He watched her, silent.
“I grew up in the High Fae court. Not the pretty parts, not the ballrooms and garden parties. The old parts. The ones with vows you don’t get to take back and fathers who forget your name unless it gets them power.”
Her fingers closed around the edge of her journal, knuckles whitening. “My father used me. Traded promises sealed in my name. Told me who I could speak to. Who I could marry. Who I should smile at, even when my stomach curled into knots. I was magic on a leash.”
Dominic’s expression shifted—no smugness, no flirtation. Just quiet, patient fury on her behalf.
“I was sixteen when I ran. Ended up here. Celestial Pines wasn’t on any map, and maybe that’s why it felt safe. The wards welcomed me. The trees didn’t ask questions. I could breathe.”
She swallowed, voice softening. “So when I built my life here… I built it to be mine. Completely. I didn’t want a bond. I didn’t want fate.”
“You wanted choice.”
“Exactly.”
Dominic was quiet for a long moment before saying, “You ever tell anyone that?”
“No,” she said. “Because most people see the sarcasm and the magic and assume I’ve always had it together.”
“You haven’t.”
“Not even close.”
The room fell into a stillness so deep it felt like time stopped.
Dominic stood. He rounded the table slowly, stopped beside her chair, and crouched until they were eye level.
“I never asked you to love me,” he said gently. “And I don’t expect you to fix this for me. But don’t shut me out because you’re afraid of something that hasn’t even happened.”
She blinked, breath catching. She wanted to look away, to retreat behind the ironclad walls she’d spent years perfecting—but he was too close, too real.
His hand rose, brushed a stray curl from her face.
It was so tender, so stupidly sweet, she almost cried. Instead, she whispered, “I don’t know how to let someone in without breaking myself.”
His gaze softened. “Then let me help. Just a little crack at a time.”
She let his fingers linger against her cheek. Just for a moment.
The walls didn’t fall but she did allow one of the bricks to shift.
17
DOMINIC
Hazel showed up like a ghost—one moment, she wasn’t there, and the next, she was standing by the crooked sign outside Twyla’s diner, cloak dusted in ash and the wind carrying the scent of old magic and charred herbs in her wake. She looked older. Tired. Like whatever she’d been doing had clawed a piece of her away.
Dominic’s pulse kicked up.
He’d spotted her the second she stepped into the square, and instinct flared sharp in his gut. Answers. Finally. But when he turned to call for Lillith, she was already deep in conversation with Twyla under the eaves of the shop. Twyla was talking in that hushed, conspiratorial voice she used when something juicy had just gone down—Dominic caught the words “storm night” and “accidental soul-bond” before Lillith groaned and rubbed her temples like she had a headache made entirely of social embarrassment.
He didn’t interrupt.
Instead, he moved—fast and silent like only a predator could—and cut Hazel off in the diner’s lot. Arms crossed, jaw locked,every line of his body humming with the restraint it took not to shake her by the shoulders.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Hazel blinked once, then gave him a look that could’ve curdled milk. “Hello to you too, Dominic Kane.”
