The Air Witch's Dragon

by Severine Wolfe

  THE AIR WITCH’S DRAGON

  Dragons of Wushin Book 1

  By Severine Wolfe

  Paranormal Romance

  The Air Witch’s Dragon

  Copyright © 2017 by Severine Wolfe

  First E-Book Published October 2017

  Cover by Melody Simmons

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the author.

  All characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations are strictly coincidental.

  License Statement

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  A Cursed New World…

  When Ryluth personally invited Sofia to visit his world with an eye towards staying, he had no idea what to expect, but he had felt so much relief when he saw her step through the portal.

  Sofia had known that she didn’t fit on either world she’d been on, but she was reluctant to leave the familiar and her friends, but she takes the chance to visit Wushin. She wants to explore and discover new things and forget her wretched past on the Demonworld and the only way she can do that is by leaving everything she knows behind.

  The two of them take a huge leap of faith and try to break the curse the Dragons have labored under for so long. Meanwhile, someone would rather they didn’t.

  Ryluth not only has to deal with his reaction to Sofia, but the fact that his Dragons want the women she’s brought with her. They have never surrendered their honor under the curse, but the moment six females step out of a portal, it’s a very near thing. Everyone wants a mate, but doesn’t want her to die. So, they must work together to solve the curse.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to anyone who ever worked with me in the workplace. I apologize, unreservedly, for being that person.

  Acknowledgements

  I’m sure you’ve all read that nothing is created in a vacuum and that is especially true of books. I don’t know how many dinners have been ruined by my ruminating on some plot point, or by the fact that I get lost in the work and let it burn. So, my family deserve major kudos for putting up with me.

  If you’ve noticed a certain improvement in the texts, that is due to the ever-vigilant Stephanie Flores, without whom I would be lost. I love her because she can ask me “What were you thinking?” and I step back and ask myself the same question and never get mad at her for doing it. Plus, she keeps me so on point on language use. My books look better because of her.

  I would love to also acknowledge Melody Simmons who does the covers for my books. Early next year I plan on asking her to recover the Demonworld series and brand it. Her work is so damned awesome. I am never let down by a cover.

  How to Read This Book

  If you are reading this sentence then you’ve pretty much got it. Good job. Just keep going the way you are.

  Prologue

  A god walked among the dead and dying on the field of battle. Every being that saw him, beheld his countenance, fell to their knees in fear and deep respect.

  “WHERE IS SHE?” He bellowed and all present quaked.

  Finally, another Drakkos approached the dread lord.

  “My Lord, Threlzin...” he was trying to not sound so frightened but it was difficult when he could not stop shaking. “Please, My Lord, whom do you seek?”

  The huge Dragon God stopped and turned his head to consider the male who had dared speak to him, interrupting his search.

  “Find her, priest,” he said as quietly as a Dragon God could. “Find Coalna or all your lives are forfeit.”

  The Dragon God priest nodded and knew all present had heard and the search would begin. But a question came in his mind, and not a question he necessarily wanted to be around when it was answered.

  “My, Lord, can you not locate her through your bond?”

  Fire seared from the eyes of the Threlzin. His metallic scales shimmering in the sunlight breaking through the fog that had covered the battlefield for hours.

  “If I could do that, little priest, do you not think I would already have my mate?”

  “Yes, my Lord, please excuse me,” and he ran like the coward he knew himself to be.

  Hours later, the entire world of Wushin knew Threlzin had found his mate as his rage and grief burst forth from him in a roar that had scared more than one being into death.

  The High Priest of Threlzin had found the cave where Coalna had been taken and knew her corporeal time was nearly done. He took a flask from his robes and grasped the last tear, still present on the face of the beloved Coalna, mate of the Drakkos god, Threlzin. He put it in his pocket, fearing he would drop it, when Threlzin appeared in the cave. His cry of grief deafened the High Priest, who would never hear right again in his short lifespan thereafter. His fear of the Threlzin so great that he had lived the rest of his life in abject fear of ever facing the Dragon God ever again.

  “CO-AL-NA!” Threlzin roared to the heavens and the entire world heard his anger and sorrow as he watched the body of his mate burst into flames upon entering the cave. His High Priest, cowering in the back, put his hands over his ears, crying out in pain as his ear drums burst. He pissed himself in fear.

  The few Dragons who had dared to search with Threlzin took back a tale so wicked and heartbreaking that none questioned the curse that came with it.

  Threlzin had found his beloved Coalna, dead, inside a cave near the coast of their great ocean. Her body had been drained of blood and she’d been skinned. Both of those things, blood and scales, beyond value in the magical world. The bodies of several Faerie at the scene told the tale of which race had dared such a desecration.

  The carcass of the lone Drakkos who had damned his entire line and their race as a whole lay nearby, drained and skinned as well.

