The harbor boiled. The sky shattered with thunder. Haven Shores trembled.
People were gathering—she could see them at the edge of her vision, clustering in groups at safe distances. Theo’s pack formed a protective perimeter around the evacuation routes, their shifted forms ready to intervene if the battle spilled toward civilians. Leo’s lions stood guard near the marina, golden coats gleaming in the fading light.
And overhead, another dragon circled—smaller, golden-red where Aero was storm-gray. Delos. Mostly healed but not fully, his wing membrane still showing the faint lines of scarring. He wasn’t engaging directly, but every time Nerissa tried to retreat toward the open ocean, he dove to cut off her escape, driving her back toward Aero’s devastating assault.
The two dragons worked in wordless coordination—not telepathy, but something deeper. Trust, maybe. The kind of partnership that came from years of fighting side by side.
Beck and Rosemary were coordinating the civilian response near the marina, their voices calm and efficient over the chaos.
“Cassia.” Junie appeared at her side, Avine right behind her. “You shouldn’t be standing.”
“I shouldn’t be a lot of things.” She couldn’t look away from the battle. “I should be out there.”
“You’d die,” Avine said quietly. “Your magic is still recovering. You don’t have the strength.”
“I know.” The words tasted like ash. “I hate it.”
A massive ice serpent lunged at Aero from below—Nerissa had been building it beneath the surface while he focused on her direct attacks. It caught his wing, fangs of frozen water scoring across membrane, and he roared in pain and fury.
Cassia’s heart stopped.
But Aero twisted mid-air, lightning exploding from every scale, and the serpent shattered into a thousand pieces of ice that rained down on the harbor like frozen tears. He dove toward Nerissa with renewed fury, and Cassia started breathing again.
“He’s winning,” Junie said, her chaos-magic crackling along her fingertips as she added her power to the wards the other witches were maintaining. “She can’t touch him.”
“She hurt him.”
“A scratch. He’s too fast, too strong. She’s old and powerful, but she’s not—” Junie gestured at the dragon currently tearing through a wall of ice like it was tissue paper. “She’s not that.”
Nerissa seemed to realize it too. Her attacks grew more desperate, less coordinated. She flung water and ice in wild patterns, no longer trying to defeat Aero but simply to survive his assault. Her beautiful face twisted with rage and fear and something that looked horrifyingly like grief.
“You could have had this!” she screamed, hurling a spear of ice that shattered against Aero’s scales without leaving a mark. “I would have given you everything! I loved you!”
Cassia’s stomach turned. She’d known the basics—the rejection thirty years ago, the obsession that had followed. But hearing it, watching Nerissa’s sanity crumble in real time, was different.
This was what happened when love curdled into possession. When wanting became entitlement. When “no” became an unforgivable wound instead of an answer to accept.
Aero’s dragon roared—a sound that shook the foundations of every building within a mile, that contained eight centuries of solitary existence and the burning fury of nearly losing his mate. He dove toward Nerissa with claws extended, lightning crackling between his teeth.
She raised a wall of water—her last defense, everything she had left. He tore through it like it was nothing.
In seconds, he had her pinned to the rocks at the harbor’s edge. His massive claws held her fast, pressing her into the stone. His jaws hovered inches from her throat.
The battle was over.
FORTY-SIX
CASSIA
Cassia limped across the ruined harbor before anyone could stop her.
Her ribs screamed with every step. Her head throbbed. The healing magic in her system protested the exertion with waves of dizziness that made the world tilt sideways. But she kept moving, one foot in front of the other, because she could see what was about to happen.
Aero was going to kill her.
His dragon wanted it—she could see it in every line of his massive body, in the way his claws pressed deeper into Nerissa’s shoulders, in the fire gathering at the back of his throat. Eight centuries of control, shattered by three days of watching his mate hover between life and death. The beast wanted blood. Wanted to end the threat permanently. Wanted Nerissa dead in the most violent way possible.
Nerissa knew it too. She wasn’t struggling anymore—just staring up at the dragon pinning her down with something that looked almost like acceptance. Like she’d expected this ending all along.
