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“Hold tight!” Harris’ voice ran through her head, giving her only milliseconds to dig her fingers into his fur as he moved at the speed of light. Never having moved so quickly, nausea threaded its fingers into her.

“Why are you here?” Rowan had to ask through a link of low magic telepathy. It grated her nerves that even such a minor spell was costing her so much.

“The Thunder declared they were receiving a new queen. The alphas of every shifter clan are here to meet her---well you, in the morning. Were you not informed?”

Although she wanted to deny the knowledge, Rowan had to admit she’d only half listened to Terra’s briefing on what the next few days would entail.

Her mind had been on less respectable matters, like getting Alessandro back in bed.

The thought of the Dragon King filled her with anger. How could he have looked down on her? After everything she’d done?

“Maybe. It’s been a lot. For now, I think you and I can take that djinn on so he can concentrate on the witch.”

The wolf growled, “A witch is causing all of this?”

“Yes.” Rowan answered, “I don’t have the magic to counter him. But I have the knowledge and, with your help, the strength to take out what’s stopping the Dragon King from taking care of it.”

“ Fine. Tell me what you need. ”

“ Djinn cannot straddle the astral plane and the physical plane when wolf’s teeth sink into their energy field.

You can tell where it begins by that faint flow around its body.

Don’t aim for anything that will kill. Once you hold it firm, I can use some of this sand Terra has scattered around to knock him out.

” Rowan gripped his fur to emphasize how important her following words were.

“ The witch wasn’t too happy about how our last encounter ended.

As soon as we make ourselves known, I think he will aim everything he has at us.

You’ll have to be on the defensive as soon as you touch back down to the ground. ”

Harris let out a huff. “ Just for clarification, how are we supposed to get up there? I can’t fly. ”

“No. But I can.” She patted his head. “And you don’t have to be in wolf form for your teeth to be considered wolf teeth.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

“Do you think I’m suggesting that I carry you up bridal-style?”

“Yes.”

“Your mind reading skills are on point, Mr. Knox! Don’t worry, you don’t have to be naked. I have enough magic to get you into a fit perfect for the Alpha of the Mediterranean Wolf Pack.”

XOXOXOXOX

His beast had smelled her the moment she’d appeared at the gates. The distraction had allowed the djinn he’d been wrestling with to get in a good punch and Alessandro cursed as restarted his wearisome incantations to bring the djinn into the physical plane all over again.

Troublesome creatures that the djinn were, Antoni Barros had picked the right nuisance to keep Alessandro occupied while his dragons fought off the hoards meant to keep him concealed in the middle.

But why?

Why had the witch decided it was worth throwing all his progress away in painting the shifters as the villains to this story just to turn all resentment against himself?

“Harris and I are tagging in, Dragon King.” Rowan’s voice rolled through his head, dripping with her anger.

It took a moment for him to understand why she was angry, but he didn’t have time to defend the action that had set her mood.

Rage flared up in his gut, and a wave of nausea filled him as his jealousy spiked to heights he’d never imagined possible when he caught sight of his mate.

The wolf’s left shoulder pressed against Rowan’s soft breasts as her wings cut through the air, dodging the flying foes that reached out to stop her.

That rage was short-lived as behind her, the center of the tightly packed bodies rippled apart.

It lent the sight of a body so badly deformed the only way that Alessandro recognized it was Antoni Barros was because of the scent of rotting meat.

It was the same as it had been in that house on that mountainside.

Even through his anger, he understood her plan at once. As he passed her, mid-transformation into his human body, he reached out a hand to pass through the strands of her hair. It was enough to ground him.

He should have realized like she had, the there was a wolf with a natural advantage near him. But he’d been used to being able to take care of things all on his own for so many years.

The woman was brilliant.

The woman was his.

Jealousy melted into pride as he called forth the magic of his land to go hand to hand with whatever Antoni Barros had transformed into.

XOXOXOXO

As soon as the djinn caught sight of the wolf, its only natural predator, it retreated, throwing the bodies of other flying mystics towards the pair to encumber them.

