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I feel so guilty. None of it has been my fault, but I feel like I should have held on more, tried harder to see her. I’m going to do that from now on. I’m going to try to make more time for her.

“Those wings almost look real,” she says, plucking a feather. The sharp pinch reminds me why I will never be able to return to this world again. If anything they seem thicker and stronger and more lustrous than ever before. “You look like a real angel, Melissa. Where did you get them from?”

“Ornix had them specially made,” I say.

“Wow, he’s really spending on you,” she says. “Good. You deserve some sugar from a daddy.”

I laugh. I wish my life was what she imagines it to be. I wish I was just caught up in a hot older guy’s house, being fucked and pampered. Instead I’m in the middle of a war I know I didn’t start, but I still somehow feel responsible for.

“Ouch!” I wince as she yanks another feather out. “Quit it, you’re going to make me bald.”

She giggles and slaps my arm. “You’re so fucking weird, Mel. I missed you! I’m glad you’re back from Mr. O’s fuck shack.”

Only Tempest would call a multimillion-dollar home a fuck shack. We’ve invited our friends, and their friends, and a whole lot of other people to this party that I hope contains someone who knows how the fuck Nox is opening portals to the dragon realm.

This is what we call a long shot. But I think it’s worth taking, if only for the fact that it gets me back to the human world.

Ornix is here too, but he’s in disguise. As a dragon. He’s crouched over the pool, intermittently raising his head and bursting gluts of fire into the sky. I didn’t know how he was going to come out of that disguise without anybody seeing, but then they pulled out a very big tent that he can be covered in. Sort of like a magician’s trick, but nobody knows it’s a trick at all.

People are absolutely fascinated by him. They keep going up and rubbing his leg and trying to climb him even though there’s a velvet rope blocking him off.

Tempest and I party like we used to, but there’s a difference—I am being watched by a massive dragon whose eye is following me across the party as I talk to various guys. I am trying not to flirt too hard, but I have to smile and laugh and engage the men in the hope that they tell me something about their work.

“I’m so into tech,” I say. “It’s truly the most important thing in the world. You know? It’s like, okay, growing food is fine, but food is everywhere. We’re made of food. But tech? You have to make tech.”

“That’s so true,” a man who probably thinks I’m incredibly stupid says.

“What kind of tech do you do?”

“I work for a medical company, we make devices that monitor brain…”

I’ve already started walking away. I don’t have time for people who save people with brain problems. I’ve got to find the asshole who is talking about ripping holes in time and space.

“Cute wings, angel.”

A guy slaps my ass. I don’t see it happening until it’s already happening and then there’s a moment in which I know some shit is absolutely going to go down.

Fwomp!

Ornix disappears.

There’s a squeal from the crowd, most of whom missed the moment he turns into a man in a suit. Those who did probably can’t believe their eyes. It might be on some phones, but at this point I don’t think he cares.

He strides through the crowd, takes me firmly by the arm, and steers me away from the handsy guy.

“I would kill him, but I don’t want to ruin the party,” he growls in my ear. “He will pay for that disrespect after. I have marked him and will ensure he is destroyed.”

“Destroying might be a little harsh,” I say as he leads me inside.

“It is not harsh enough. For what he just did, he should be deprived of…” Ornix catches himself before he utters a string of unhinged punishments that will only serve to scare me. “I do not like them so much as looking at you. You’re mine, and you’ll stay that way.”

“Of course I’m yours,” I giggle. His intensity makes me nervous, almost as if I did something wrong, though he has given me no indication he blames me.

“You are too desirable for these worms to resist,” he continues. “But resist they will or I will destroy their bloodlines. How dare they. You, the vessel of my seed, the love of my eternal life. For them to so much as approach you is unacceptable.”

I have never seen him jealous before, but I suppose I’ve never publicly paraded around in a bodysuit and high heels in the middle of a party filled with tech men before.

He draws me into a private bedroom and shuts the door, pressing me up against it. It is so strange to see him in this very human form, not a trace of dragon about him. I am used to his other side, the one that is taller, bigger, scaled. The one with the slitted eyes and the regal bearing. But even trapped in his human form, he’s so devastatingly handsome. It is just as it was when I first met him. He is angular and beautiful and brutal. His eyes gleam with possession, and I feel his passion for me with every breath he takes. The chemistry between us is not just powerful. It is fundamental. It bends reality. It demands consummation.