloody long enough to storm the keep, brother,” Fintan teased. Frowning, I rejoined the group, fingers loosely threaded through Rafe’s, some of the relief from before giving way to stress. Where was Elijah? What were all the supers cloistered around us supposed to do now? We were in the middle of Siberia, for goodness’ sake.
“We found your relative location months ago,” Rollo insisted, passing his helmet over to a nearby warrior and removing his chainmail gloves. “Getting through the ward proved near impossible, unfortunately. We simply had to wait until it was removed—at no point was it open long enough to feed the army through, and the warlocks who came and went had protection of their own. We didn’t want to make our presence known—”
“Funny.” Fintan sniffed, examining his dirty nails with pursed lips. “Because that cat broke in without an issue.” All eyes dropped to Tully, who had situated himself firmly between Rafe and me, slow blinks aplenty, still a purr machine. Fintan offered him a quick little scratch behind each ear, shooting his brother a look over his shoulder. “Perhaps you ought to assign him to the war council. I suspect he’ll make a strong siege tactician.”
“Where’s Elijah?” I blurted, unable to stand here and shoot the shit anymore like we were at the saddest cocktail party ever. Rafe drew me closer with a kiss to my temple, his hand twining around mine, his skin cold but his touch beyond reassuring.
“He’s freeing those in solitary,” the vampire told me, and before I could demand why they had let him do that alone, Fintan interjected like he could read my mind.
“Holster your weapons, darling… He wanted to do it himself,” the fae said, hands up in mock-surrender. “Seemed rather important to him, so we came to find you.”
“Next step will be to get out of here,” Rafe carried on, his tone taking a turn for the serious, ever my brooding vampire as he adjusted the leather strap around his neck. “But the collars—”
“Excindo.” My softly murmured spell struck him like a charging bull, knocking the vampire a few feet from me. Oops. I really did need something to rein my magic in. Fortunately, the spell did its job: as soon as the flash of black charged from my fingertips to his collar, the leather ignited with shadowy flames that sizzled around the band, reducing it to white ash that dusted Rafe’s shoulders like freshly fallen snow.
Eyes wide, he smoothed a hand over his throat, then looked to me, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
“Prince Rollo and I already took care of the collars… I guess I probably should have led with that,” I told him with a slight lift of my chin. Defending her. Sure, my guys had stood up for me more times than I could count in here, but with my magic back, I had a debt to pay—and this was just the start. Every so often, they deserved to be rescued, whether they liked it or not. “The sigils will still bind your abilities, but at least now you can remove it.”
Fintan tore clean through his, needing both hands to split the material, and soon enough loitering supers and shifters followed suit. One by one, the collars that had ruled our lives inside these four walls fell away. Former inmates stomped on them, spit at them, set them on fire. Many of the shifters immediately let their inner animals free, tearing through jumpsuits during the transition, and those straps of leather were quickly met with teeth and claws, the foyer filled with growls and howls and cries, the air around us positively bursting with magic.
And it was… magnificent.
The scene blurred as another flood of emotion washed over me, leaving me no choice but to just hold on and enjoy the ride, the current raging, the rapids fierce—I’d never felt more alive.
“Right, so…” Fintan smacked his brother in the middle of that starry breastplate, then motioned toward the wall of doors that led to the outside world across the foyer, their shattered windows tinted purple with fae fire. “If we don’t want to personally experience a cave-in, I suggest we get moving.”
“What?” Seriously, what had these boys plotted without me? While I hated to abandon the unfolding beauty of shifters and supers finding themselves again, Fintan and Rafe left me no choice. Each locked on to one of my hands, then marched me right out Xargi’s front doors. Rollo and his warriors trailed behind us, and once we were in the great outdoors, met by the scent of scorched earth and ancient magic, by the crunch of gravel underfoot that grated on my nerves, by the cries of bird shifters taking flight, those left in the foyer followed. Former inmates from all blocks spilled out through various doors, and as soon as someone saw another had removed their collar, off came the leather, the air thickening with a new punch of power.
Pockets in the purple flames appeared, allowing inmates to pass untouched, and while some took advantage of that, particularly the collared wolf shifters, many just drifted around on the outskirts, lost. Displaced. Searching for home and finding the Siberian tundra in the throes of autumn instead.
While Fintan, Rollo, and Rafe discussed the logistics of assisting some of the stranded supers and shifters, I hovered outside the group, staring at Xargi, waiting. Studying the faces of every jumpsuit that blitzed out, scrutinizing anyone in blue, desperate to find Elijah’s golden curls, his rugged face, his enormous frame in the mix.
Nothing.
