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“Unfortunately,” he threw a glare over at the cameras pointed in their general direction, “I think they already know. Come on, we’ll head to EEK right after.” He wiped another tear from the vampiress’ cheek.

She snickered. “Please don’t call it that to Axel’s face. She will clobber us both.”

“Yeah, I’m not interested in testing the berserker.” He held out his hand before the two phased away.

Alessandro scanned the sea of reporters still standing and rolling film. Nausea rolled through him at the sight.

The decision to destroy the tech was an easy one to execute. With a snap of his fingers, each device gave a spark of blue lightning and died on the spot.

Satisfied with the shouts of frustration, Alessandro cut his connection and slid back into his body.

“I can’t find her on the astral plane.” He informed Blaise as he stood. “Her friends seem to think she’s still alive, but scrying won’t work. Are Naseem and Stone still with the witch?”

Blaise fell into step beside him by the time he walked out of his office. “Last time I saw them, they were comparing notes on Barros’ recorded properties in the library.”

“Have they seen the video?”

“Probably not. The only reason I ran into it was because I was scrolling through social media on the shitter and when I saw it, I knew you’d want to do something about it ASAP.”

Alessandro tried not to let the image of Blaise in the bathroom enter his mind.

Together they passed through the covered walkways of the estate, passing dragons who seemed to sense their king was not in a good mood if the 180 degree turns were anything to go by.

Alessandro tried to relax, but as soon as the library’s stone steeple came into view and a raised voice reached his ears, the tension snapped right back into place.

“You had no place saying that to him.” It was Terra.

Terra who was supposed to be taking care of making backup plans in Dragon City in case everything went south with Draconis.

“It isn’t our approval that matters, Terra. The houses will rebel against the idea.”

“Are you insane? Do you know how long they have been trying to get him mated off? There hasn’t been one dragon to get his headlights to go off, and the one shot he has at that bond you tell him to stay away from?

” Naseem’s voice cracked with emotion. An image of a young blonde woman flashed through the Dragon King’s mind at the sound.

Being the only general who had actually received the mating feeling, Naseem saw the bond in a different light than any of his peers.

Clear on what the subject of the raised voices were concerned with, Alessandro put his hand on the knob until he heard a soft sob.

“I already said I messed up!” Aqua sniffed.

“I’m the reason he’s been unbearable since he last saw her!

The pain it caused him to stay back while she put herself in the path of those witches woke me up.

Now he’s walking around here feeling so…

empty. I just need you two to back me up and convince him she will be safe with our people. That we will have her back!”

Alessandro turned the knob.

Aqua shrieked in surprise at his sudden appearance behind her and snapped her head to look away. Naseem and Stone followed her example.

Terra grinned and shook her head, “Honestly, I leave for one week and you finally find us a suitable queen candidate, then you allow this knucklehead to convince you to not approach her?” She flicked Aqua on the forehead before forcing the younger dragon to turn his way.

“Suitable?”

She was more than suitable. But he'd be damned if he allowed the weight of that crown to dull even the smallest bit of her soul.

All he wanted now was to see what she'd do with her long awaited freedom.

Aqua rubbed the reddening spot. “You heard everything, right?” Her voice was soft, a tactic to make him feel pity for her.

She didn’t need to. She had only done her sworn duty of protecting the Thunder, of acting as a check and balance to decisions that would affect more than just himself.

“I did. But perhaps you should all recall that I don’t give into your demands when it doesn’t align with my aims. I have my own reasons for not going through with the instinct.

We still owe her an actual favor that we can pay off.

Rowan Dahl just got kidnapped in front of national TV.

I have a good hunch Antoni Barros is behind it. What do you have on him so far?”

It took a moment for his words to elicit a response from his stunned dragons, but as was most often the case, it was Stone who was the first to react.

He slid into a computer chair, his fingers waving over the table and bringing up holograms of several buildings, charts and scanned paperwork surrounding the image of a blonde man with green eyes staring off into space.

The witch, who had been standing in the background trying his hardest to blend into the bookcases, looked terrified when the Air General scooped him forward.