  Everyone in the family of the Drakkos that had betrayed Threlzin and Coalna dropped dead immediately. Elderly, newborn, healthy, infirm, it mattered not. They dropped where they stood as the entire world of Wushin looked on in horror. Family lines were nearly a religion in itself and to see one whole family line cut out was a frightening thought.

  Then Threlzin stripped away the longevity of all of the mates on the world. Many Drakkos knew the grief and rage of their god as their mates suddenly became their chronological age and died. There were torturous screams throughout the world. Crazed Drakkos killing themselves when denied their mate bond. So much death, so much grief overwhelmed their world.

  Threlzin was not through, though. Through his grief he hurled one more damnation at the Drakkos.

  “Your world will not heal this wound quickly, or even in your lifetimes. You will not know love, and you will not know legacy until you find one such as I have just lost, and she loves you more than you can ever deserve. And, then you will lose her as I have lost my Coalna. You cannot bring my mate back to me, so you shall not have that solace. As long as I don’t have my mate, you shall not have yours.”

  And then he withdrew from them until the day they could find a way to return to him what was his or die trying.

  Chapter One

  “Are you certain you want to do this, Sofia?” Cassie Clancy aske
d for the one-hundredth time, and Sofia found she was losing her patience with the Demi and most powerful witch any of them had ever seen.

  “What is there for me here, Cassie?” Sofia turned from the bag she was packing. “There is nothing on Earth, my entire family is gone. There is nothing for me here. I cannot stand the touch of a Demon. I cannot get past my repulsion.” She looked down and tried to hide the blush of shame she always felt on remembering her earlier time on this world, held as a sex slave, used abominably, and now afraid to try to find happiness within this world or with its inhabitants.

  “There is no mate for me here… no family.”

  She felt Cassie’s arms come around her from behind, and the woman laid her cheek on Sofia’s shoulder.

  “I can’t stand to lose you, Sofia,” the young woman finally admitted.

  Sofia turned and embraced Cassie, running her hand down the smooth, dark curls of Cassie’s head, comforting her as she’d comforted so many other women on this world.

  “My adventures await elsewhere, Cassie,” she smiled. “I must seek my adventure, for it surely isn’t seeking me.”

  “What if Bax and I took you to the Technomage World? We could spend a couple of weeks visiting Penelope and Gustav and you could see if any of the men there catch your eye.” Cassie grinned, warming to the idea, but Sofia just shook her head.

  “The Drakkos invitation appeals to me, Cassie. I cannot tell you why, but it does.” She wondered if the Drakkos could possibly weave a compulsion into their invitation, but she had received it second hand from Cassie, so she was fairly sure that this was the direction she should be moving.

  Cassie looked at Sofia for several moments, then nodded her head as if she had come to some sort of agreement with herself.

  “Ryluth asked me to extend the invitation to you, personally, Sofia.” She then looked at the Italian Air witch.

  “I have no idea why,” Sofia replied honestly. “I only spoke to him to ascertain whether he needed more food or drink. He never spoke to me at all outside of that.”

  Cassie just shrugged.

  “So, I cannot possibly talk you out of leaving us?” For effect, she pushed out her bottom lip in a pout that Cassie’s daughter Ariadne would try to emulate.

  “I must find my own way, and it does not appear to be on this world.” Sofia was firm in this knowledge. She just knew it inside of her.

  Sofia had to chuckle.

  “You will come back to us if you don’t find it?” Cassie looked at her, so worried, that for a moment Sofia seriously reconsidered what she was doing.

  “You have Brigid, Ava, and Lauren to keep you busy, not to mention your husband and children,” Sofia smiled. “You have family and happiness here, Cassie. You have everything. I have nothing holding me here but the promise of holding your children.”

  Cassie’s eyes became clouded and Sofia prepared herself for the big Demi tears the woman leaked when she was sad.

  “I will miss you, desperately, Sofia,” Cassie rasped and grabbed her into another tight hug. She then pushed Sofia back and took a breath. “I will allow messages through the Wushin Portal. If ever you need me, I will be right there. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from going to you. You are not alone.”

  Sofia smiled and hugged Cassie to her.

  “Andiamo, Cassandra,” Sofia told her in her native Italian.

  “Si, bella,” Cassie chuckled.

  *****

  How many women do you think that Cassie will bring here?” Lennalth asked Ryluth for what he was sure was the thousandth time. In the past hour.

  “What did I say the last time that you asked me three minutes ago?” Ryluth had to work hard to keep the smile from his face. They were both wearing their human form so it was a hard trick to pull off.

  “You said you didn’t know,” his old friend said, his brow wrinkling with confusion.

  “Has any new intelligence come in between the time you last asked me and my answer?”