Arms crossed, I wandered closer, searching frantically now, a series of horrific thoughts wheedling into what was supposed to be a victory. But there was no real celebration without him. No success if we weren’t all together. No—
“Willow!” At least one navy blue jumpsuit came with a familiar face. The petite rabbit shifter staggered out one of the side doors, her collar gone and her face coated in dirt, her loose brown hair an absolute rat’s nest. I sprinted toward her, hating how daz
ed she looked, how she stumbled, how her one good eye had a slash through it that she didn’t have the last time we had sat together in the cafeteria. Slowly, she turned in my direction, and by the time recognition flashed across her lovely features, I’d crashed into her and dragged her into a hug.
She stood limp for a moment, arms dangling at her side—no surprise if she questioned all this. In my time behind bars, I’d had so many dreams about this exact moment, about blowing a hole through Xargi’s walls and strolling out, free as a bird, the prison in cinders behind me.
“Oh, gods, I was so worried about you,” I whispered, hugging her harder like that might wake her up.
And it did.
Finally, my Cellblock B dinner companion wrapped her arms around me with a sob. We stood together like that, locked in an embrace that would have gotten us beaten just hours earlier, holding each other, lifting the other up.
She could go home now.
Back to her children, her harem of husbands.
Freedom tasted brilliant, even as fae fire burned the world around us.
“They put me in solitary,” she muttered when we slowly eased apart. Tears cut through the brown smudges on her face, and she rubbed at her cheeks with both hands, rolling her eyes. “Apparently refusing to suck off a guard is a deeply punishable offense. Been in a hole for three fucking weeks.”
A familiar fury lashed at my insides, an inferno sparking for her. “Have you seen the one who put you in there? Is he still alive?”
If he was, I swore to the gods I would cut off his—
“Your dragon killed him,” Willow admitted softly, purple reflecting off her clouded eye. She rubbed at the red ring around her neck, then shot me a coy look, voice lowering as she added, “But I did curb-stomp his disgusting face on the way out… Gave him a good kick in the nads for the afterlife. Pretty satisfying.”
“You’re really living the Xargi dream.” I tried to keep my tone light, not wanting to sidestep her newfound freedom and the delivery of some deserved justice, but just the mention of Elijah with no follow-up was driving me nuts. “And… You saw Elijah, then?” When Willow nodded, scanning the purple flames, fingers drifting to her jumpsuit’s buttons like she was seconds from stripping down and shifting, I cleared my throat and stepped into her wandering eyeline. “Not to diminish your accomplishments by talking about a boy, but… do you know where he is now? Is he okay?”
Willow studied me for a beat, unbuttoning her jumpsuit and then shimmying out of the too-big material, letting it pool around her feet like a navy mountain. “Uh, yes, I’d say he’s doing pretty good, actually.”
I nodded, pretending to not be fazed by the totally nude woman standing in front of me all of a sudden. “Oh. Great. Thank you so much…” Shoving the awkwardness aside, I grabbed her shoulder and squeezed, our eyes briefly locked. “Really, for everything… For your friendship and conversation, thank you.”
“Same to you,” the rabbit shifter murmured, gripping my forearm tight for a moment, then releasing me just as I did her. She stepped back, flipping off a nearby warlock gawking in his purple jumpsuit without even glancing his way. “If you’re ever in Brisbane, you’ve got a place to stay.”
“My place in Seattle always has a bed for you.”
“Yeah, but not for the fifteen of us,” Willow mused, grinning, “but I appreciate the sentiment. Ciao for now, doll.”
In a flash, she vanished, shrinking from delicate woman to tiny rabbit—who could really hoof it over the gravel. She zipped around wandering supers, just a blur of light brown in the darkness, then crossed a gap in the purple flames without looking back or breaking her stride—making her way home to her family, like she had always wanted.
Like she deserved.
Now, my family still wasn’t quite as whole as I would have liked. Nibbling my lower lip, I glanced back, hands on my hips, to find Rafe still chatting with Fintan and Rollo, Tully in his arms; my spoiled familiar had that vampire wrapped around his massive paw. All we were missing was—
The ground shuddered, gravel jittering around my feet, the cursed walls of Xargi trembling as a low, guttural rumble echoed from its depths. Conversations dimmed around the grounds, the fae flames flickering, shrinking, halved in size by the time the next roar thundered through the prison. Arms falling limp at my sides, I staggered toward the building while jumpsuits fled in every direction, then stilled with a gasp, eyes wide, heart in my throat, when the roof over our old cellblock exploded. Embers and ash and dust spewed everywhere as an enormous figure broke through the stone that had kept us caged, the shape rising like a monster from legend, a primordial being clawing out of the depths—a titan shattering the bars of Tartarus…
Elijah.
In his true form.
Oh.
