Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

disordered energy and ill-formed ball of power inside Robert's bubble. It would take him time to sort it out and safely dissipate it all. By then, Alec would be out of his reach.
    ****
    "Alec!"
    Swearing a stream of vitriol at his roommate's back as the tiny man disappeared down the hallway towards the stairs, Robert wrestled with the left over magic. It was burning holes through his shell faster than he could contain the snakes of energy. Every tentacle of fiery magic left blackened gouges in the walls and floor where they touched. If he lost concentration even for a moment, he'd lose it all and the entire wing of the dorms would be in danger of burning to the ground. Alec's abandoned magic was as feverish and out of control as the man himself, seeming to draw more power from Robert's efforts to contain it.
    Even as he drew tongue after tongue of heated power into his protective spell, more escaped. He was losing the battle. The longer it took him to get this under control, the further from his grasp Alec got, and the closer to the dragons.
    Snarling, he let go of the skin-magic containing his own dragon and let his wings unfurl. He couldn't let go of the man in himself altogether. His dragon was young. Untried. He'd never control magic not his own in that form. But he couldn't concentrate on the magic holding the dragon in check and the magic holding Alec's spells at the same time. Freedom for the dragon seemed the safer bet, even in a building infused with the smell of easy-to-hunt prey.
    He pushed the animal instinct down as far as he could. It didn't stop his tail from knocking over furniture or his wings getting bruised on the ceiling, but it let him focus on the out-of-control chaos Alec had left behind.
    So when it suddenly began shrinking back in on itself, his own forceful attempts lashed outwards, no longer having anything to wrap around. Out in the hallway, there was a crash, the sounds of furniture splintering and curses flying through the air.
    "For fuck sakes! Calm the hell down and let me help, asshole!"
    The shouting snapped Robert back to his body and the dragon, and his magic, subsided. Alec's spells shivered in his grasp, shrank to thin strands and wisps of cool chaos, then disappeared completely.
    "What the hell is going on?" Kreed gingerly picked himself off the hallway floor where Robert's magic had flung him. "What are you doing?"
    "Trying to control Alec's wild magic." Robert shivered back into his human form. "How did you do that?"
    Kreed grinned. "Half-blood adaptation, jerk-off." He tapped the side of his skull. "I can control the instinct to burn everything to cinders." He ran his fingers over a still-smoldering line of charred wood in the door frame. "I used a few chilling spells."
    "You mean anti-dragon—"
    "I mean alternate spells. They're just as useful for preserving the food for your fancy royal feasts as they are for cooling your tempers. Though why you don't just use freezers like everyone else…." He smoothed his bare hand over the smoking wood and the coals died. The dark scar remained in the wood, but at least the magic eating into it dissipated. "Sometimes fighting fire with fire only makes a bigger fire. It helps to just not follow blind instinct once in a while."
    "Freezing the meat leaves a bad taste—"
    "Where is Alec?" Kreed interrupted. "Is he okay?"
    "He­—" Robert glanced down the hallway to the stairs at the far end. "He left. You didn't see him go by?"
    "I came in by the balcony." Flexing his shoulders so his wings rustled, Kreed gave him a sneering look. "These aren't just for show, you know. The hallway was empty when I saw the plumes of smoke coming out the door."
    "So where did he go?"
    Kreed stared at him. "What do you mean where did he go?" He glanced around. "He was here. With you."
    "He esc—left."
    Kreed let out a snort. "If you didn't lock him up like a prisoner, he would never have felt the need to escape." He pushed past Robert into the room.
    "I was trying to protect him!" Robert turned to follow Kreed's progress across the room, his head still scrambled from the conflicting skin- and scale-magic.
    "Trying to control him, you mean." As he spoke, Kreed rifled through the papers on Alec's desk, shoving aside textbooks and snarling when the laptop required a password he didn't have.
    Robert wasn't about to equate keeping Alec safely in the dorm with keeping him prisoner. Inside, Alec was safe. Out in the maelstrom of mating dragons, there was no way