“This is fun,” he says.
“THIS IS A NIGHTMARE.”
He smirks. “Not for me.”
“Get out.”
He saunters to the door like a lazy predator. Instead of leaving, he leans against the frame, smoldering. “You told me to stay put,” he says. “And I did.”
“This is NOT what I meant!”
“It’s what thebondmeant.”
I scream into my hands. The shelves tremble again. And Slade? Slade wears a smile that is pure, unadulterated sin incarnate. And I still want to strangle the living daylights out of him.
I’ve got to find a way to break this curse… thisbond… whatever the fuck it is.
Before I lose my god's damned mind.
Chapter 6
Slade
The day drags. Humans talk too much, touch too much, breathe too loudly, and yet Piper moves among them like she belongs—like someone born to warmth and soft lights and glittering shelves of charm-laced nonsense.
Iwatch her… All day. I’ve tried to stop… But, I can’t help it.
She doesn’t notice me most of the time, too busy ringing customers up or laughing at something someone says, curls bouncing around her shoulders in ways that make my hands itch.
But I notice everything.
The way her magic flickers gold around her fingers when she’s focused. Or the way she tries, and fails, to hide each spike of irritation when I hover nearby. And the way she keeps glancing at me like I’m a ticking bomb she can’t defuse.
She’s wrong. I’m the one trying to defuse her.
I find myself wandering the shop—casually, like a predator pretending to be a house pet—trailing fingertips over jars of herbs and glass ornaments, feeling the faint hum of old Bellamy magic stitched into the walls.
She watches every time I touch something. Suspicious. Tense. So adorably cute.
Gods, since when do I use the words cute and adorable?
At one point she mutters under her breath, “If you break anything, I’m billing Hell directly.”
I hum. “Send the invoice to the Ninth Circle. Mark it attention to Slade.”
She glares, and I enjoy it way more than I should.
I keep circling her, observing her from different angles. Her movements. Her scent. Her mood shifts. I’m looking for clues. Because she insists—loudly, repeatedly, and with increasing fury—that she didn’t summon me.
She did. Like I told her… Emotion is a stronger conduit than ritual.
Whatever she felt last night was strong enough to punch a hole between realms and drag me through. But what emotion? Fear? Longing? Desperation? Anger? Or something else—something she refuses to name.
Every time I get close enough to her magic, it pulses toward mine like a hand reaching in the dark—hungry, curious, even familiar.
Bound.
She’s fighting it so hard she’s exhausting herself. Near closing, she’s rounding up stray candles while muttering to herself. “…doesn’t make sense… I didn’t summon anything… I was warding, not conjuring—”
