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It took a moment for him to understand why she was angry, but he didn’t have time to defend the action that had set her mood.

Rage flared up in his gut, and a wave of nausea filled him as his jealousy spiked to heights he’d never imagined possible when he caught sight of his mate. The wolf’s left shoulder pressed against Rowan’s soft breasts as her wings cut through the air, dodging the flying foes that reached out to stop her.

That rage was short-lived as behind her, the center of the tightly packed bodies rippled apart. It lent the sight of a body so badly deformed the only way that Alessandro recognized it was Antoni Barros was because of the scent of rotting meat. It was the same as it had been in that house on that mountainside.

Even through his anger, he understood her plan at once. As he passed her, mid-transformation into his human body, hereached out a hand to pass through the strands of her hair. It was enough to ground him.

He should have realized like she had, the there was a wolf with a natural advantage near him. But he’d been used to being able to take care of things all on his own for so many years.

The woman was brilliant.

The woman was his.

Jealousy melted into pride as he called forth the magic of his land to go hand to hand with whatever Antoni Barros had transformed into.

XOXOXOXO

As soon as the djinn caught sight of the wolf, its only natural predator, it retreated, throwing the bodies of other flying mystics towards the pair to encumber them.

Her wings were lithe and strong enough to get them through the barrage, even with her lack of training them. She was excited to test those limits as she barreled out of the way of a pegasus with fire in the depths of its eyes.

As soon as she saw a clear shot, she took it.

“Sorry about this.”She fed into his mind and, using the momentum a necessary front flip had caused her, she flung him with all the strength her arms could muster.

His scream caught the djinn off guard, but the alpha was quick to understand what he had to do and he took a giant bite of air. He damn near missed the aura around the djinn’s neck from his surprise.

Relief rolled through Rowan when the wolf remained in the air.

With the Djinn panicked and trying to swat the wolf from his neck, Rowan opened her pores up to the magic that had been knocking at her.

It burned, the resistance of her nulling jewelry against the power that she was allowing in, but she didn’t care. She had to do this to buy Alessandro all the time he needed to fight against the hoards Antoni had sent after her and incapacitate whatever the witch had become.

She’d gotten a brief look at Barros as the bodies parted; she could tell that the being that had killed her friend was gone and what stood in his place could only be subdued by the power of a being as potent with magic as Alessandro was.

Rowan concentrated her sight on the lines of magic that were currently so chaotic around her. She’d never seen so many spells executed at once from so many branches of magic. It might have been overwhelming if she hadn’t come equipped with Odin’s Eye.

While she hadn’t played with the supposed powers of prophecy it came with, she had been analyzing magic around her all day, playing and picking through the threads of the shifter, demon, and elf magic she’d come into contact with. She’d have to thank her godmother for such a useful gift as she dug out the thread of bright blue, the djinn’s half elemental-half celestial nature, and looked for the golden thread of earth magic attached to the Earth General.

She hoped Terra wouldn’t mind as Rowan phased out a share of her sleep sand. It was a social faux pas to intrude among another spellcaster’s spell and use it as one’s own, but considering the emergency of getting the djinn down before it could cast a wide enough spell to incapacitate the dragons, Rowan hoped a sincere apology would be enough to calm her.

Heat bubbled up behind her and Rowan tucked her wings in, sinking like a stone as a fireball from her left swept where she’d just been.

She took herself out of the dive as she’d finally gathered enough magic to enact the phase.

One second Terra’s sand particles were sweeping over the bodies on the ground in a grainy cascade, the next they were midair, falling not only over the djinn but also all the other flying bodies of both dragons and the brainwashed victims.

Panic swept through her as she’d only gathered enough magic to phase Harris out of the way, but not the others.

Under normal circumstances, her magic would have replenished as soon as she used it, but with her current limits, she had to wait. Her neck blazed in pain as she tried to surpass her constraints. She fingered the piece of jewelry, getting ready to tear it off until she felt a swell of magic behind her.

She turned and plucked Stone out of midair.

“What the-”

“Cushion their fall!” She yelled over the screaming.

He glanced behind her, nodded, and zoomed past her with a pair of gorgeous opal wings. They propelled him faster than Rowan thought she could ever achieve, sending out a cushion of air.