“Obviously. And she’s… she’s… I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. Funny. Brave. Kind. But we spent less than forty-eight hours together, and I didn’t even know she was my mate until the very last second, while she did the whole time and had to wrestle with returning to Victor or telling me the truth. Truth that would have forced my hand to protect her and ended up with me dead as a result.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Yeah.”
We both lay back down, staring at the ceiling.
“Why’d you even make a demon deal, anyway? I never thought you’d be that reckless.”
I thought for a moment before responding. If anyone else had asked, I would have given some kraken shit answer, like how I knew I was the best, that I never even considered the possibility that I wouldn’t get my bounty.
It had gotten to the point where I probably even believed that lie myself.
But now that I was home, and that chapter of my life was officially over, I could finally admit the truth.
“Because I didn’t care if I died.”
Maia stilled, reaching over to grab my hand. “Fuck. That’s messed up, too. No wonder you and Sage are mates; you both got death wishes.”
“Nah,” I replied. “I got a death wish. She’s just got a martyr complex.”
She let out a stifled giggle, and then I gave her hand a small squeeze, letting her know she could laugh. That I was okay.
I mean, I wasn’t, but I needed to be to get through this and get Sage back.
Once she was safe in my arms, I could spend all my free time breaking down about being right back where I’d started. But atleast I’d sleep like a baby afterwards, knowing I’d be waking up right next to her.
“Dad never told me why you left, by the way.”
I sat up. “What?”
She sat up, too, bringing her feet up and sitting cross-legged. “All I knew was there was some incident after we got rid of Ivan, and then you were gone that night, without so much as a ‘See you later, kiddo.’”
I raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Come on.”
She shook her head, a genuine, pleading expression on her face. “I really don’t know.”
I ran a hand down my beard—it was a little itchy, but I’d power through—and let out a deep sigh. “You don’t remember how I was trying to broker a ceasefire with the Dragoviches?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You were?”
A little over ten years ago, when I was twenty, I met Ivan Dragovich, heir to the Dragovich crime family. His girlfriend had racked up a massive tab on expensive champagne at one of our clubs and turned belligerent when staff asked her to pay.
He came and apologized for her behavior, taking care of the bill with no questions asked or further incident.
I ran into him again a few months later, and we struck up a bit of a friendship. We had a lot in common, after all, and it was nice to talk to someone who could understand me. Who could relate to the stress and the pressure of being the heir to a crime family neither of us were really interested in heading.
“Dad found out, of course. I thought he’d be mad at first, since we’d been having a lot of flare ups along the shared borders of our territory, but he actually commended me. Said maybe it was time to usher in a new era of cooperation between the families.”
“Oh,” Maia whispered. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” I replied with a sad scoff. “I was such an idiot.”
For my twenty-first birthday, I’d decided to host a party at the VIP lounge ofThe Peacock, the crown jewel of our nightclubs.
“Dad encouraged me to invite Ivan,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. Ravaric, I still couldn’t believe how naive I’d been.
Ivan had shown up, of course, with several high-ranking members of the Dragoviches in tow as his entourage.