“Dae was just working on gathering information from his past.” Naseem patted the witch on the back. “Go on, tell Alessandro what you found.”

Dae gulped and pointed to his face. “Sorry, is no one going to mention why your eyes are glowing red?”

Alessandro was finding himself weary of the witch after allowing him access to the libraries of Draconis for the week that he’d been there. “It signifies I’m running thin on patience.”

The witch took a deep breath and pointed to the hologram of the man.

“He’s originally from Macedonia, Greece, my neck of the woods, but when he was still in his adolescence, he left with his family to start over in South America.

Even then, he honestly didn’t show promise with magic until about two years ago, when he saved Henrietta Young during a demon exorcism.

” Dae looked disturbed by his next words.

“Not only did he block the demon poison, but he also finished the exorcism himself.”

Alessandro understood the disturbed look then. Demon poison had one known cure, celestial blood. Angels, who were made from the essence of celestial beings, were usually the ones who healed those victims.

“Well, since then, he has steadily built a following. As his control of magic has grown, he has surpassed many of the top spellcasters in the Coven. As far as his limits, I’m not sure he has any.

He has shown an affinity for all four elements, a bit of clairvoyance and now, massive mental manipulation. ”

Alessandro frowned. “Does he live in a Coven compound like some elders before him, or has he taken a separate residence like Elder Henrietta?”

Naseem moved forward, and a list popped front and center, along with the holograms of a dozen houses.

“He’s not living at the compound, but with his growing following, he’s also amassed multiple properties, whether gifted or bought.

As far as some preliminary investigations show, he doesn’t stay in one for too long.

I’ve dispatched a pair of dragons for each location to keep watch.

I’ve let them know of his ability to manipulate minds and they’re all equipped with Darling nulling charms in case they make contact. ”

“Which of these is his first property?”

Everything but a cape cod two story home settled on a mountain side vanished.

“How did he get this one?”

“His parents passed it down to him. If you’re thinking he uses this one most because of sentimental reasons, I thought the same. However, the scouts say it looks abandoned..” Naseem supplied.

“Are his parents still alive?”

“No.” Naseem ran his hands over a keyboard suddenly available to him. “But this is the only land they left to him. They did own several in their lifetime. Did you want to look into those?”

“Yes, specifically the ones where he went through his latest accomplishments, whatever they may be.”

Naseem’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and Alessandro willed his body to relax.

Despite the grim look of things, Alessandro merely had to recall how she had dodged his surprise attack that first night they met to find a bit of hope.

If he hadn’t kissed her, she might have made it a lot harder to kidnap her.

If the witch kept his lips to himself, Alessandro was sure Rowan Dahl could survive through anything he threw at her.

Chapter 23

Rowan could hear the thumping of Cherry’s heart slowing to a concerning rate even from their distance. She could smell death slowly creeping in from a dark corner of the room.

But, she had a plan. A tedious plan that had only been available to her because of the trap.

Antoni Barros, like most spellcasters, didn’t comprehend nulling principles. But with Chloe, the most potent null in history, as her best friend, Rowan did.

First, any nulling object had to make at least a secondary contact with the target.

This meant that standing on the floor with just her heels as a barrier, the nulling was successful.

But, when she climbed on top of the camp bed, the nulling spell had to go through the legs of the bed, the two-inch mattress and her shoes to get to her. This made the spell ineffective.

Second, magic corroded physical elements. Gold, already a soft workable metal, didn’t require more than a low flame to target the weakest points of the cage, their soldered joints.

The tedious part of her plan was the fact that the air inside of the cage lacked magic. To overcome this, she had to connect to the air outside the bars to gather magic.

Though small by nature, her hands were initially too large to fit through the bars without her skin touching the sides, which meant she only had four fingers available to channel the magic in as her other hand cast the flame spell on the joints.

When the space got large enough for her to comfortably cast she could work faster but her succubus’ starvation had her hands shaking so hard that they sometimes bumped against the metal and killed her spell.