Page 22 of Dragon’s Midlife Secret Baby (Shifter Nation: Enchanted Over Forty #1)

“Oh, thank Goddess!” As Chelsea and Beck reached Corbin, she leaped from his back and fell to her knees. Griffin wordlessly handed her toddler over. He was screaming and dirty, and a good amount of snot ran from his nose, but she pressed him to her chest and held him tightly. “My sweet boy.”

Beck had quickly flipped his form, and his arms enclosed firmly around them both.

He breathed heavily and muttered something under his breath.

Through her tears, Chelsea could see the pure anguish on Beck’s face.

She’d been pissed at him when they’d arrived on the island, and then she’d turned that anger toward those who actually deserved it.

Now, she wasn’t sure how she felt. For the moment, she just kissed the top of Corbin’s head over and over.

“Now you can get the hell off my island!” Sol called out. “And take your brat with you. I’d suggest keeping a very close eye on him, though.”

A blaze of gold light sent him staggering slightly as Maeve lobbed an attack.

He recovered quickly and flicked an attack right back. “Please. As if your miserable attempts at magic could affect me.”

“Is that why you ran away like a dog with your tail tucked between your legs?” Lucille called out. “You didn’t have any chance of stopping us until you threatened the life of a child.”

Maeve moved to her left, ensuring that Sol couldn’t run again. It was either them or the cliff. “My grandson. You’re going to pay for that.” She reeled back like a baseball pitcher and sent another one flying.

It burned his fingers, making him flick his hand and curse, but he laughed. “Oh, Maeve. If you’d stayed with me, I could’ve taught you how to use magic as a real weapon, not just a little light show. It’s pathetic, really.”

A few of the remaining acolytes had gathered a short distance away. They hovered, watching and waiting to see what they were supposed to do.

Chelsea was only somewhat worried about them. They could be taken out if needed, but Sol was the real concern. “Mom, we need to bind him. He’ll always be a problem for us if we don’t.”

“I agree,” Lucille said.

Sol pretended to yawn. “Or you could just stop the charade and leave while you still have a chance.”

Even in defeat, the asshole was arrogant.

Maeve stepped back to be closer to the other witches. “We don’t have any candles, so we’ll have to wing it.”

A puff of smoke escaped from Ewan’s nostril. “We have plenty of fire if you need it.”

“Saturn is in our favor right now,” Chelsea advised her mother, trying to think of anything that might help their spell work.

The best-case scenario was to have all the right supplies on hand, but there was no time to wait.

Saturn was the planet of structure, order, discipline, and responsibility.

She couldn’t think of anything more suiting.

“Good enough. We’ll make it work. Ladies, I believe you know what to do.

” Maeve continued to face Sol. Lucille stood on one side of her and Chelsea on the other.

They formed a circle with Maeve at the head, facing the target of their spell.

“We bind your magic as we bind these threads, keeping you from harming others or yourself.”

Without the customary supplies, they had to make do.

Maeve used the long chain of her necklace.

Kristy pulled a strand of her own hair, and Jamie pulled the lace from her hooded sweatshirt.

Chelsea looked around, not seeing much that would work, but then she noticed that the hem of her shirt had gotten ripped sometime in the battle.

She separated a thread and pulled it until she had a length she could work with.

Each of them held out their index finger on their left hand, slowly winding their makeshift binding elements around it.

They repeated the words that Maeve had spoken.

Chelsea could feel the energy rising inside her, and she opened her heart to let it flow.

All the emotions that’d flooded her as they’d discovered Corbin was missing and had come to the island for his rescue had worn her out, but the magic was like a balm to her soul.

A binding magic, yes, not the sort of spell they’d usually prefer to do unless it was absolutely necessary, but it would ensure a safe future.

She heard a crackling noise and opened her eyes just in time to see Sol launch a ball of flame into the air.

He sent it harmlessly flying over the cliff, but it was enough to make his point.

“I don’t think it’s working,” he teased.

“You may have wiped out most of my followers, but you don’t understand how powerful I am. ”

“All right. I’ve had about enough of this prick.” Ewan pulled in a breath deep enough that his front feet rose off the ground slightly. They slammed back down as he let out a blast of fire.

Several of Sol’s gathered followers started to come forward, but others pulled them back. They knew they were defeated.

The heat was enough to blow back Chelsea’s hair, and she lifted her hand to protect her eyes from the intense light, yet she had to look. She had to see the downfall of the man who’d threatened their family.

Ewan’s flames seemed to have hit a wall just in front of Sol. The mage had put some sort of shield around himself, and it was strong enough even to protect him from dragon flame.

He laughed again when Ewan finally ran out of breath. The grass all around him was singed, and the wooden guardrail at the cliff’s edge was nothing more than a few charred stumps poking out of the ground.

“Thank you for warming my bones, dragon, but I’ll do just fine on my own, thanks. Caius!” Sol called to one of his disciples. “Bring me my staff so I can show these hags some real magic.”

“Why bother?” Maeve called. “You and your staff couldn’t bring the magic all those years ago, so I highly doubt you can now.”

Lucille piped up next to her. “Just like a man. You gotta wave your stick around to try to impress everyone.”

It was amusing to make fun of the bastard, but Chelsea felt fear and anxiety rising in her chest again.

The witches and dragons had been able to handily defeat Sol’s henchmen, but they didn’t have the training their leader did.

Sol was a different matter, and though he’d allowed this to turn into a bit of a standoff, she worried it wouldn’t last much longer.

“We need to do something,” Chelsea said, speaking quietly into her mother’s ear. “There’s no telling what he might be capable of once he has that staff.”