  “No. You know it hasn’t.” Lennalth turned his full glare on Ryluth, who only smiled.

  “So why would my answer be any different?”

  Lennalth gave him a disgusted look. “Do you think...”

  “Stop! All of this supposition is doing none of us any good,” The leader of the Drakkos looked over to some of the other males waiting at the portal for Cassie to bring the women through. They would have time to meet each Drakkos and decide whether or not they felt like mating permanently with any of them.

  As it stood, females would come and give them young, but they always left. Taking their extra magical power with them when they left, because they always left. There had not been a mate bond formed since Coalna had been killed. Ryluth didn’t have much hope that any would form now, but he felt such a pull towards Sofia that he had not had towards any females he’d ever met. He had to try to save his people.

  “What if none of them choose any of us?” Lennalth had to say the one fear all of them were denying they secretly harbored.

  “Then this experiment is a failure.” He stopped walking and turned to his best friend and Captain of the Guard. “Lennalth, you are severely trying my patience,” he turned to his best friend and right hand. “Usually you are the voice of reason, the cool head. Quiet. Ponderous. Now, you’re behaving like a female,” Ryluth’s lip curled. “I don’t like it.”

  Looking down at his feet, Lennalth’s face burned red. “I worry.” He then looked up and his eyes were deadly serious. “This is so very important to all of us.”

  Ryluth knew it was. After all, this may be the only chance they had to attract mates and perhaps find a way to break the gods be damned curse, put on them by their own god for the death of his mate. Important was an understatement of epic proportions. His people were close to giving up hope entirely. He was merely trying to hold off the despair a little longer with this trial. In truth, he wasn’t even sure having and losing a mate would appease Threlzin. Nothing in the intervening years since Coalna’s death had shown them any sign their god even listened to them any longer.

  The males on his world had contracted with magical women, mainly human women, from the Technomage World and other magical worlds, that could breed with the Drakkos. But, the women never stayed, never formed an emotional attachment to the males or their children and were happy to leave once they were assured of the boost in their magical power. The males were happy to have progeny, but were saddened to be raising their fledglings alone with no feminine influence. It had worn all of them down. In fact, the only Drakkos born recently had been years ago, an no other Drakkos was even bothering to visit the Technomage World to even try do more than scratch an itch.

  He had prayed earnestly before he had approached the Demonworld for trade with an eye towards enticing females to his world for breeding and hopefully breaking the curse, and make no mistake, it was a curse, they suffered under.

  When he had finally approached Cassandra, a miracle herself, a female Demi-Demon, questioning whether she could interest magical women from Earth or the Technomage World to visit them and see if they might like to settle there, he’d been as nervous as he’d been taking his first flight. He’d had to explain the curse and that they were not like the Demons at all, never abducting or raping females. In fact, females who had come to Wushin had been treated like queens. For tender-hearted males, it had hurt them brutally when the female would leave them as soon as she gave the males the egg.

  Cassie had scoffed at the idea of males having tender feelings, but she had said she would see what she could arrange, and in the past week she had sent him word that she had found five witches who wished to come to Wushin and see if they could find mates.

  He had been overjoyed and had set his entire world to prepare for their arrival. They were under his protection until they found mates or wished to return home. A great dinner was being prepared to introduce the females to many of the males left on the world.

  Which was why he was standing at the portal with roughly
twenty Drakkos rather than just himself and Lennalth, as he had planned.

  Everyone was talking in low tones, as if a loud voice would prevent the females from arriving. Ryluth looked up at the sky and realized that Cassie would be arriving any moment. His stomach clenched in anticipation and he wondered if Sofia would be among them. He had to be honest, it was truly the only reason he was there at all.

  He had extended her a personal invitation, through Cassie, hoping beyond hope that she would accept. He felt a pull to her, but didn’t know why. He had never preferred one female over another. Sofia was different, at least to him. Lennalth had found no female that caught his fancy while they had visited the Demonworld. Who knew what was coming with these Earth females?

  The air around the portal shimmered and it opened as females began walking through. Cassie followed them and closed the portal and locked it as soon as she was through. She smiled at Ryluth.

  He squinted, making sure he wasn’t seeing what he wanted to see. There were six women, but he really didn’t notice them as his gaze was firmly locked on Sofia. She’d come!

  “I bring you these females for consideration of your world,” Cassie spoke formally, but smiled at all the Drakkos standing about. “And, I have brought Sofia, at your request, Ryluth. She has graciously accepted your kind invitation.”

  “Six?” Lennalth was barely breathing, staring intently at the females.

  Cassie looked over and nodded. “I promised five females who consented to come here to see if they might find mates and settle here.”

  Ryluth’s mouth had dried up. He couldn’t speak. The fact that Sofia here, on his world, gripped him like a tight fist around his middle. He was breathing in short breaths, nearly panting.