Her wings were lithe and strong enough to get them through the barrage, even with her lack of training them. She was excited to test those limits as she barreled out of the way of a pegasus with fire in the depths of its eyes.

As soon as she saw a clear shot, she took it.

“Sorry about this.” She fed into his mind and, using the momentum a necessary front flip had caused her, she flung him with all the strength her arms could muster.

His scream caught the djinn off guard, but the alpha was quick to understand what he had to do and he took a giant bite of air. He damn near missed the aura around the djinn’s neck from his surprise.

Relief rolled through Rowan when the wolf remained in the air.

With the Djinn panicked and trying to swat the wolf from his neck, Rowan opened her pores up to the magic that had been knocking at her.

It burned, the resistance of her nulling jewelry against the power that she was allowing in, but she didn’t care. She had to do this to buy Alessandro all the time he needed to fight against the hoards Antoni had sent after her and incapacitate whatever the witch had become.

She’d gotten a brief look at Barros as the bodies parted; she could tell that the being that had killed her friend was gone and what stood in his place could only be subdued by the power of a being as potent with magic as Alessandro was.

Rowan concentrated her sight on the lines of magic that were currently so chaotic around her. She’d never seen so many spells executed at once from so many branches of magic. It might have been overwhelming if she hadn’t come equipped with Odin’s Eye.

While she hadn’t played with the supposed powers of prophecy it came with, she had been analyzing magic around her all day, playing and picking through the threads of the shifter, demon, and elf magic she’d come into contact with.

She’d have to thank her godmother for such a useful gift as she dug out the thread of bright blue, the djinn’s half elemental-half celestial nature, and looked for the golden thread of earth magic attached to the Earth General.

She hoped Terra wouldn’t mind as Rowan phased out a share of her sleep sand.

It was a social faux pas to intrude among another spellcaster’s spell and use it as one’s own, but considering the emergency of getting the djinn down before it could cast a wide enough spell to incapacitate the dragons, Rowan hoped a sincere apology would be enough to calm her.

Heat bubbled up behind her and Rowan tucked her wings in, sinking like a stone as a fireball from her left swept where she’d just been.

She took herself out of the dive as she’d finally gathered enough magic to enact the phase.

One second Terra’s sand particles were sweeping over the bodies on the ground in a grainy cascade, the next they were midair, falling not only over the djinn but also all the other flying bodies of both dragons and the brainwashed victims.

Panic swept through her as she’d only gathered enough magic to phase Harris out of the way, but not the others.

Under normal circumstances, her magic would have replenished as soon as she used it, but with her current limits, she had to wait.

Her neck blazed in pain as she tried to surpass her constraints.

She fingered the piece of jewelry, getting ready to tear it off until she felt a swell of magic behind her.

She turned and plucked Stone out of midair.

“What the-”

“Cushion their fall!” She yelled over the screaming.

He glanced behind her, nodded, and zoomed past her with a pair of gorgeous opal wings. They propelled him faster than Rowan thought she could ever achieve, sending out a cushion of air.

Relief filled her, and she phased Harris to her side as she gently touched down back to Earth.

With the wolf’s teeth removed, the djinn could safely return to the astral plane. She watched as it passed through every physical obstruction on its path back to earth until it completely melted into the ground.

Worn out by the pathetically limited magic she’d just used, she bent over to catch her breath, every muscle aching with the strain, her neck raw and stinging.

Harris was gagging beside her, trying to rid himself of whatever sensation the plan had put in his mouth and Rowan might have asked what it had felt like, but in the next moment Master Japhet phased in with Axel, forming a protective barrier between them and a new wave of bodies as they caught their breath.

Aqua popped in, her eyes wide. “Consort, allow me to heal your wound.”

Rowan sat still as Aqua pulled out a roll of bandages from the pack on her hip.

The water dragon murmured an incantation over the dressing as another water dragon removed Rowan’s neck and arm pieces.

Rowan unclipped the chain from her neck and wrapped it around her wrist, a swell of magic acted up in that moment, trying its best to get past her own barriers so fast and so hard it was a moment of terror where she thought she might drown.

She still had a long way to go to recover, but she was certain what she’d just done hadn’t made her case any worse.