Chapter 3
A lsander
“Now?” Poppy stared at him, her expression a mixture of concern and confusion. "But what was that?"
"It was nothing," he lied, his voice strained.
But it wasn’t nothing. It was everything . It was hope and despair, desire and denial, all wrapped up in one impossible, unbearable moment.
A violent growl climbed his throat before he crushed it back down. Heat rolled beneath his skin in brutal waves, scales flashing briefly along his forearms before vanishing again. His claws bit into the stone hard enough to splinter it.
Mine. Keep.
The words hammered through him with savage insistence.
The dragon surged against the cage of his human form, restless and furious, hunger sharpening each time Poppy moved farther away.
It cared nothing for the curse eating through him piece by piece.
Nothing for the slow descent waiting at the end of it.
Nothing for the death already circling him like a patient scavenger.
Their mate stood within reach.
And Alsander was letting her leave.
The beast recoiled violently in refusal.
Alsander staggered back a step, dragging air into lungs that no longer seemed capable of holding any.
The shift pressed hard against his bones now.
His spine locked painfully. Fire pulsed beneath his skin in hot, savage bursts while the outline of wings flickered across the clearing shadows behind him.
“No,” he snarled through clenched teeth. To claim her, to bind her to his cursed existence, would be the ultimate act of selfishness. It would be a death sentence for the one woman in centuries who had made him feel anything other than agony.
His dragon refused to listen, pulling instead on magic they couldn’t afford to expend.
The curse answered immediately. Victoriously.
The trees nearest them shriveled. Leaves turned brown and fell to the ground.
Darkness coiled through his veins like living smoke, tightening around him with cruel familiarity.
Agony followed close behind — deep and grinding, settling into his bones until even standing upright became an act of sheer will.
The mountain beneath his feet trembled softly with the force of his restraint while sweat gathered at his temples despite the cool forest air.
"Go," he repeated. Harsher this time. The voice of a creature who had ruled skies. " Now. "
Poppy flinched at the tone, her bright eyes dimming. "But I —"
"Leave me." He turned away before he did something they would both regret. "And don’t come back."
He heard her hesitate. Heard the soft sigh of her breath. Then the crunch of leaves as she turned and walked away.
He didn’t watch her go.
He couldn’t.
If he looked at her again, he wasn’t certain he would be able to let her leave.
Only when her scent had faded from the air, when the sound of her footsteps had vanished into the distance, did he allow himself to move. He sagged against the rough bark of an ancient oak, his body trembling with the effort of holding back the monster within.
The dragon roared in his mind, a keening sound of such loss and longing that it brought tears to his eyes — eyes which hadn’t wept since the day his sister fell.
He had found his mate.
And he had sent her away.
He’d done the honorable thing. It was the only way to protect her.
Fool. She is ours, the dragon snarled. She is ours and you let her go.
"I know," Alsander whispered to the empty forest, to the dying trees, to the dragon clawing at the inside of his ribs.
"I know."
His only solace was in knowing she would be safe. Alive.
With an anguished roar that echoed in the silence, he charged back into the forest, ran without direction like an angry bull until he could run no more.
He ran for hours. Finally, under the full moon, exhausted beyond his endurance, he slid down the trunk of an oak until he sat in the moss, more dragon than man, empty.
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 resolve to 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.
Her path. 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 and his .
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, and take .
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.
His gaze locked on her, a physical hunger that gnawed at his insides.
She reached for the hem of her simple linen dress and pulled it over her head in one smooth motion.
The firelight caught her, painted her skin in gold and shadow, and Alsander forgot how to breathe.
She was perfect.
A masterpiece of life and vitality his cursed eyes had no right to behold.
The gentle curve of her hips. The soft, full swell of her breasts, tipped with rose-pink nipples that drew tight in the cool evening air.
The graceful line of her neck — exactly the line where a dragon's mate should bear his mark.
Each detail seared into his memory. A beautiful, agonizing torture.
Mine.
The dragon's voice. Low. Hungry. Patient as stone.
Look at her. Look at what is ours. Look at what you keep telling yourself we cannot have.
Alsander watched, mesmerized, as she sank into the steaming water. A soft sigh of contentment escaped her lips, and his cock jerked beneath the rough black trousers his magic had woven for him. The sight of her — naked, wet, vulnerable, unguarded — was a torment beyond any the curse had devised.
He imagined himself in that water with her.
His hands sliding up her thighs beneath the surface.
Her head tipped back against his shoulder.
Her gasps catching in the steam as he slipped two fingers between her legs and discovered her slick and ready for him, the way he knew with absolute certainty she would be.
His fingers gripped the branch above him with such force, the wood split.
He was a beast. A voyeur. A monster crouched in the dark watching a woman bathe.
He couldn’t look away.
He was starving and she a feast.