Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

was getting harder and harder to ignore. For any creature with magic, the heart of the wood was easy to find. He just travelled in the direction every instinct was telling him to avoid.
    Only a few hundred yards in, he had to land and continue on foot. There was no way, at this speed, to beat Alec to the null space. Not if his friend had managed to get off the university grounds in one piece, anyway. Hopefully, the dragon battle above hadn't felled him. The woods reacted badly to so much negative use of their energy. Trees swayed and smaller ones, still as wide around at their base as Kreed was at the shoulder, ripped at their roots. He couldn't shake the idea the trees were not reacting to the wild wind, but that their movement was somehow self-motivated.
    "That's just fucking creepy…" he picked up his pace.
    Sure enough, Alec was already safely inside the heart of the null space by the time Kreed arrived.
    "You'd better stay there," Alec warned. He stood straight, watching the sky. Blood dripped down his front and back and he cradled one arm carefully against himself. But his words weren't slurred, his eyes looked clear, and the fatigue of the past days seemed absent.
    "Alec!" Kreed's heart thumped hard at seeing him, at the sight of him, hurt, but stronger than he'd seemed in maybe weeks.
    "I'm fine. Better than fine, actually. I was right. The mating fever's gone." He glanced at Kreed, a wry smile on his face. "Probably hit me twice as hard the minute I step past that ring of trees, but for now, Powers, Kreed, I haven't felt this good in months, and I can feel the venom sinking into every part of my body. I should feel like dying shit."
    "Venom?" Kreed wavered. His knees wobbled and he had to grab the trunk of a tree to steady himself. "What?"
    "It's fine." Alec turned his attention back to the sky and the fierce battle just a stone's throw from the circle of trees encompassing the heart of the wood. "Well." He grimaced. "Not fine, fine, but it won't kill me. Just make life damn sucky for a while."
    "Who's?" He glared up through the trees, but from where he was, he couldn't see the dragons. He could only hear the fury in Robert's cries and the soft, continual keening from the female dragon.
    "Not his. Relax. He didn't touch me." Alec pointed upwards. "That's Ruby. She totally saved my ass, too. He would have, but she just—" he made a motion of his fist crashing into his hand and exploding. "It was awesome! Oh, fuck! That hurt!"
    Kreed could see now that the arm he had pressed back to his chest was swollen from palm almost to his elbow.
    "Powers, Alec, are you drunk?"
    Alec laughed. "No." he spun and grinned at Kreed. "Don't come in here, though. The magic totally doesn't work in here."
    "What's wrong with you?" Kreed inched forward. He could feel the magical void. His own magic crawled over his skin as though trying to get away from that space, but he ignored it.
    "Nah." Alec waved a hand at him. "I'm fine."
    "I don't think so." Kreed turned his attention to the dragons above them and the screeching rending the morning air. They were drawing a crowd. No matter if his fever seemed to be gone, Alec still reeked of the pheromones of a dragon who had not yet mated. Kreed could smell it from twenty feet away in the middle of a loamy forest. Nothing could mask that. The more dragons gathered to watch the battle and find out who gained the upper hand, the more likely it was that one, or more of them, would smell Alec too.
    Kreed didn't fancy his friend's chances if that happened.
    "Alec?" Turning his attention back to the more immediate problem, Kreed took another step forward. "Come on over here." He held out a hand and his fingertips tingled as they encountered the very edges of the null magic field.
    "Nah." Alec waved him off. "I'm good."
    "I really think maybe you're not, Alec. Please." One more step forward brought Kreed into range of an all-over body sizzling effect. Magic, both skin and scale, slithered and roiled inside him.
    "Don't make me come in there after you, Alec." Powers, don't make me come in there, he thought. The magic didn't like this place.
    "I'm not coming out, Kreed."
    Alec turned away, the levity gone from his face. "You don't want to come in, that's fine, but you know what? It's peaceful. Not magic, not mating instinct. Just me and I know what I want."
    Kreed shivered. "What's that?" he asked, voice clawing for purchase in his parched throat.
    "Come in and find out."
    And what would the null