“I know.” Maeve’s voice was low and short. “I’m trying to think.”

“That’s the problem,” Lucille remarked. “You never could think when you were around Sol.”

“Remind me to be angry at you later for that comment,” her older sister returned. She sighed, never taking her eyes off Sol. “But you might be right. I know we’re at a disadvantage out there, but I must be missing something.”

Erin had been toward the back of the circle, but now she stepped closer.

“Sol works with a different kind of magic than we do. We’re pulling from the earth and the stars, tapping into the natural world all around us.

I don’t quite understand what he’s doing or where his source energy comes from, but do we have any sort of advantage that we could use? ”

Amanda held up her hand, her fingers slightly bent as she felt the energy around them. “I’ve been wondering the same thing, but I haven’t come up with anything.”

“Well, we can’t just stand here,” Jamie insisted.

“Um, Chelsea?”

The worry in Beck’s voice had her spinning quickly.

Beck was sitting on a small rock with Corbin in his arms. A brilliant blue-white light emanated all around the little boy.

His hand was on the rock itself, and that same energy could be seen pulsing up through the bones of his hand and into his arm.

“Whoa.” Fear and awe mixed inside her. Her son had already proven that he had remarkable abilities, but she didn’t know what was happening. “Are the rest of you seeing this?”

“Remarkable,” Lucille commented.

Griffin, still in his dragon form, hovered just over Beck’s shoulder. “It’s the ley lines.”

“What?” Chelsea asked. It made her nervous to see Griffin so close to her son and mate. He may have saved Corbin from falling to his death and brought him back to them, but she’d heard what he said in that house. He’d been responsible for all that had happened to Beck.

“I can see them,” Griffin explained. “I can see the way they trace through the earth, and he’s tapped into one.”

“But he’s only half dragon,” Beck argued. “The rest of us can’t use their energy that directly.”

The bronze dragon bobbed his head slightly to the side, almost like a shrug. “Witch and dragon blood mixed together must be a hell of a thing.”

The light from Corbin was bright enough that Sol had noticed it now and was cursing loudly.

“Caius! Get back out here, you little coward! Don’t you see what’s happening?

And what about the rest of you fucking idiots?

Aren’t you going to do anything? After all I’ve done for you? ” he demanded of his minions.

They ignored their master, watching Corbin with wide eyes.

Maeve touched her daughter’s shoulder. “Chelsea, I think your son is going to be able to help us. Again.” She stepped up next to Beck, and her brows shot up when she touched her grandson. “It’s strong, and he doesn’t know how to control it. We’ll have to be careful.”

Chelsea went to the other side as the rest of the witches gathered. Corbin looked up at her when she touched him. She, too, could feel the raw strength of the ley lines. It nearly took her breath away, and she fought to keep her body steady.

Corbin looked up at her. His eyes were red-rimmed from all his crying, and a few leaves had worked their way into his unruly hair. He looked exhausted, which broke her heart, but he was no longer scared. He was in the arms of his father with his mother at his side. “It fuzzy, Mommy.”

It only took her a moment to understand what he meant. The energetical vibrations of the ley lines were something altogether different from what she and the rest of the sisterhood had been using in their magic. It buzzed inside her, which must be the fuzziness he told her about. “It sure is, baby.”

“Is he going to be all right if you do this?” Beck asked. He clung tightly to Corbin but didn’t try to remove his son’s hand from the stone.

“Yes.” There were many things she didn’t know right now, one of which was exactly how this energy would work alongside the other witches’ magic, but Corbin looked so content.

He wouldn’t have been able to connect with the ley lines like that if he didn’t have some innate sense of what to do with all that power.

Chelsea laid her hand on Kristy’s shoulder, and the rest of the circle assembled.

Even with this potential boost in power, they still had to make some accommodations.

They couldn’t perform the winding and binding with their threads if they were holding hands, yet they needed to touch to keep that energy flowing through them.

While Maeve and Chelsea touched those next to them with their hands, the other witches stood wide and intercrossed their legs with those next to them.

“We bind your magic as we bind these threads,” Maeve intoned once again. “You may do no harm to others. So shall it be.”

“So shall it be,” the others echoed before repeating the lines again.

The bright bluish glow from Corbin began to flow out through the rest of them. Chelsea saw it in sparking trails down her arm, and it glowed in the strand of hair that Kristy wound around her finger. It grew brighter as they repeated their phrase again.

A lower-pitched voice was added to the recital. It was Beck. He spoke the words that his son couldn’t yet articulate.

“Fucking useless!” Sol raged, not yet having the staff he’d requested. “I’m not sticking around for any more of this foolishness.”

Energy flared up around his feet. It flashed around him and pulsed from his pendant as he turned toward the cliff.

All at once, Chelsea understood that he truly had used magic to get on and off this island.

He was going to simply walk away from them, or perhaps even fly.

They’d gone to so much effort, yet all of this had been a waste of time.

Sol might require his staff to defeat such an assemblage of enemies, but he could still get away under his own power.

Sol stepped past the scorched remains of the guard rail. The air currents from the crashing waves below flowed up and over him, ruffling his hair and his tunic, but the red glow at his feet held him aloft over thin air.

“So shall it be!” the witches repeated once more.

The ley line energy coalesced into an orb at the center of their circle.

It remained there for only a moment before it arced through the air and slammed into Sol.

He gasped as it turned into a ropelike structure, literally wrapping around him and binding him.

The red glow under his feet went out like a blown-out match.

They had a fraction of a second to see the look of horror on his face before he fell, his screams echoing through the night air.