Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
CASSIA
“Delos. Delos, stay with me.”
The young dragon had shifted back to human form—instinct, probably, the body seeking its smaller shape when the larger one was too damaged to maintain. He lay in the wreckage of the cottage, shirtless and shaking, blood streaming from wounds that traced the pattern of shattered scales.
His right arm hung at the wrong angle. His chest was a mess of lacerations. And his shoulder—where his wing had joined his body in dragon form—was a ruin of torn muscle and exposed bone.
“Cassia.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Did we—did we get her?”
“She ran.” Cassia pressed her hands against his chest, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to remember every healing charm she’d ever learned. “But we hurt her. You hurt her. That fire—”
“Good.” A ghost of his usual grin flickered across his pain-tight face. “Sirens hate fire. Should’ve seen her face when I—” He coughed, and blood flecked his lips. “When I lit up her pretty cottage.”
“Stop talking. Save your strength.”
“Have to tell you.” His hand found hers, grip weak but determined. “She’s building something. A wave. Bigger than anything—” Another cough. More blood. “Get Aero. She’s going to… the tsunami… she’s been building toward…”
His eyes rolled back. His grip went slack.
“Delos!” Cassia shook him, panic clawing at her chest. “DELOS!”
He was breathing. Barely. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven gasps. But he was alive.
For now.
Cassia looked around the ruined cottage. The walls were half-collapsed. The floor was flooded with water and blood. The ceiling had holes where her lightning had punched through. And somewhere in Haven Shores, a siren was building a tsunami that could kill everyone she loved.
Get help, the rational part of her mind insisted. Get Aero. Get the healers. You can’t carry him alone.
But leaving him here, unconscious and bleeding in enemy territory—
A familiar weight landed on her shoulder. Gust. Her storm petrel had found her, drawn by the magical chaos or their psychic bond or both.
Help is coming, he sent through their link. I felt it. The pack felt it. Everyone felt it. They’re on their way.
Relief crashed through her, so intense it nearly buckled her knees.
“Hang in there,” she told Delos, even though he couldn’t hear her. “Just stay with me. Aero’s coming. Help is coming. You’re going to be okay.”
She didn’t know if she believed it. But she kept talking, kept her hands pressed against his wounds, kept pouring what little healing magic she possessed into his broken body.
The sound of running footsteps reached her ears. Voices. Shouted commands. The thunder of boots on wet ground.
“In here!” she screamed. “We’re in here!”
The first through the ruined doorway was Beck Driscoll, his wolf’s eyes already scanning for threats. Behind him came Theo Vance, Wyatt Gentry, and a team of Haven Shores’s emergency responders.
“Damn.” Beck dropped to his knees beside Delos, his face going pale. “What the hell happened?”
“Nerissa.” The name tasted like poison. “She’s been behind everything. The weather manipulation, the attacks, all of it. She’s building a tsunami. Something massive. Delos tried to stop her and she—” Cassia’s voice cracked. “She hurt him. She hurt him protecting me.”
“Healers,” Theo commanded, and two witches Cassia vaguely recognized pushed through the crowd. “Get him stable. Now.”
Strong hands pulled Cassia away from Delos’s body, making room for the healers to work. She fought them for a moment—instinct, protectiveness, the need to keep doing something—before recognizing Wyatt’s steady grip on her arms.
“Easy,” the panther shifter said, his voice calm despite the chaos. “Let them work. You’ve done your part.”
“Aero.” The name came out ragged. “Someone needs to—he needs to know—”
“Already done.” Wyatt’s golden eyes held hers. “Theo sent word the moment we heard the commotion. He’s on his way.”
Cassia sagged against the sheriff’s grip, exhaustion crashing through her now that the adrenaline was fading. Her magic felt scraped hollow. Her lungs still burned from the water Nerissa had forced into them. Every muscle ached from being thrown against walls and fighting for her life.
But Delos was alive. The healers were stabilizing him, their magic glowing soft and steady as they worked. And Aero was coming.
