Page 10 of Dragon Cursed
She would live, and he would die in this forest as he had always been meant to — alone.
The curse pulsed once, dark and triumphant, and dug its teeth back into his bones.
Alsander’s resolveto do the honorable thing crumbled as he returned to the clearing the next morning to find fresh, sweet-scented grass.Abundant flowers, all in bloom.Trees heavy with thick, new leaves.The changes around him followed a distinct path.Herpath.Everywhere Poppy had stepped, everything she had touched, had somehow been healed.While he’d slept, the curse had weakened.
How was that possible?
How did a human have this effect?
Who was she?
Had the curse weakened enough to let him leave?Dare he risk it?
The scent of her was a ghost on the wind — a trail his dragon-blood could track through any storm.Alsander told himself he was a fool.A monster drawn to the very light that would burn him.
But honor was a flimsy shield against the primal roar that echoed in his dragon's soul.
Mate.
The word was a brand seared into his heart.
His dragon's unceasing demands intertwined with his need to solve the mystery, and he suddenly had no will left to resist.Honor be damned.If she could save his forest, he had to find her.
Decision made, he followed the path of bright, blooming flowers and new tree shoots for three days, a shadow woven from the twilight.Sometimes he walked, others he flew, using what magic he had left to remain a whisper at the edge of her world.He watched her small cottage appear through the trees — a sturdy structure of stone and weathered wood, a garden bursting with life.Smoke curled from its stone chimney, carrying the scent of her home.Herbs.Drying flowers.Something warm and inviting that made his chest ache with longing.
He perched in the boughs of an ancient oak, branches thick enough to conceal his massive frame without the use of magic, and waited.
A predator.Yes.But one enthralled.
He told himself his pursuit was for information.He needed to understand why her touch had sent the curse into retreat.He needed to study her, to dissect the mystery of her effect on him and on his dying forest.
A logical, detached pursuit.
The lie tasted like ash in his mouth.
Through the small, thick-paned window, she moved with an easy grace, humming a soft counterpoint to the crackle of the fire in her hearth.The sight of her crashed over him, hot and dizzying.His body went rigid.Need thundered through his veins.His dragon stirred — not with aggression, but with a deep, resonant hum of recognition.
She worked, unaware of his presence, at a wooden table, brow furrowed in concentration as she ground the Aos-sí-blooms with a mortar and pestle.The petals, which had only glowed faintly in the forest, now pulsed with a brilliant silver light in her hands — reacting as they hadn’t before, not even in the heart of his domain where his magic was strongest.
Could she see the magic flowing from her fingertips into the flowers?
Or was it only visible to dragon-sight?
She was a catalyst.A conduit for magic she didn’t appear to know she carried.
His cock grew hard.Heavy.Aching to be buried deep where she was warm and wet andhis.
Desire, sharp and savage, clawed at his control.He imagined those small, capable hands on his skin.Her body pressed against his.Her scent filling his lungs as he worked her open with his fingers and his tongue and his teeth, three centuries of starvation poured into one small mortal female until she screamed his name and the forest screamed it back.
His muscles coiled with a primal urge to leap from the tree, smash through the window, andtake.
The shift itched beneath his skin.He forced it down.The effort left him trembling.He would not.He couldn’t.
He could only watch.Learn.
She finished her work, bottling the luminous liquid in a small glass vial.Then she moved to the back of her cottage, and his heart stopped.
She stepped outside into the cool evening air and began to fill a large tub with water from a large copper kettle steaming on her fire.She added handfuls of herbs from baskets lining the wall — lavender, rosemary, others he didn’t recognize — their fragrant steam rising into the twilight.
