Three armored figures stepped forward with movements too smooth and too coordinated. Puppet-smooth. Their faces were hidden beneath helms carved with sigils that pulsed with oily light—cultists turned into shadow-slaves, different from the plague but born of the same corrupted origin.
And their weapons gleamed with corruption magic specifically designed to slice through witch wards.
Throughherwards.
Cold fury spread through Vaelrik’s veins like poison. These weren’t random attackers. Someone had sent assassins equipped to kill witches. To killher. Someone knew exactly what risk she posed to keeping his curse contained, knew how effectively she could stabilize him in battle.
Someone wanted her dead.
“No.” The word tore from his throat like a snarl. “Not her. Never her.”
The curse roared up his spine, blistering and furious, feeding on rage that felt clear for the first time. He wasn’t losing control. He waschoosingto unleash it.
The shift into his dragon form hit him mid-stride, violent tearing of bone and sinew that he barely regulated. One heartbeat he was a man standing protectively beside a witch. The next, a dragon the size of a warship crashed onto the bridge with enough force to crack the ancient basalt.
Shadowfire flooded him, roaring over stone like a living storm. The impossible fog evaporated in violet-black flame that burned cold at the edges, cosmic void given form and fury. His wings arched wide, shielding Serenya from the assassins, fromdebris, from anything that might dare harm what belonged to him.
He was brutality shaped into purpose, death given wings and flame. Yet even now, drunk on rage and the curse’s violent joy, every burst of shadowfire curved around her—never toward her. The mate bond had rewritten the fundamental physics of his curse: he could burn the world around her to ash, but not her. Never her.
Serenya didn’t cower. The realization jolted him even as he prepared to incinerate everything that threatened her. She dropped to her knees on the scorching stone and drew sigils with practiced precision, bright geometric lines that carved channels of clean light through his darkness.
Her lumen magic rose in a lattice that guided his flame with impossible synchronicity. They moved like they’d done this all their lives—her barriers locking down behind his attacks, his fire angling through corridors she created, their magic intertwining in deadly harmony.
This was what they were meant to be. Not captive and captor. Not witch and dragon forced into alliance.Partners.Equals. Two halves of something larger and more dangerous than either could be alone.
Her bravery was reckless. Brilliant. And absolutely infuriating.
One assassin broke formation, sprinting low beneath the chaos—not toward his massive dragon form but straight for Serenya. Toward her wrist. Toward the shackle that bound them.
Vaelrik’s heart stopped.
Breaking their stabilizing connection while he was fully shifted would rupture the magic between them. The backlash would kill her instantly and send him completely feral. Thiswasn’t a battle—it was an execution attempt designed to eliminate them both.
He tried to pivot, but he was too large, too far from the right angle?—
No no no?—
The assassin’s corrupted blade reached for Serenya’s shackled wrist, and Vaelrik unleashed shadowfire so violent, the attacker didn’t die, he ceased to exist.
The remaining assassins collapsed into an oily dust from the after-effects of his powerful attack that the bridge’s volcanic heat immediately evaporated it.
Vaelrik shifted back to human form, his hands trembling not with exhaustion but leftover rage. Someone had dared to target her. His dragon mind howled with a single, consuming need: find whoever sent them and teach them why threatening his mate was the last mistake they’d ever make.
Before he could speak, before he could process the magnitude of what had just happened, Serenya turned on him—not grateful but furious, her green eyes blazing with righteous anger.
“You didn’t have to incinerate him!”
Her fury at him cut deeper than any knife.
After everything he’d just done to protect her, she was angry at him for being too violent?
Vaelrik forced his voice into a level tone. “You’re still alive. The assassin is not. Choose which outcome offends you more.”
The words came out harder than he intended, edged with the darkness that lived in him. But it hurt that she looked at him like he was the danger again. For a moment, his dragon recoiled, wounded in a place he’d never admit existed. She clearly couldn’t see that everything he’d done, every drop of violence he’d unleashed, had been for her.
NINE
SERENYA
