“When we were together?”
“You mean, when you seduced me into taking you to my family home and schooling you in the art of sex?”
“Seduced you?” I slapped my hand to my chest in mock offense. “Moi? Inexperienced, out of their depth young woman?”
“Yes. Seduced me.”
“For the record, the family home thing was a good bet at the time, because nobody was there. They were all at Torvek’s big birthday bash atSolumira.”
“Where we almost got caught by my entire family anyway because you were insatiable and we ended up there for over two hours when you’d just cited wanting a‘quick roll in the sack to know how it felt’.And to know if you could have sex without destroying a non-dragon with your strength and abilities. Me being unkillable made it a safe test.”
“We only got caught by Ketheron and Torvek. Ketheron was very cool about it.”
“He’s‘very cool about’everything. And you’re leaving out the Torvek reaction there.”
I winced. “Yeah, that was intentional. After what happened earlier tonight. I’m so sorry he attacked you, Winter.”
He lifted a shoulder. “It was warranted.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“My magic dropping and impacting the spell put you at risk. He cares for you so deeply, so I understand fully.”
I reached out and stroked his cheek. “You’re too understanding sometimes. And that’s another reason why you shouldn’t pull away from the three of us. We even that out for you, so you don’t hurt for others. Something you need, lovely.” I smiled sadly. “And something you deserve, whether you can see that or not.” As he turned into my touch and sucked in a shuddering breath, feeling the intensity between us that we’d spent too long swallowing down because of external factors, I told him, “But most of all, if you pull away now, it’ll hurtyou.Given how much you crave affection, understanding, and comfort. Now you’re seeing that you can have it with us. So, to walk away from it… I don’t want that for you.”
“I don’t either.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He grasped my hand on his face. “But there’s still this… thing. Whatever it is.”
“We’ll figure it out. Together. Between us we all come from different areas of expertise and knowledge.” I grinned at him. “That’s another thing you’d be walking away from. A tactical error on your part.”
“Well, I don’t really think of things in tactical error terms,” he said, with amusement.
“That’s what you’ve got me for, then, isn’t it? And Vaxan, of course.”
He chuckled, then eased from me. “Message them and tell them I’m fine now. And that I’m sorry. Also… that I’ll talk to them about it soon.”
“Well, you can do the last two yourself,” I said as I pulled my phone out and fired off a text to Zayn and Vaxan.
He frowned.
“They’re not gonna wait. As soon as they get this, they’ll head right here.”
“Right.” He glanced at the ruins where he’d been earlier. “There is actually some good news I was able to determine.”
“What’s that?”
“Whatever that thing is… the infection… it’s no longer impacting my magic,” he informed me. “When I cast it out, the glitching stopped. Maybe it was just a challenge from somebody or something.”
“That would still be for a purpose. To gauge your abilities and strength to threats like that… interior ones, invasive ones. Now your necromantic magic is stable, give it some time to acclimate, give your mind a rest. Then we’ll pursue this and—”
A rush of citrine magic erupted just a couple of feet from us.
Vaxan materialized with Zayn right beside him.
I arched an eyebrow at the lovely sight of them wrapped around one another. No more tension and tight postures around one another. In fact, Zayn was basically clinging to him.
