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“I didn’t piss him off, I impressed him.

He calmed me down enough to stop throwing spells at him and brought me to a small upstart of a village exclusive to dragons.

I didn’t want to go. I liked my life in the forest, but he dragged me kicking and screaming until my adoptive mother, Anya, showed up.

When she found out he had taken me against my will and beat me up, she was livid. ”

The woman in the vision was a spitting image of Terra, save for the blonde streaks in her hair. Her green eyes shone with the fire of a woman not to be trifled with.

“Her energy reminded me of my mother’s. I instantly clung to her.

She comforted me and asked if I just wanted to eat with them, then I could head back to the forest afterwards if I wished.

When the dragon told her about my dual magic wielding, she commended me for my skill, but her offer still stood.

I could leave if I wanted. So, I ate dinner and left.

I came back every once in a while, especially when game in the forest became scarce, but pretty soon I was staying so regularly she had a bedroom made just for me in her small hut. It wasn’t long until she met Phineas.”

Rowan saw a beer bellied dragon with a wide smile full of good-hearted joy. He had no hair, but his sharp brown eyes noted him as a possible earth-dragon.

While she could sense there was comfort Alessandro felt with Anya, there was a mischievousness that he’d explored with Phineas who accepted the roaming street dragon as eagerly as Anya had.

“At that point, the village seemed to accept me as a part of their family and the dragon I’d attacked?

He was their leader, King Titus. I avoided him the best I could when I would visit, but he always found me.

He took it as a personal quest to train me.

As a multi-elemental user, I was a potential replacement for him. ”

“When did he end up quitting?”

“He didn’t.”

A flash of a severed head startled Rowan.

“I killed him.”

There was pain in his voice, and shame. She wanted to ask why, but she also knew whatever the answer, it would hurt for him to explain.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around his and laid a soft kiss on his right bicep.

“When I first received my godhood, I wasn’t ready for it.

Hells, I didn’t even recognize it as celestial power.

I just thought I was just progressing in my training.

Then came the day when King Titus got a bit too greedy.

I’d worked alongside him to bring the village up from 1,000 dragon shifters to over 20,000.

He became drunk on his new power and began abusing it.

These were in those days where mystics were still trying to get pieces of land under our control, chipping away at countries to build our homes.

He sent us to wars with neighbors. He wanted an empire, and because I was so well-versed in magic, I could deliver anything he requested.

In return, I gained the wealth and influence to provide comfortable lives for Phineas, Anya and their new baby Terra.

Not that they were happy to be used by his majesty. Anya was especially vocal.”

The next vision was inside of a farmhouse, the smell of blood thick in the air, so corporeal that she believed for a moment that she had gone back in time to experience that moment as if she’d lived through it.

She understood. This was the moment. The one that would define him for the rest of his life.

“It was during a battle of one of these villages that his blood thirst got to me. He was in the middle of slaughtering a family of farmers who had no weapons to fight back with.” The sounds of steel slicing into flesh and bones crunching surrounded her.

“Surrounded by men who didn’t stand a chance at helping the children, I reached my limit. I was tired of the bloodshed. I subdued him.”

At that point, Alessandro looked like he was maybe in his mid twenties. He hadn’t fully grown into his head, and was so lean compared to how she knew him.

King Titus, in comparison, was tall, bulky and even though his greed defined him, he was no glutton for food.

He was a weapon sheathed in skin, but he stood no chance against Alessandro’s superior magic and speed.

All Alessandro did was fend him off, away from the children and force him to go home, but he had created fear in the eyes of the king.

“That moment sowed the seed of my godhood into the minds of the soldiers who witnessed it. A couple of months went by. Each time I met my king, it was explosive, and then he tried to increase the taxes on our already poor people. People I’d promised would have a better life, a safer life when I recruited them for the kingdom.

They still believed in the dream I’d sold, and by that point, I knew Titus wouldn’t give them the future I’d envisioned.

