He didn’t look at her. Just stared at the horizon. “She thinks the bond saved my life.”
“She might be right.”
Silence wrapped around them. Not the comfortable kind. The kind filled with jagged edges and truths too big for the space between them.
“I didn’t know,” she said after a beat, quieter now. “If I had?—”
“You’d still have tried to break it,” he said, not accusing. Just tired.
Her laugh was bitter. “Probably.”
He stepped closer—just enough to feel her warmth. To feel that tether pull tighter.
“You said you were afraid of being forced into something.”
“I am.”
“And yet…” He exhaled. “We keep choosing this.”
Her eyes flicked to his. Soft. Scared. Beautiful.
“I don’t know what this is, Dominic,” she admitted. “I don’t know if it’s real or magic or just the universe being a sadistic bastard.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Could be all three.”
She stared at him. “And that doesn’t scare you?”
He didn’t flinch. “Terrifies me. But I’ve never felt anything this real.”
The church bell rang in the distance. Someone laughed. The wind stirred their hair. Life continued around them while theirs shifted.
He reached for her hand.
Not a claim.
A choice.
18
LILLITH
Things had been tense when Dominc and Lillith had gotten home after the brief interaction with Hazel. She had felt bad for pulling her hand away when he went to hold it on their walk home, after everything Hazel had sait, but it was reaction. And she couldn’t for the life of her explain why or even grab his hand again after she saw the momentary hurt on his face.
There was simply too much to say and neither of them wanted to say it or even knew how. SO, DOminc sat on the couch pretending to read a magazine while Twyla sketched as she brainstormed ideas on what in the hell she was supposed to do.
When the tension was finally ebbing away, Lillith took a break from pretending to not care.
“Dominic, about earlier–”
There was a knock. Lillith let out an even heavier breath and went to answer the door, already not wanting to deal with whoever was on the other side. Before she could even get to it though, Twyla kicked in her front door.
Not literally. The woman had better manners than that. But the way her energy barreled into the room ahead of her cherry-red boots and wind-tousled hair sure made it feel like a siege.
“Get dressed, my fae-little-witchling,” Twyla announced, tossing a black mesh crop top and a pair of high-waisted jeans onto the kitchen table. “You’re going out tonight.”
Lillith blinked up from the mess of scrolls she’d been pretending to study since breakfast. “Twyla, I can’t. I’m busy.”
“All the more reason to go out,” Twyla said, hands on hips. “You’ve been holed up with your lion-boy for too long. The town’s starting to make bets on whether you’ve already eloped or if you’re gonna hex each other in your sleep.”
