by Alisa Woods
She nodded and relief washed through her.
When Rosalyn looked back, the morphing, pulsing blue cloud was oddly taking the shape of a person. Almost like her father was replicating her mother in magic, a giant magical shadow he would somehow infuse into her. Even though Rosalyn got the general idea of what he was doing, it was still a shock when he reared back and shoved his hands toward her mother, pushing the magic straight into her body. Her mother jerked back and stumbled against the couch.
“Mom!” Rosalyn tried to rush to her side, but she wasn’t as fast on her feet as she used to be. Leonidas got there first, catching hold of her mother’s arm before she tumbled to the ground. Her mother was shaking all over—literally vibrating—with her eyes squeezed shut and only standing because Leonidas was holding her up. “Mom.” But her voice was weak.
What had she done?
But her mom seemed to gain enough control over her limbs to grab hold of the couch and Leonidas. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
“Mmkay,” she chattered through her teeth.
Leonidas gave Rosalyn a dark look, then gently to her mom, he said, “I’m just going to help you get comfortable, Ms. Thorne.” Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her around to the front of the couch. Her father hovered nearby, a stricken look on his face, and Alora was quietly crying at the end of the couch, looking on but just wringing her hands. Rosalyn scurried after Leonidas and lifted her mom’s feet so she could sit on the couch next to her and hold her mom’s feet in her lap. Leonidas was holding her as she sat upright. Rosalyn watched the runes hurry down Leonidas’s arm to the hand he had lightly resting on her mom’s forearm. He was peering intently at her face, which seemed ridiculously pale. But slowly, the jitters calmed, and the frenzied dance of the runes on Leonidas’s skin slowed. After what seemed like an eternity, her mom’s eyes opened.
“Mom?” Rosalyn was almost afraid to ask how she felt, much less if the crazy-magical-transfer or hex-undoing or whatever had done any harm.
“I’m okay, Rose,” she said, her voice shaky, but even those few words gushed relief through Rosalyn.
Leonidas had a smile on his face, which made her feel even better. “Your magic was just a little… unbalanced. I settled it a bit.” He leaned in to whisper, conspiratorially. “Helps that you have some of my blood still in you.”
Her mom hiccupped a small laugh, and Rosalyn smiled wide. So much had happened since she’d tried to steal blood from Leonidas to cure her mom’s cancer... it felt like forever ago.
“Wait… what?” her father asked. “You have dragon blood? When did that happen?” He wasn’t quite back to being the asshole he was before, but it was still enough to make Rosalyn shake her head. She wasn’t going to explain.
“When you were busy with other things,” her mother said with a sparkle in her eyes.
Her father just frowned more.
“Isadora,” Alora said, scooting up to the back of the couch and reaching to squeeze her mom’s shoulder. “Don’t keep us in suspense, for magic’s sake! Do something.”
Her mother smiled, and amazingly, the shakes from before seemed almost entirely gone. She sat up straighter on the couch, retrieving her feet from Rosalyn’s lap. Leonidas rose up to give her room.
“How about this?” Then she twirled her fingers in the air with a little flicking motion, and suddenly, on the couch next to Rosalyn, was a tiny baby outfit, complete with a beautiful bronze dragon embroidered on the chest.
Magic. Her mother had conjured clothes… and Rosalyn felt like her heart was ready to burst.
“Oh, mom!” Her belly made it awkward to scoot, so Rosalyn had to rise up from the couch to cross the few feet that separated them and throw her arms around her mother’s neck.
“I do believe that’s our first baby gift.” Leonidas’s cheery voice pushed Rosalyn right over the edge, and then both her and her mom were wiping their eyes and smiling and laughing with a crazy joy that couldn’t be contained.
Alora had her hand over her mouth, but she was smiling and tearing up behind it.
Rosalyn disentangled from her mother, and before the moment could slip away and sanity could return, she went around the couch and gave her father a hug around the waist. She caught him off guard, and she escaped before he could hug her back, but she couldn’t believe the tormented look on his face was anything but good.
