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The claim causes a blinding rush of euphoria that feels so much bigger than the burn of the bite. When he laps at it, sucking and soothing the bite, I surrender myself to his shadows, letting him hold me up.
We did it.
A connection stronger than sex, more hypnotic than any fantasy, deeper than anything I could have imagined settles between us.
Wren wraps his darkness around me as if he’ll never let me go. I give myself over to the tangle of shadows, to the tenderness of this new certainty. When he gently lays me on the bed, I whisper, “You’re mine now.”
“As you are mine. My love. My heart. My home.”
His home. I rest my head on his chest, tracing the charm on the bracelet he gave me. “I wish I could see your home.”
My vision blurs, the world around me goes cold, and the solid muscle beneath my cheek vanishes.
“Wren?” Panic shoots through me. “Wren!”
Wren
Hayden disappears from my hold,vanishing as though she has become shadow.
“Hayden?” My roar brings Maximus, Glenda, and all the ghosts.
“Where is she?” Glenda asks, flickering in a frantic pattern as though she’s searching multiple spaces at once. Or so terrified she can’t keep her form.
Maximus barks with one head, howls with another, and whines with the last.
The ghosts all talk at once.
“Quiet,” I demand. “Nothing could’ve gotten through the wards. Whatever magic took her?—”
“Pardon me, don’t rend me, Sir Reaper, but…” Bertie the Bard sweeps his turkey leg in an odd bow.
“What?” I snap.
“I read the matching contract Hayden signed with the demon.”
I donotwant to discuss Theodopolis right now. “Get to the point, ghost.”
“What if this is related to the mating magic mentioned in the contract? It seemed very important in the terms of the agreement?—”
“Mating magic.” My voice goes almost as hoarse as Bertie’s. Demons select their partners solely for the increase in magical abilities brought on by a completed mating bond—a level up forbothparties. If I’m freaking the fuck out, what might my human be feeling if she suddenly acquired a new power?
Glenda tugs on herGroovy Good Timeshirt. “Can you find Hayden?” Her voice breaks on a quiet sob.
Hayden.
My mate.
My world.
I block out everything but the connection we forged. Feeling her come apart around me. Knowing I wouldn’t have to wait for her dreams ever again. Finding the best parts of me in loving her. Yet here, I only sense an emptiness. “She spoke of home.”
“She’s a wanderer,” Glenda says. “She doesn’t have a home.”
“Myhome,” I whisper. “What if…”
I don’t take the time to finish the thought. “Come, Maximus.”
Traveling through shadows, I hurry to my home realm, to the fortress surrounded by water, mirrors, prisms, and all manners of light reflection in case the dreaded, banished shadow eldritch horrors who predate us ever return. My magic pulses the closer I get to my rooms. I burst into the long shadows of my bedroom, praying to any deities in the Valley of the Gods who might hear me that I guessed right.
