Chapter One Wyvernbonded Mate

Elloren

Northern Forest

Eighteen days after Xishlon

I shudder against Yvan, his lips on mine, my heart fracturing open as our Wyvernbond reignites under the Great Tree, III.

Our bond’s churning flame visibly lights up the world, and I’m barely able to hold back sobs as Yvan holds me to his muscular form and the Forest sizzles out of sight, my vision overtaken by our joint blaze’s golden-green glow.

Yvan deepens his firestorm kiss, fire to fire, the feel of our bond enveloping me, sending a volcanic charge through my rootlines. I surrender to it fully. Overcome by the power in it.

Overcome by the power in him.

As Yvan’s heartbeat pulses strong against mine, I’m hit by a rushing wave of Tierney’s magic at the same moment the Northern Forest’s aura flows around my restored Wyvernbond to Yvan, the trees and III linking into Yvan’s Icaral of Prophecy fire through my rootline connection to the surrounding Forest.

Tierney’s magic fades, but before I can wonder at it, revulsion explodes through III and the trees, lashing through the very air. Alarm tightens my gut as leaves rustle and trunks bend and creak all around us, the image of leagues upon leagues of trees consumed in flame slicing through my mind.

The Forest gives a painful, wrenching yank on my rootlines, violently intent on severing their connection to Yvan’s Wyvernbond, the caws of my huge kindred ravens sounding, the scene around us snapping back into sight.

Shocked, Yvan and I break our kiss, and I cry out, tensing my rootlines against the strangling attack of Forest power and the planetary force of III’s pull.

Yvan hisses, tightening his protective hold on me as he hurls fire into our Wyvernbond, and I’m caught up in the feel of his power thrashing against my Forest’s yanking assault.

“An Icaral cannot link to our Forest!”

the Dryad Oaklyyn’s rage-filled voice spears out. “He’s all killing fire!”

My gaze flits to the Dryads, who all stand against us.

Oaklyyn’s fern-hued face is twisted in a scowl, her oak staff gripped tight in her hands, its luminous forest green runes charged for battle, her brown wolverine kindred snarling at us. The stance of the mushroom-tressed Dryad Lyptus is just as combative, her mint-green, lightning bolt–marked face livid, her silver panther kindred emitting a low, threatening growl. The Dryads’ branch-horned and pine-haired leader, Sylvan, as well as graceful, flower-tressed Yulan, the Deathkin-Dryad Hazel, and the huge branch-horned Dryad whose name I don’t yet know, are all glaring at us with equal parts horror and outrage, the huge Dryad’s black bear kindred dropping into a threatening crouch.

Alarm spiking, I realize that Tierney and her Death Fae companion have disappeared, along with that great whoosh of water power I sensed, and only the semicircle of six Dryads, their kindreds and my flock of giant Errilor Ravens remain in the clearing around III, Errilith and the other ravens moving in to encircle Yvan and me.

“Where’s Tierney?”

Yvan demands of the Dryads as he keeps tenacious hold of our bond.

My same urgent question is torn away as the surrounding Forest intensifies its assault on our Wyvernbond with furious, wrenching force. My whole body constricts with pain, a gasp ripping from my throat, the full might of the Northern Forest’s Natural Matrix slashing against Yvan’s bond to my rootlines. Yvan’s invisible aura rears, half of it burning protectively around me, the other half whipping against the Forest’s attack in a potent firestorm.

Errilith lets out another thunderously loud CAW, as if threatening the Forest in return, my kindred raven’s ground-shaking cry quickly taken up by the rest of the Errilor flock, the world pulsing with their strange Dark aura mist, even as III’s immense power whirls around Yvan and me in ever-tightening spirals.

“Tell the Forest to stand down!”

Yvan snarls at Sylvan, Hazel, and Yulan.

Hazel’s otherworldly night-dark eyes scan my ravens, his lime-green face tensing with a conflicted look as the world strobes with the ravens’ world-dimming aura. Hazel’s gaze snaps to Sylvan’s and Yulan’s equally tumultuous gazes, and a conflicted look passes between the three of them.

As one, Sylvan, Hazel, and Yulan thrust their III-marked palms out toward the surrounding wilds.

I gasp, hit by a radiating blast of Hazel’s dark mist and Sylvan’s and Yulan’s powerful elemental auras, their combined magic flashing against the Forest’s relentless assault to no avail.

Oaklyyn cuts Sylvan, Hazel, and Yulan a murderous glare and jabs a finger at Yvan. “Our Forest sees him as an enemy!”

“He’s my ally!”

I snarl back, as the Forest sends a series of images screaming through my mind . . .

Dark wings erupting into Shadowfire.

The wings enlarging, overtaking a distant Forest canopy before beating silver gray fire down on the trees.

Leagues and leagues of trees burning . . .

Clarity descends as I realize the source of the Forest’s confusion—the Wyvernfire Vogel stole from Yvan when he wrested hold of our Wyvernbond during the battle at Voloi . . . a trace of it must still be present in Vogel’s Shadow-corrupted firelines. And now the trees are sensing that same fire in Yvan through our Wyvernbond.

My gaze locks onto Yvan’s. “The trees think it’s you destroying the Western Forest,”

I force out through the line-stretching pain, while Yvan fights the Forest off with an encircling wall of invisible fire, his body beginning to tremble from the effort. I swing my gaze toward III. “Yvan’s fire isn’t burning you down! The Magedom’s is!”

III responds with a more urgent pull on our bond, desperation overtaking me as the Forest’s visions gain potency, the Prophecy flipping in the Northern Forest and III’s mind.

Setting itself fully against Yvan.

“No!”