Before that could get any more awkward, she turned back to her mother and clasped her hands together, declaring, “Okay! What next?”
With Leonidas’s help, her mother rose up from the couch. She still looked a little unsteady, but her face was gaining color by the moment. “Now, I need to get back on my feet. Physically and magically.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Rosalyn didn’t know why she thought her mother could jump right into separating the demon from her baby.
Alora shook her head. “Sweetie, we’re going to do that birthing spell on you, but your mother needs to be at her peak form for that. I’ll make sure she’s ready.”
“Oh! Okay.” That made sense. They would only have one shot at this, and Rosalyn wanted every possible thing going in their favor.
“And it is a birthing spell, Rose,” her mother said, stretching out the last of the jitters. “Once we start to separate the baby, we’ll need to have the physical birth follow immediately. I’d do it all at the same time, but I think that would be riskier. Still… we’ll have to wait until the baby is ready to be born.”
Two more weeks? Rosalyn tried to hide her disappointment, but Leonidas rushed over to her, smile wide on his face. “Well,” he said, “I’ll just have to keep you occupied until then.” He turned to the rest. “If you’ll excuse us, I’d feel a lot better if my mate had a rest from all the excitement.”
That got nods all around, and before she could even protest, he was hustling her out the door.
“Leonidas!” she chastised him as they strode away from her mom’s apartment. “You hardly gave me a chance to say goodbye.”
He held up his fingers, counting them off. “First, you are tired, and you need to get off your feet. This whole thing was crazy stressful for me, I can’t even imagine what it’s done to you. Or the baby.”
Well, he was right about that. She was completely wrung out.
“And second, your father and your mother need a moment alone.”
“What?” She scowled at him. “You know he took another mate, right? And has, like, three other children or something.”
“Yes.” He smirked. “And if there was some kind of gratitude your mother wanted to express, I’m sure she would not want a roomful of witnesses to that fact.”
Rosalyn looked at him like he was crazy. “You realize not everyone is as sex-crazed as dragons, right?”
“She does have my blood now.”
Rosalyn couldn’t help the giggle that brought out… and once she started, she couldn’t stop. She was gasping for air by the time they reached Leonidas’s lair. He scooped her up and carried her, laughing like a fool, across the threshold.
Two weeks more… and maybe, just maybe, everything would work out right.
“Are you keeping your eyes closed?” Leonidas asked.
“I do everything you say.” Rosalyn grinned.
He cracked a smile, but she did, in fact, still have her eyes shut. “If you’re going to lie, at least be convincing.” He kept leading her by the hand through the wandering halls of the keep. They’d spent nearly all of the last two weeks in the lair, loving and living and whispering their shared dreams that would never come true. He knew that, even as he knew that Rosalyn clung to the hope this birthing spell her mother would cast tomorrow would work.
Leonidas kept up the pretense, but he knew—this was their last day.
He pushed that thought aside, savagely chastising himself for letting his mind go there. But it was difficult to keep focus, especially when he had insisted on this special outing precisely because it was the final day before the birth. Dragon
births weren’t any more certain than human ones, but tomorrow the baby would be full term, and a magically-induced birth was possible… once the birthing spell had completed. And likely failed. But Leonidas had decided that proceeding with the birth at that moment was for the best. He would be prepared, and he needed that to have any hope of whisking the child—his son—away to the fate that awaited them both.
Leonidas tugged Rosalyn through a doorway, careful to not let her catch a toe on the threshold. Her belly was gloriously full, but it made the going awkward. He would carry her, but she insisted on walking. Only now they had a spiral staircase to ascend.
“These steps go up a full two stories,” Leonidas warned her. “Are you sure I can’t carry you?”
“I’m sure you can, dragon prince,” she said with a smirk. “But I’m quite capable, thank you. Can I open my eyes yet?”
“No.” He held her hand and hovered close in case she missed a step.
“I had no idea that babymoons were so adventurous.” But she was still smiling.
