Page 143 of The Dryad Storm

Trystan strides toward Vothe, an emotional tension mounting between them, Vothe’s throat going dry with a sudden river-amplified desire for Trystan, a current of the Zonor’s formidable power swirling around them both.

Vothe’s pulse pounds hard through his veins as Trystan stills before him and opens his palm. The image of the Great Tree III that Vothe saw inside the Forest is imprinted there, the image the same wavering steel blue hue as Trystan’s eyes and hair.

Vothe realizes what this transformed color mirrors as he glances toward the huge river beside them.Zonor blue.The river that’s marked them both as its kindreds.

Trembling slightly, Vothe unfurls his own palm, the same defiant III image emblazoned there, shot through with an identical rippling Zonor blue, traceries of his white lightning threading over his onyx skin.

“I’m forever changed,” Trystan marvels in the Dryadin language... a language that Vothe, too, can now understand.

“I’m changed too,” Vothe responds in Dryadin, his heart full to bursting with Trystan and the Waters and the Forest and the Air above. “I was always so anchored to the Sky,” he roughly states, “but cut off from the Forest and the Waters. Now I’m anchored to itall.”

Trystan nods, and his expression takes on a pained look, his aura of blue lightning flashing ardently around Vothe. “I feel truly different, Vothe. I don’t know if...” Trystan pauses, and Vothe can scent the sudden fear storming through him.

Passion rises hot in Vothe’s chest, and a wild incredulity rises. “Are you asking me if I still love you?”

A more intense pain slashes through Trystan’s power as he stands there, rigid, all the lightning in the world balling up in him, and also balling up inside of Vothe.All of itfor this man.

“Trystan,” Vothe growls, the name ripped from the center of his chest as his lightning aura cuts loose, exploding toward Trystan’s power. “Always.More.”

And then they’re closing the distance between them, Trystan’s lips crashing down on his, their lightning igniting against each other’s in an incandescent firestorm, lighting up the surrounding air with forking white and blue power.

“I love you,” Trystan says in a gasp between electric kisses. “I love you, Vothe. I love youso much.”

“Be my mate,” Vothe growls against Trystan’s lightning-coated lips. “Be mine with the Zonor. With all of Erthia. But be mine, Trystan Gardner.”

“Not on land,” Trystan insists, gripping the sides of Vothe’s pants, holding Vothe against himself, so tight Vothe feels as if he’ll lose his mind if they don’t take each other fully. “You can conjure air around me.”

Nodding, Vothe pulls Trystan into another kiss, their lips meeting in an explosion of lightning as Vothe flies them into the center of the huge Zonor, Trystan’s mouth hot on Vothe’s.

Vothe pivots his wings and arrows them down toward the river’s rushing surface. They hit the cool water and bolt into it, multihued lightning illuminating their descent as Vothe conjures a bubble of air around Trystan’s head.

Trystan pulls Vothe into another kiss as they reach the riverbed, Vothe’s hands sliding over Trystan’s slick, muscular form, the two of them desperately pulling at and yanking off each other’s clothing until there’s nothing separating them from each other, nothing separating them from the Life-giving waters of the Zonor.

Nothing separating them from the power of the river merging with the power in their bodies.

Capturing each other’s mouths in a deep, tongue-twining kiss that comes close to turning them both into pure lightning, they slide around each other in the churning waters and powerfully join with a crack of lightning, Vothe’s mouth clamping down on Trystan’s shoulder, Trystan’s skin hot against Vothe’s lips.

Storming magic sizzles over them both with the power to cleave worlds as Vothe sinks his teeth into Trystan’s shoulder and sends his full lightning into him.

The entire Natural Matrix of the river explodes in blue light, merging with them both as they’re swept into a wave of Erthia-tilting ecstasy and love and merged Wyvern-Dryad power.

“Are you ready?” Trystan asks from where they later stand, hand in hand, on the riverbank’s outcropping of flat, obsidian stone, both of them clothed in pants made of melded deep-purple leaves that Trystan fashioned with a swipe of the branch in his hand.

A steady breeze kisses Vothe’s skin, and he can read that Trystan isn’t chilled by it, Trystan’s physical connection to the world transformed by the Forest and the Zonor and their full Wyvernbonding. More shifter-like than he was before, as a result of their mating bond.

Just like Vothe has become more Dryad Fae.

Vothe pulls in an ecstatic breath, both of them suffused with the warm, shimmering aura of their merged lightning, a bit stunned by their effect on each other, Vothe’s emotions and power still swept up in Trystan, his hold on Trystan’s hand firm.

Vothe looks to the half-moon Wyvernbond mark on Trystan’s shoulder. It glows lightning bright, small threads of silvery lightning crackling from it. A besotted ache constricts Vothe’s chest, the Eastern Wyvern mating mark’s glow as incandescent as their love for each other and for their kindred river. Their merged power amplified by itall.

“I’m ready,” Vothe affirms.

Trystan raises the branch in his hand at the same time that Vothe raises his palm to the heavens, and they summon that love-fused power.

Bolts of their fused blue-and-white lightning flash from Trystan’s branch and Vothe’s palm and merge as they soar upward and fan out to form a domed net of pulsing, forking magic over the entire Zonor River and its bracketing Forest, the Forest’s energy joining in to guide the net-barrier’s flow in perfect sync with the trajectory of Trystan and Vothe’s magic.

Vothe and Trystan continue to feed power into their lightning barrier until they’re tapped out, their bonded magic needing time to recharge. But this shield, Vothe considers as they survey it, side by side, it feels strong enough to protect this second largest body of water in the Eastern Realm fromanythingcontaining Vogel’s Shadow.

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