I didn’t want to linger in their presence any longer than I had to.
Maybe I would get my warning out and then expire from starvation at their feet.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. No. I needed to keep going—at least until I’d seen things through with Isadora.
My memories of the last few weeks were hazy, as though whatever had been wrought by Isadora’s compulsion had fractured and drifted out of reach. But I remembered enough. The way she’d replaced the feelings I’d had for Blaise with her own face. The way she’d cursed me into believing it was her I wanted.
I shuddered.
She’d tainted my very nature.
My anger only subsided when I finally cleared the tree line and saw the creepy, gothic mansion squatting in the middle of a field, Blaise’s van parked out front.
I couldn’t help but loosen my vise-like grip on my senses—and nearly veered into a fence post as Blaise’s scent flooded my nose.Cardamon and sandalwood. Woven through it was another scent entirely, as though the whole field had been steeped in sunlight and honeysuckle.
That must be the candy witch—Caitlyn, I reminded myself.
Hells, I’d read her name often enough on the bookings that it felt branded into the inside of my skull.
The scents of emotions lingered in the clearing as if too heavy for the wind to carry off—shame, embarrassment, relief—but happiness and hope were the strongest by far.
I should be happy for him,I told myself.
But as I selfishly drank in Blaise’s scent while pulling up beside his van, a new feeling reared its head. One I hadn’t expected from myself.
Jealousy.
Or... not jealousy exactly.Longing.
A longing I’d never anticipated, because while I still yearned for Blaise, something else stirred alongside it. A second ache, born from the way his scent tangled with another’s—and I wanted that too.
For the first time in my existence, Blaise wasn’t the only one who occupied my thoughts. For the first time, a space carved itself out in anticipation of someone else.
Ironic, really, that the first time I allowed thoughts of my fated mate to surface was when I was confronted with undeniable proof that Blaise was no longer mine—not that he ever had been—and that he’d found his happy ending.
His happy ending with a mate who smelled of sunshine and honeysuckle.
As I made my way up the front steps on unsteady legs, an odd calm settled over me. Even the unmistakable sense of being watched didn’t spark enough suspicion to make me send out my shadows.
I rapped on the door and felt oddly at home.
But that could have just been my body beginning to shut down from starvation.
The door swung open, and I was met with nothing but the glassy stares of taxidermy animals and the glint of trinkets, dappled in refracted light from a glittering chandelier high above.
I stepped into the hallway, the distant creak of footsteps signaling that Blaise was on his way... and I felt none of the worry that had gripped me moments earlier. It was as though it had all been stripped away, replaced by a quiet, insistent certainty.
This is right,I thought.
This is right for Blaise.
And, strangely, another thought followed close behind.
This is right for you too.
And there went my sanity.
Tricked again by my longing for Blaise, my mind eagerly filled in the gaps I’d never allowed myself to examine. The forever home I’d refused to imagine was suddenly a creepy manor, complete with an odd, hopefully not haunted doll perched among dead-eyed animals, watching me. I pictured Blaise’s arms around me, his voice hoarse from all the times he’d told meI love you too.And the sun-and-honeysuckle scent of my fated mate who, apparently, was perfectly content with the idea of two incubus mates.