He’d arranged for a special room for them—private and secluded—for this honeymoon-before-the-baby. “You haven’t seen anything yet, my love.”
“Well, obviously.” She laughed, and the clear, high sound of it lifted his heart.
Sweet magic, how was he going to walk away from her tomorrow? The only consolation was that he wouldn’t have to go far. His brothers promised to meet him in the pool room and make quick work of both his death and the baby’s. He would go first—dragons are hard to kill, but not when voluntarily offering up their necks to the razor-sharp talons of one’s brothers. And the baby… he refused to think of that. He would be gone, and dwelling on it was an unnecessary torture. His brothers would fabricate a story to tell Rosalyn, protecting her from the truth and the fallout from the collapse of the treaty. There was no helping that, but deep inside a keep, protected by a House full of dragon shifters, was an excellent place for Rosalyn to safely hide out during the turmoils that lay ahead.
Finally, they reached the top of the stairs, which led to a private royal chamber, one where the king and queen could escape for a secluded, romantic getaway without having to leave the keep. It had last been used by his mother and father, and Lucian and Arabella were the rightful owners of the throne now, but Leonidas had gained permission to use it for a night. And he’d decorated it just for the occasion.
“All right,” he said. “Open your eyes.” Satisfaction coursed through him with the wide-eyed look on Rosalyn’s face when she did.
The suite was relatively small, but the entire floorspace was either water or bed. The whirlpool was lit from below, giving a magical blue glow to the water, and the rest of the room was illuminated by a thousand flickering candles, each in a tiny stone holder that would keep them from burning down the place. The bed was broad and round and covered in crushed red velvet.
“Leonidas, it’s beautiful,” she said and turned to him. Peering up at him with those blue eyes and all the love she seemed to have for him, rendered him unable to speak. Instead, he simply started unbuttoning her loose, linen shirt, the one that billowed over her belly.
She gave him a coy look. “So we’re really here just to do one thing.” But she wasn’t stopping him.
Somehow that gave him back his voice. “One thing, over and over.” He finished with the last button, then slid her shirt from her shoulders. He dropped to one knee to work the loose-fitting pants down her legs. He kissed her belly for good measure, then peered up at her. She smiled, looking down at him over her swollen breasts and her belly safely holding their son, and to him, she’d never been more radiant with womanly power. That so much love and beauty and pure goodness would be destroyed a day hence… his mind rebelled against it, and he couldn’t help the fantasies. The one where he took Rosalyn and the baby and fled. The one where they hid in some remote mountain cabin, raising their son outside of both the mortal and immortal realms. Where they somehow existed in a warded retreat that would allow them to simply love and live. He couldn’t help the fantasies from invading his thoughts, especially when he was holding her this way. Especially when she was about to give him a son… but he had to banish those dreams when they came.
Because they weren’t possible.
They would be lucky if the baby survived the birth. Any number of things could go wrong, including that the demon could trigger a turn into wyvern. The prospect that she would give birth to a fire-breathing animal instead of the sweet innocence of their infant son kept him wide awake at night, even as Rosalyn was peacefully slumbering next to him. He would have no choice but to physically restrain the wild baby dragon before it could hurt Rosalyn. And restrain wasn’t the right word—Leonidas would have to kill him to stop him. With Rosalyn watching.
It was literally the stuff of nightmares.
Even if they escaped that horrific fate at the birth, the threat of it would haunt them. His child would constantly be at risk of turning—and he would only be more wild and more powerful as he grew. They couldn’t run away from that fact, and the pain would only be worse when they lost him. Now, under the peaceful and soothing influence of his mother’s womb, the baby remained calm. Unchanged. It was one reason Leonidas had kept up their endless lovemaking right until the end—he had to do whatever it took to keep the baby from turning before he was born. Otherwise, Rosalyn could be lost in this tragedy as well… and that, his heart could not bear.
He was lingering far too long. She was giving him a strange look.
