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Authors: Various Authors
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prince!"
The threat didn't register so much as did the fear behind the anger in Kreed's expression. Fear for Alec. Robert felt it spike in himself and nodded, finally able to shove the panic and the dragon aside long enough to act. He turned on his heel and dodged out of the room towards the double doors and the balcony at the end of the hall.
This time of year, the doors were wide open, allowing students to come and go at will. Kreed was right, of course. Any other dragon would take Alec for themselves. It was a difficult drive to resist, especially when Alec's fever spiked and just the scent of him was enough to ignite every mating instinct a dragon had. Only the blood of the prince flowing through Robert, and the human blood of Kreed's mixed heritage kept Alec safe from them. Even that was often a struggle too difficult for Robert to spend much time in his roommate's presence during the season. He had no idea how Kreed resisted.
The thought occurred to him that maybe the two were so close because Kreed didn't resist. It was enough to make him stumble, to trip up the spell he cast as he launched himself from the balcony. It was enough to make the change stall and plunge him into a stuttering, heart-stopping fall as his wings creaked and groaned under the stress of pulling him out of the dive.
He hadn't fucked up a change since the very first time when he was twelve. He shook himself as he righted his flight, skimming over the ground, nostrils wide, lungs filling with the scent of dragons in heat. What little bit of human reasoning he managed to hang onto as the pheromones took over his brain, he trained on Alec.
The only mating that would satisfy him this flight was with Alec. One way or another, this time, it would happen. Magic sizzled through him, nose to tail-tip, the heat of it drawing a shriek from him that shattered the dragonsong around him. Mind, soul and magic fixated on the remembered scent that was his roommate, Robert lifted his orange and red-scaled body into the sky and wheeled back over the university grounds. There was no way out of this body now but to satisfy the magic, and for that, he needed Alec.
"I knew this was a bad idea," Kreed muttered as he launched from the balcony himself and watched the prince nose-dive. He most definitely did not follow in Robert's wake as the big dragon plummeted earthward.
"Too bad." He couldn't quite resist voicing the sentiment as Robert mastered the ill-formed spell, pumped his wings and narrowly avoided crashing. Kreed was dragon enough to recognize his competition and want it destroyed, but human enough to know that was instinct talking. Mostly.
The mating scream emanating from the big red dragon made Kreed's bones shiver. If he didn't find Alec first, there might not be a lot left to find. Dragons, in full form, were creatures of instinct. It drove them to hunt and feed, and in spring, to mate. Kreed couldn't deny he felt it, too. But his mixed blood let him exercise restraint and logic. No so for a shifted dragon. Even a princely one. Thank all the Powers mating only resulted in very, very few successful breedings, and therefore just as few dragons who didn't change back. Three weeks of chaos in the spring, of the skies being filled with crazed dragons, was more than enough. A half a dozen of them remaining that way was enough danger to the human populations on the mainland.
The rest of the year, dragons walked around looking and acting mostly human. It was the only way they could survive. Dragons were too big, too wild, and even the small ones, too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely in their shifted form all year long. Only those incubating eggs were permitted to keep their form until the eggs were ready. During that time, they were carefully contained within the Waveside hunting grounds. People knew to keep away from the ocean-ward side of the island until late summer when the hatchlings had flow out to sea and the egg-bearers found their human skins
The threat didn't register so much as did the fear behind the anger in Kreed's expression. Fear for Alec. Robert felt it spike in himself and nodded, finally able to shove the panic and the dragon aside long enough to act. He turned on his heel and dodged out of the room towards the double doors and the balcony at the end of the hall.
This time of year, the doors were wide open, allowing students to come and go at will. Kreed was right, of course. Any other dragon would take Alec for themselves. It was a difficult drive to resist, especially when Alec's fever spiked and just the scent of him was enough to ignite every mating instinct a dragon had. Only the blood of the prince flowing through Robert, and the human blood of Kreed's mixed heritage kept Alec safe from them. Even that was often a struggle too difficult for Robert to spend much time in his roommate's presence during the season. He had no idea how Kreed resisted.
The thought occurred to him that maybe the two were so close because Kreed didn't resist. It was enough to make him stumble, to trip up the spell he cast as he launched himself from the balcony. It was enough to make the change stall and plunge him into a stuttering, heart-stopping fall as his wings creaked and groaned under the stress of pulling him out of the dive.
He hadn't fucked up a change since the very first time when he was twelve. He shook himself as he righted his flight, skimming over the ground, nostrils wide, lungs filling with the scent of dragons in heat. What little bit of human reasoning he managed to hang onto as the pheromones took over his brain, he trained on Alec.
The only mating that would satisfy him this flight was with Alec. One way or another, this time, it would happen. Magic sizzled through him, nose to tail-tip, the heat of it drawing a shriek from him that shattered the dragonsong around him. Mind, soul and magic fixated on the remembered scent that was his roommate, Robert lifted his orange and red-scaled body into the sky and wheeled back over the university grounds. There was no way out of this body now but to satisfy the magic, and for that, he needed Alec.
"I knew this was a bad idea," Kreed muttered as he launched from the balcony himself and watched the prince nose-dive. He most definitely did not follow in Robert's wake as the big dragon plummeted earthward.
"Too bad." He couldn't quite resist voicing the sentiment as Robert mastered the ill-formed spell, pumped his wings and narrowly avoided crashing. Kreed was dragon enough to recognize his competition and want it destroyed, but human enough to know that was instinct talking. Mostly.
The mating scream emanating from the big red dragon made Kreed's bones shiver. If he didn't find Alec first, there might not be a lot left to find. Dragons, in full form, were creatures of instinct. It drove them to hunt and feed, and in spring, to mate. Kreed couldn't deny he felt it, too. But his mixed blood let him exercise restraint and logic. No so for a shifted dragon. Even a princely one. Thank all the Powers mating only resulted in very, very few successful breedings, and therefore just as few dragons who didn't change back. Three weeks of chaos in the spring, of the skies being filled with crazed dragons, was more than enough. A half a dozen of them remaining that way was enough danger to the human populations on the mainland.
The rest of the year, dragons walked around looking and acting mostly human. It was the only way they could survive. Dragons were too big, too wild, and even the small ones, too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely in their shifted form all year long. Only those incubating eggs were permitted to keep their form until the eggs were ready. During that time, they were carefully contained within the Waveside hunting grounds. People knew to keep away from the ocean-ward side of the island until late summer when the hatchlings had flow out to sea and the egg-bearers found their human skins
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