So we fought. I wasn’t much for political bullshit—it still pisses me off to this day—and our kingdom was too young to really have cemented bonds, but there was a definite split, until he decided the only way to get me was by a surprise attack.

He outfitted a couple of his supporter’s kids with magic bombs.

Terra had created a bit of a soft spot in me for children and he tried to use this knowledge to his advantage knowing I would let them get close.

I survived, they didn’t. His supporters had finally had enough.

His action united both sides, and they all turned to me, the only one who had ever taken the brunt of his rage.

On that same night when I visited him, I had 20,000 furious dragons seeping their years of rage into me and I beheaded him. ”

“Their will overrode yours.”

He nodded. “Once you feel that kind of loss, it stays quaking in every single one of your cells. I wait every day for that moment to happen again. Everything I feel, I sift through again and again to make sure it’s what I am truly feeling.”

“It sounds exhausting.” She sighed. “No wonder you’re so cranky.”

He let out an unwilling laugh. “You’re one of the few things I don’t have to do that with.” He shook her leg.

“Because your dragons definitely would prefer a dragon mate?”

“Yes.”

She laughed, “Well, I’m sorry to inform you that in due course, your dragons are going to be enthused for me to be your Dragon Queen.”

His finger on her chin forced her to meet his silver eyes. “You don’t have to take the position if you don’t want to. How could I take away your freedom when the only reason you marked me was to give me mine?”

Now that she had his memories, she knew this was born out of a noble place within the Dragon King who had long since grown weary of the weight of his crown. Of a man who didn’t want to drag her into something she wasn’t totally sure she wanted.

But a deep part of her felt a sense of indignation she couldn’t comprehend.

Could it be a simple sting of pride? Her desire to fit into any role of power?

Or could it be that now that she knew he wanted out, she wanted to save him, but knew she couldn’t?

The least she could do was share that burden.

Her heart gave a painful lurch and she placed a hand over her chest to soothe it.

At the corner of her eye she caught sight of a mark that hasn't been there before.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and made her way over to his dresser mirror. She could feel his tension building behind her, could practically hear his dragon roaring his displeasure that she was putting distance between them, but she needed to see it in its entirety.

A mating mark. The mark that announced the claim they'd made on each other. It made them officially off limits.

Kin had his on the back of his neck. Two rings interconnected. Easily hidden and simple.

Rowan’s was large in comparison as it ran along the entire underside of her collarbone. A hollow inverted triangle took space in the middle pointing down to her cleavage. A thin horizontal line slashed across it, ranging from one side of her chest to the other.

The sight of the mark ignited more visions. She hadn’t realized the previous memories came with a hint of fogginess until the crisp memories of her took center stage. Since the moment she dodged his surprise attack, everything he experienced was suddenly in high definition.

Her body heated at the sight of her ecstasy and eagerness each time they met in bed. She could smell their combined lust, the heady tangy smell as they fell into each other. Every single time he saw her, it was a crisp picture accompanied by a feeling of constant free fall.

She glowed to him, like a walking drop of sunshine.

She also experienced the sensation he got every time he had to walk away from her; it always felt like an ice bath in the middle of the arctic.

It reminded him of how it felt that day that he lost both of his parents, of the loneliness that it struck within him.

She gripped the sides of the dresser as the depth of his affection for her overwhelmed her. It burned hot and cold so fast it was like experiencing whiplash. She made him feel like this and he still wanted her?

He was insane.

A laugh bubbled out of her.

She wasn’t any better.

How quickly she had crumbled under the idea that they could be together?

Her damn cabin was visible just outside of the window. It sat there, mocking her with the truth.

She had committed to the man before her succubus had ever had the chance to fall in line with his dragon’s influence.

It must have been the first time she saw him flying overhead in her first years at Spellcaster’s Academy, way before Antoni Barros’ actions had forced her from her hidey-hole of averageness. Hadn’t it been since then that the idea of being with a meal more than once physically made her ill?