The word erupts from my throat in a growl, Erthia-tilting in its intensity as Yvan keeps hold of our bond and I face down III, the Dryads, the entire Northern Forest—the entirety of Erthia. “He’s not your enemy! He’s my Wyvernbonded MATE!”

My heart seems to burst open around the word, while Yvan’s fire explodes, our energy shot through with my intention to be with him always.

Yvan’s incandescent gaze collides with mine, a look of pure passion blazing in it. An emotional snarl escapes him, defiance bolting through us with the strength of worlds cleaving, our bonded fire power rising to blistering heights.

Yvan’s shoulders stiffen, and his expression turns feral as his power sears through my lines in a scorching blast of heat. I draw the living branch III gave to me, life flooding through it via my Forest connection, both of us ready to go to elemental war over this huge, flaming line in the sand, even though I know nothing about wielding magic as a Dryad.

Because we’re done.

Done with being forced away from anyone we love. Done with being coerced into a prophesied fight that only brings division and destruction to Erthia.

The Prophecy ends here.

Without warning, Oaklyyn thrusts her runic staff toward Yvan.

I thrust out my branch and murmur the words to the Mage fire-blast spell to no effect, while Yvan bolts out a line of golden fire from his palm. At the same moment, Sylvan levels a pine branch at Oaklyyn and sends a line of deep-green flame toward her staff and Hazel lashes out blurred tendrils of black mist at the staff from his clawed fingertips.

Hazel’s magic whips around the staff and wrests it from Oaklyyn’s grip just before Yvan’s and Sylvan’s bolts of fire slam into the weapon.

It bursts into gold and green flame.

Oaklyyn’s expression turns murderous as she glares at Hazel and Sylvan and spears her finger at Yvan. “Our Forest has named him enemy!”

she cries. “But beyond that, he’s Lasair Wyvern! He’s all fire with no other elements to temper it! Tree-killing fire! His bond to the Black Witch must be broken before his power fully connects to our Forest and burns it to ash!”

A maelstrom of conflict shudders through Yvan’s fire, while my ravens’ caws and pulsing auras gain more urgent force.

Yvan hisses out what sounds like a Wyvern curse, his fervid gaze swinging to meet mine. “She’s right,”

he grits out. “I can’t war with the trees to keep hold of our bond and risk the Forest’s destruction. The Forest is the source of all your power . . .”

“The Forest needs to find a way to ally with you,”

I counter. “It can’t be aligned with me while warring with you. We can’t fight Vogel divided like that. The Prophecy cannot stand!”

My words are cut off as III’s potent aura descends through the storming chaos, a sense of vast, invisible weight bearing down on the entire Northern Forest, on Yvan and me and my rootlines. We all flinch, including the Dryads, my ravens’ caws ceasing and their pulsing power dissipating as all of us look to the Great Ironwood Tree.

“Let III decide!”

Yulan’s impassioned voice chimes out.

I meet the lichen-lashed gaze of the petite Dryad, struck by the dead certainty I find in it that this is Yvan’s and my only chance to convince the Forest to see past the Prophecy.

To convince III to see who Yvan truly is, as it did with me.

“Put your palms on III’s bark,”

I urge Yvan while fighting against the surrounding Forest’s rootline-stretching pull away from him. “Let III read you.”

“No!”

Oaklyyn cries, her tone one of pure desperation. “Icaral, no . . .”

“I’m all killing fire, Elloren,”

Yvan rasps. He glances at III, conflict whipping through his power even as he rages to hold on to our bond. Eyes bright with pain, he grips my shoulders. “Our Wyvernbond is directly connected to my core of fire. I’m set apart from this. I’m set apart from you—”

“No, you’re not,”

I protest as the surrounding Forest flings another fiery warning full of dark wings through my mind. But there’s another image blooming inside me once more. Rooting itself deep in my beleaguered center—III’s vision of everyone encircling the Great Tree’s broad trunk, all of us joined to III and intimately linked to the Natural Matrix. Intimately joined to the power of Life.

Everyone.

No exceptions.

Defiance rears through my chest, scathingly hot. “Yvan, I’m asking you to trust me in this. As your fire-bonded mate.”

The word mate triggers another palpable surge of Yvan’s fire, a ravenous look passing over his face, every nerve inside me heating and contracting toward that lightning-bolt look. His power streaming hot around me through our bond, he nods then turns and brings his palms definitively to III’s trunk.

I gasp as golden light rays out from where Yvan’s hands meet bark, at the same moment that Oaklyyn, Lyptus, and the huge Dryad with the bear kindred cry out and lunge forward, leveling branches and staffs at Yvan while Errlith’s caw splits the air, a misty shield of Darkness flowing out of my flock’s midnight feathers and Hazel’s raised palms to enclose Yvan and me.

Yvan shivers, and a CRACK sounds on the air as the attacking Dryads blast bolts of deep-green power at our Deathkin shield.

The shield explodes into black mist while bark forms all over Yvan’s body, and Oaklyyn, Lyptus, and the huge Dryad ready another magic attack just as Yvan’s whole form is drawn into the Great Tree.

“NO!”

Oaklyyn cries.

I blink once then stagger back, my pulse roaring through my ears, barely registering her alarmed cry and the Forest’s sharp spike of terror as my newly reformed Wyvernbond to Yvan gives a sudden, brutal stretch . . .

. . . and breaks.

A shock of pain blasts through my rootlines, and I cry out and drop to my knees, Yvan’s volcanic, all-encompassing heat wrenched away, only his hands’ glowing imprints shimmering bright gold on the Great Tree’s night-dark bark. Until those, too, are consumed by III.