He rose up, peppering her sweet belly with kisses along the way. Then he gave her a long kiss on the lips, tender and sweet and with every ounce of love he possessed. “You’re everything to me, sweet Rose,” he whispered, holding her close. “Everything. Always remember it.”
She wound her fingers into his hair. “Make love to me.”
And so he did. With a whisk of fingers, he magicked away his clothes and scooped her up into his arms. Skin-to-skin like this, his heart as bare as his body, magic sparking wherever they touched… he didn’t think it could get any more elemental. This was love. His love for her, and hers for him, and their baby the proof in between. That he had somehow survived for five hundred years without it was a wonder to him.
Make love to me.
As he stepped down into the whirlpool, the heated water lapping at his legs and then welcoming them both into its warm, weightless embrace, he sought the best way to give her exactly what she asked for.
But the answer appeared before him just as easily as slipping into the pool. She nearly floated out of his arms, her full-to-brimming-with-life body extra buoyant in perfectly warm water. The pool was large enough—they weren’t in danger of banging the sides—so he simply urged her to lean back and float in the transcendent blue glow and slowly bobbing waves. Then he backed up onto the entrance steps until he was at just the right height. He brought the sweet softness of her core to meet the hard rigidity of his cock and eased into her.
She gasped and let her arms float wide.
The gentleness at first was lulling. He was pleasuring her with his hand and his cock, but slowly, luxuriously, like they had all the time in the world. The water nipped at the edges of the pool, and the waves they were making steadily climbed higher. She was breathing heavily but with her head tipped back, letting him set the pace, glide her body, have complete control. She’d given herself over to him in every way, and not just now—she risked her life to save him from his curse; she risked it again to take his seal and his child; and now, she trusted him to pleasure her and make this night the best in a long string of loving acts.
He would do everything in his power to do so.
Her breaths were becoming more shallow, and already he could feel her flesh quivering around him, getting close to the first climax he would give her tonight. It didn’t take much, just a steady, slow thrusting as she floated, but an intermittent flicking of his thumb to bring her there. She cursed and gasped and clenched tight down on his cock, con
vulsing the water with her orgasm so much he was afraid she might go under. But she didn’t, and when the fury of it had come and passed, he pulled her close again. He left her body, his cock still aching for more, but he wanted her skin-to-skin again. He kissed her gently and thoroughly, and the soft sighs she gave him were more precious than words.
For a long time, they stayed that way—him standing and brushing back her wet hair and kissing her; her bobbing in the water, legs still wrapped around his waist, hands roaming his shoulders. Their bodies were slick with pool water and slid easily and erotically, adding to the ache in his cock. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he lowered her legs until she could stand, the water still supporting most of the weight of the baby. They walked deeper into the pool until it was chest-high, and they both were near-floating. Then he turned her toward the enameled edge, putting her hands to the cool wetness of the stone.
“I need you, my love,” he whispered, his breath warm to combat the cooling evaporation of water on her skin.
“I’m yours. Always.” She was still breathless from the first round and their kissing, but when he pulled her body back and angled just right to take her from behind, her breath became ragged again in a way that surged an urgent need to claim her. And so he did, an artful dance of nearly zero gravity love-making, his hands having to grip her hips hard to give his thrusts strength. But as their bodies met and separated, met and separated, pleasure spiking through him with every delicious stroke, her cries sang of their love and went straight to his heart.
He’d never imagined such a perfect thing as this could be his.
But it was… and it was enough.
Even if only for one more night.
“Oh, God, Leonidas!” Rosalyn could hardly catch her breath.
“Yes, my love.” His voice was strained.
She could tell he was holding back—not with the thrusts of his cock, filling and ramming her as she lay at the edge of the bed, but with his own climax. She let her head fall back and just enjoyed the fullness of him, the magical connection, the sparking pleasure. Her entire body was jostling with the hard banging, but it was just what she needed to send her soaring toward her climax. And when she came, it felt like every muscle in her body seized up, a great shuddering tension-relief that went on and on. Leonidas finally let go, plunging deep and groaning as he came.