My heart skipped a beat at the breathtaking dragon that scaled the ruins of the penitentiary, his bellow rattling in my bones as he roared into the night sky.
Backlit by stars and moonlight, he was exquisite—the sunrise against the darkness, illuminated by fae fire, his scales a russet red, coppery orange, and a lush, buttery yellow. Shaking off the dust, the stone bricks that must have weighed a hundred pounds each, he stretched his huge wings, each one tipped with a spike that had to be as tall as me. They carried on down his back, from the nape of his skull along his spine, right to the tip of his tail—protective thorns of pure obsidian, equally intimidating and beautiful. Powerful claws gripped the crumbling structure as he stalked along its rooftop, cracks skittering through the remnants of Xargi Penitentiary. Each huff of dragon’s breath carried like the west wind…
I had never been more impressed by anything in my life.
Never been more instantly infatuated with someone.
Never craved danger like I craved him.
Wings flared, the dragon reared back and unleashed a firestorm across the penitentiary. The fae fire paled in comparison to the crimson scorching across the building, dissolving thick and suffocating stone walls to ash in seconds. Distant cheers tickled my ears, but the entire world fell away in his presence. Nothing else existed outside of that dragon and his fire, his scales like sunshine and his wings the ultimate freedom.
As flames decimated the penitentiary, I swore I felt his gaze drift to me. Even in the dancing light, purple and orange colliding, fae flames and dragonfire turning the night to day, I knew those eyes. I had seen them before, desperate to break free, desperate to see me, trapped inside the body of a man—the man that I loved. The man fate had chosen for me.
Our bond solidified in that moment, fear of this ancient beast ebbing like the lowering tide. Steel stretched between us, forged in dragonfire—utterly unbreakable.
I needed him.
Now.
Needed to touch him, explore him… Kiss him.
Hold him.
Feel his arms around me and his teeth on my flesh.
As the fae fire perimeter dimmed, dropping from a formidable wall to magenta embers in burnt grass, the dragon took flight. Shot up in the air, bellowing loud enough they must have heard him around the globe, then soared in a sweeping circle over what had once been our prison—our tomb in the making. With a smile so wide my cheeks ached, I watched him stretch his wings and loop through the sky, belly underlit by his own fire, by flames that would erase Xargi from the history books for good.
When I looked back to the others, I realized I wasn’t the only one infatuated with the sight. Fintan watched the dragon’s dance with his mouth literally hanging open, as if speechless for the first time in all his long life. Rafe raised a fist in solidarity when Elijah swept over the cluster of fae warriors, and Tully’s big blues tracked him, tail swishing with interest.
As soon as he touched down in the Siberian grassland, the earth shuddered again, this time hard enough to send me stumbling, and I took off in a sprint, heart pounding, my sights locked on the first and last dragon to ever set my heart on fire.
Silhouetted against a hilly backdrop, against a grassy
plateau that stretched for miles and miles all around, Elijah’s dragon form stood leaps and bounds ahead of all the natural beauty. Starchy grass tickled my calves as I ran barefoot toward him, slowing only when my brain finally processed the sheer size of him, this creature tall as a mountain and broad as the ocean, dominating everything in his presence just by being. He folded his wings in as I crept forward, and his next huff of breath had his nostrils flaring and my hair whipping around. I braced against the hot gust but didn’t stop until I was within an arm’s length of him.
Close enough to touch, I lost myself, just for a moment, in his physical prowess, in this towering creature who could crush me with just one of his massive clawed feet. Golden eyes appraised me, and when he dropped his huge head down, face flared with scales and talons like protective armor, Elijah shone through all of it. His calming presence caressed me, even like this, and I raised a trembling hand, holding it between us for a moment, hesitating…
Until he nudged his snout against my palm. Dwarfed by his massive frame, my little hand was nothing as it ghosted along his fiery muzzle, as it stroked scorching scales and brutal spikes. An ant poking at a shoe—that was how I felt.
But he was beautiful and patient, entertaining my cautious exploration only until I reached his wing joint. Then, in a flash, he was gone, shifting from dragon to man so suddenly that it made my head spin.
Gods, I had missed him.
We hadn’t been apart more than a few hours, but the sight of Elijah standing before me, still tall as a mountain and broad as the ocean, naked and panting, glistening with sweat, with the effort of the shift—it made my eyes water. Made my knees weak. Made my heart sing.
Without a word, I charged at him like a missile. He met me halfway, scooping me into his arms, my feet dangling off the ground, and hugged me so tight he crushed the air from my lungs. Something cracked sharply in my back—and I didn’t care. I could take the alpha’s strength. I craved it, needed it, loved it. My fingers wove into his thick tousled locks as I exhaled a shaky sob against his neck.