The long months stuck in dragon form had altered them. It appeared as if the gilded circles had broken and bled irregularly over parts of the jade. In the left one, it even covered some of the white. They were magnificent, rendering the mating marks dancing down his left cheek more pronounced, and Chrysander was tired of staring. On shaky limbs, he rushed over and crushed Ellery against his chest. Ellery’s arms wrapped around his neck, and Chrysander was in a state of complete disbelief that he was finally holding his mate again.
“I love you,” Ellery whispered next to his ear.
Chrysander gave up any hope of holding back his tears as he did nothing but stand there embracing the other half of his soul. “I love you too,” he choked out.
“I missed you.”
“Oh Ell, I missed you too.” Chrysander pulled away enough to cup Ellery’s spectacular face in his hands. “Look at you…even more beautiful than I remembered. The changes. You’re dazzling.”
“What kind of changes are we talking about?”
“You haven’t seen your face?”
“No, I only cared about seeing you.”
Chrysander smiled and for the first time in half a year, pressed his lips to Ellery’s. There was so much going on inside him, he was completely incapable of giving names to his emotions. “Come into the house and see. You’re exquisite.”
A tear slid out of one of his beautiful eyes. “I can’t.”
Pain tore through Chrysander as he realized he didn’t truly have his Ellery back. This was just a single frozen moment. “You’re going to shift, aren’t you?”
Scales slid over part of Ellery’s face and he tore himself away from Chrysander with a loud roar. Seconds later, pieces of the tunic and pants he’d been wearing fluttered down to the ground alongside the white dragon, who whimpered as he tossed himself onto the sand.
“Why didn’t he stay in elf form?” Chrysander demanded in a shout at the sorcerers standing around him.
“We’ll make it stronger now that we know it works,” Dra’Kaedan rushed out.
Chrysander was desolate over losing Ellery again, and he let go of being the man everyone expected him to be all the time. He was yelling before he even registered the words leaving his mouth. “How long do I have to wait to have more than five minutes with him? Why can’t you guys fucking fix this? It’s been six damn months, for Fate’s sake! You’re supposed to be the strongest fucking sorcerers on the planet, and this is it?”
“Chrys, they’re doing the best they can,” Damian said softly. “It’s one step closer to a cure. At least you know he’s okay.”
“And fucking stunning,” Aleksander remarked.
Without any clue what to do or what to think, Chrysander nodded and, like a child, hugged himself as the tumult of the last six months tore him apart. “I need him,” he managed. The dragon on the ground crawled over, and Chrysander dropped down next to him. He wrapped his arms over his scales and cried while Ellery made little growly sounds in his throat. It might have been to soothe, or perhaps it was an expression of his own pain. Without any way to talk to him, Chrysander was left with guesswork. It was a game he’d grown weary of a long time ago. He closed his eyes to block out the people watching them and finally released his pent-up emotions in a tide of weeping.
Lifting a hand, he yanked the crown from his head and tossed it into the dirt. Who cared what Fate expected of him? She was supposed to have given him a mate for life, not for a few precious minutes between dragon shifts. Chrysander was no longer fueled by duty. He needed Ellery, and he would be damned if he was going to spend any amount of time hiding it.The world around us could burn for all I care, Chrysander thought as he tightened his hold on Ellery. His elf was the only thing that mattered.
Chapter 28
Ellery was sick to his stomach both emotionally and physically. Hearing the anguish in Chrysander’s voice as he shifted back was harrowing, but Ellery wasn’t daunted by the sorcerers’ efforts. He would be an elf again, and they might have finally unlocked the key to that dream. Chrysander had held on to him for what seemed like hours before Damian gently convinced him to get up and at least get changed out of his suit. Even if Chrysander hadn’t wept over him, Ellery couldn’t have moved.
The potion might have given him a few precious moments with Chrysander, but it also left him nauseous, dizzy, and fatigued. Ellery would never complain about his discomfort though; he would pay any price to be an elf. He had to admit he was curious about what his elven side looked like—however, it was hardly a priority. Chrysander strode back outside, the tears washed away and his eyes haunted. Ellery closed his own and focused on what it felt like to be in his arms again.
“What’s going on?” Chrysander asked with trepidation in his voice.
Ellery glanced over to see what was worrying his other half and saw sorcerers and shifters pouring from their office building. A giant table appeared a few feet from where Ellery was still lying in the dirt.
“We’re going to have a meeting, and we thought you and Elf would like to attend,” Aleksander explained.
Anxious to be a part of the discussion, Ellery pulled himself up to his front feet. A wave of vertigo nearly knocked him to the ground, but he fought it off and gingerly trotted forward so he could listen.
“You okay, Ell?” Chrysander laid a hand on one wing after pulling up a chair alongside him.
Ellery carefully nodded so he didn’t throw up. From the frown on Chrysander’s face, he guessed he wasn’t fooling anyone, but he was not going to throw in the towel when they were so tantalizingly close to restoring him to some semblance of his life before Wesley’s poison.
“Okay, gentlemen and lady, let’s dig right in. The potion Dra’Kaedan was kind enough to help you drink managed to turn you back into an elf. It also made throwing up on the Grand Warlock possible, and I’m sorry I had to miss that,” Aleksander said with a grin.
“It was actually all kinds of gross but totally not Elf’s fault.”