“The tsunami,” she forced out. “Nerissa said she’s building something. A wave. Bigger than anything we’ve seen.”
“We’ll handle it.” Wyatt’s voice was steady. “But first—” He turned as a commotion erupted at the cottage entrance.
Aero tore through the remnants of the doorway with the barely contained violence of a dragon about to lose control.
He wasn’t running. He was prowling. Each movement precisely controlled despite the fury radiating from every line of his body. His eyes swept the room—found Delos on the ground, found Cassia standing blood-soaked and shaking, found the destruction that marked a battle he hadn’t been here to fight.
For one terrible moment, Cassia saw his dragon rise to the surface. Scales flickered beneath his skin. Lightning crackled in his eyes. The air temperature spiked as eight hundred years of suppressed emotion threatened to explode into catastrophic release.
Then his gaze locked on hers.
“You’re hurt.” His voice was barely human.
“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. But compared to Delos— “Aero, I’m so sorry. We didn’t expect her to attack. We thought we were just asking questions, and then she—”
He crossed the distance between them and pulled her against his chest.
The embrace was fierce, desperate, nothing like the careful distance they’d been maintaining for the past week. His arms wrapped around her with crushing intensity. His face pressed into her hair. His whole body shook with something that might have been rage or relief or both.
“You’re alive,” he breathed against her temple. “You’re alive.”
“Delos protected me.” Tears streamed down her face, the shock finally catching up to her. “He shifted and fought her, and when she summoned that construct, he—he put himself between us. Aero, I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t.” He pulled back just enough to look at her, his hands framing her face with desperate gentleness. “Don’t apologize. You’re alive. He’s alive. That’s what matters.”
“But—”
“That’s what matters.” His thumbs brushed the tears from her cheeks.
His eyes were still wild, still edged with his dragon’s fury, but the violence was being channeled.
Focused. “Nerissa will pay for this. I will hunt her to the bottom of the ocean if I have to. The only thing I care about is that you’re standing in front of me. ”
Cassia’s breath caught. Even now—blood-soaked, exhausted, surrounded by the wreckage of a fight she’d barely survived—the pull between them was there. Not destructively. Not chaotically. Just… reaching. Seeking. Finding its match.
“The tsunami,” she whispered. “She’s building toward something catastrophic.”
“I know.” His jaw tightened. “And we’re going to stop her.”
Behind them, the healers lifted Delos onto a stretcher, his unconscious form wrapped in magical stabilization fields. Beck walked beside them, his hand on the young dragon’s uninjured arm, his expression a mix of anger and grief.
“He saved my life,” Cassia said quietly. “He barely knows me, and he threw himself between me and that thing because—”
“Because he’s known from the start what you mean to me.” Aero’s voice was rough. “From the day he noticed what was happening, he would burn down the entire ocean to protect it.”
The words landed in her chest and stayed there, warm and terrifying and impossibly real.
“We should go,” Wyatt said, breaking the moment with professional efficiency. “The healers need to get Delos to the Siren’s Rest. And we need to start planning.”
Aero nodded, but he didn’t release Cassia. Instead, he tucked her against his side and guided her toward the ruined doorway, keeping her close despite the magical volatility they’d been so careful to avoid.
No hailstorm materialized. No lightning struck.
Maybe crisis burned off the excess energy. Or maybe their magic had finally figured out how to coexist without destroying everything in range.
Either way, Cassia let herself lean into his strength and didn’t pull away.
Ahead of them, the healers moved around Delos with quiet urgency, their magic glowing soft and blue as they worked. Stabilization fields. Pain dampening.
Cassia watched the soft pulse of the healing fields and couldn’t look away.
Delos’s breathing was shallow. The wing membrane, shredded down to exposed bone an hour ago, had been bound in magical gauze that flickered with every exhale.
The healers’ expressions were careful, controlled—the particular blank focus of people who needed not to show how worried they were.
She felt Aero’s arm tighten around her.
“He’ll make it,” she said, because one of them had to.
Aero didn’t answer. His eyes didn’t leave Delos.