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Clad in only her silky pajama shorts and an oversized tee, she zoomed out towards the front of the house, giving the doorframe an appreciative pat as she slid into a pair of rain boots she left near the entrance.

The night had a new moon sky. Stars twinkled brightly with the lack of city lights, but they didn’t make up for the absence of the lunar satellite.

It was so dark Rowan only saw the body shooting itself towards her because it had a fireball gripped in its talons.

Rowan dug her heels into the porch planks, crouching a bit to make sure she would actually stop the seething creature rather than letting it in through the open door. She realized a secondlater that the creature wasn’t intending to meet her body to body, but to send the fireball to her face.

Rowan’s water barrier ate the flame before it hit her square on target, but she didn’t miss how much power it packed.

Who in the endless hells had she upset so much they were aiming to kill? Had her father been right, and the Coven had reneged on the agreement? She couldn’t believe they would risk the Elder’s Grimoire.

She stepped out onto the porch, her eyes locking on the beast. Its transformation seemed to have stopped halfway to completion. One giant horn erupted from its skull, curving back around its misshapen head. One eye was reptilian, the other blacked out. Its mouth was full of fangs, but the humanoid shape had them jutting out in all kinds of disturbing directions. On the opposite side of the horn was a giant bat-like wing bigger than the entire body of the thing. Only one hand was taloned, and a scaled foot was being dragged as the beast got closer.

So, not the Coven, but something much worse.

“What happened to you?” Rowan asked, her breath short.

The creature gave off a pained sound, so sorrowful and familiar. It wasn’t as melodious as it had been in Draconis, but it was what had turned the dragons berserk.

The creature rushed towards her, sharp talons glinting with the sparse night light, taking advantage of the apparent second of indecision from Rowan. It wanted her dead.

Rowan sneered as she dodged deadly swipe after deadly swipe, careful not to stumble on the rocks underfoot while she struggled with doing what she knew she had to do. In a desperate attempt, she tried to drain the thing’s energy source,but she found it wasn’t feeding off nature’s magic like regular dragons did. Instead, it was feeding off the source of its own pain, chaotic and full of dark ancient curses. The thing should’ve already been going cold in a ditch somewhere with the saturation.

Still hoping for an alternate answer, Rowan turned to the option of incapacitation, but a slice to her thigh and forehead when she attempted it made her realize a knockout spell would be ineffective.

Spell resistant creature. Rowan cursed as she summoned the only solution she knew.

Tears filled her eyes as light erupted from her hand. It took on the form of a blazing sword. It crackled through the air, lighting the edges of the forest as she fed it more and more power to make one slice all she’d need to finish it. She recalled the other broken creatures that showed up at her doorstep looking for release when they realized there was no return to their former life.

She looked into the reptilian eye for a breath, catching a bit of lingering consciousness, and she whispered an apology before she sliced through where she thought its heart would be. She watched as it convulsed after her strike. When it came down, it landed at her feet, breathing hard, the song fading into the wind.

Rowan released the sword and as it extinguished, darkness consumed them again. She looked down at the body as the cleansing took effect. A small object fell from where its talons transformed into a delicate hand.

So that’s what had driven the dragons insane? Pan’s Flute. The original.

She fell to her knees before the object and glared down at it. The first time she put on a nulling chain, a hatred for things that made people lose free will carved her soul. The deep-seated darkness had swelled in the following years. She wanted to stomp on the relic. To destroy it so thoroughly it would be a question if it’d ever existed, but it was impossible. Godly trinkets were impossible to destroy, and hundreds of curses saturated this one.

The body next to it stopped morphing, and a dragon shifter lay in its place.

She was beautiful. Long, dark blue hair fanned out around her glowing porcelain skin. Her eyes were about the same shade as her hair as they took Rowan in through the shadows.

“They’re okay, aren’t they?” She bit out in short pants.

Was she asking about the other dragons? If so, Rowan didn’t think so, but she couldn’t find it in herself to say so when it would bring the woman no comfort in her last moments. She briefly wondered how many lies she’d given over the years. “Yeah.”

The dragon let out a gasp as her gaze settled behind Rowan’s head. Tears filled her eyes, and she sobbed. “I’m sorry, my king.”

Rowan didn’t have to crane her neck to see who was there. She felt his immense power shroud her like a blanket. He didn’t say a thing as the woman let out a final breath and was gone.

With her departure, the strength that kept Rowan’s tears in check faded. She looked up, searching for the moon, but she had forgotten it was gone, and all she saw were the glowing silver eyes of the Dragon King staring at her.

She knew what that meant for normal shifters, but there was no way it could be the same for the Dragon King. His eyes had shifted colors before. That was proof that she couldn’t expect him to follow the same precedent, right?

“I’m sorry.” She repeated the last words of the woman before them.

Alessandro shook his head, his curls bouncing as he did so. He knelt down beside her and he reached a hand out to touch the other dragon.

An odd mix of relief and disappointment filled her. If the silver had been the sign of his beast’s intent to mate, he wouldn’t have been able to ignore the instinct.