Her marking him was what he wanted most. Even with his refusal to come to terms with it, she knew that his fulfilled desire would satiate her for a small eternity.

His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, which in her vision only lightened and darkened in hues of purples and reds rather than their lovely rainbow swirls. His fingers brushed against her forehead, which reminded her of the first night they met.

And then her world was once again black.

XOXOXOXO

Rage ripped through Alessandro as he finished bathing the unconscious woman. His dragon was beyond furious at what had just transpired. He could feel his self control hanging on by the slightest thread, his scales fighting to overtake his sanity and wake the elf back up to demand she finish what she started, but anytime his fingers got near her forehead to undo the spell hesummoned a knife to plunge into his thigh to keep a grip on his control. It made keeping her clean difficult.

“My king?”

Alessandro whipped his gaze to the man standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

“OUT!”He roared, shifting his body so Stone would not see Rowan’s naked form.

“Ale-“

Alessandro sent a flurry of ice to force the dragon out of the room, too out of control to diminish his attack to warning.

A wall of stone erected to protect his protégé. Alessandro found he had never been so grateful for the woman who stepped forth once the wall crumbled with the hits of the shards.

“Help her.” He demanded of Terra, who shoved Stone out of Alessandro’s line of sight.

Terra didn’t skip a beat. She had the woman in her arms only seconds before he felt the dragon was breaking past a threshold of his tight control.

Trusting no one above his Earth General, Alessandro phased to the one place he could pull his beast back from madness.

Gold twinkled and cold air washed over him as the world reassembled.

The immediate feeling of calm he had come searching for was absent. He hadn’t expected the level of fury that his dragon reached, but Rowan was not in the right headspace to make such a decision.

He had prepped the cave for an occasion like this. For a sojourn into the old days, where he was more beast than man.

He wouldn’t be able to leave until either he was back in control or until his dragon could work out the counter spell, which would almost certainly bring sanity with it.

Until such a time arrived, his beast was more than welcome to wreck their hoard. Anything to keep the world safe from him.

Chapter 26

Shattering glass and yells sliced through the air.

The sounds ripped Rowan from sleep in a rush of adrenaline.

Her eye snapped open.

Axel and Miasma were her only visitors, they were looking out of a window that offered a view of a darkened sky.

Pain she prepared herself for never came. Even the unbearable hunger that had haunted her was gone.

The only abnormal thing the elven-succubi felt was her limited access to magic. She despised it.

Pushing her discomfort down, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, getting the attention of both women.

“Princess!” Miasma gasped, already heading to check on her.

Rowan waved her down. “What’s going on?” She approached the window and before either woman could respond, a torrent of wind shattered glass into the room.

Rowan raised a hand to erect a barrier out of habit. When no magic came, she glared at the useless appendage as her sister pushed her to safety while notably handling the good doctor with much softer hands.