Page 55 of The Witch They Crave

"Breathe."

I breathe. It catches once and then goes all the way down. His hands stop moving but they don't come off me.

"I had a second to choose," he says. Low. "I picked the one that ended fastest."

His jaw works.

"I’m sorry."

"Kage."

His jaw clenches, the scar across his face pulling. His stormy features look so tortured for a quick second that I can’t help the urge to console him.

"You knocked me over. I've had worse from a bad mattress." I reach up and close my hand around one of his wrists. "I'm okay. Look at me. I'm good."

He looks at me. Really looks—the way he didn't get to on the field, with an audience and a leash on him. Some of the shaking goes out of his hands.

"Where have you been, Kage?"

His face closes. Just like that—the openness from ten seconds ago gone behind something flatter. "Working."

"That's not an answer. It's been over a week. I get nothing, and then you turn up when it's convenient—"

"I turn up when I can." There's an edge on it now, low and irritated. "You think I'm off enjoying myself? I go where I'm sent. I do what I'm told. I don't get to check a schedule with you first." He shakes his head, jaw tight. "I'm not yours to keep tabs on."

That lands somewhere I wasn't braced for. Like a punch to the gut.

"Fine." I step back and pull myself out of reach. "Noted."

His hand shoots out and catches my wrist before I've fully turned—not rough, but fast, faster than I can track, and his thumb lands over my pulse like he did it without deciding to. He goes still. Head tilted, like he's listening to something under my skin.

His brow creases. "Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing. You feel..." His thumb moves along the vein, chasing it, the irritation draining out of his face into something more careful. "Off. Louder than usual. Like there's two of something where there should be one." He shakes his head. "Bond's probably just cranky."

Then he goes very still, and his nostrils flare, and whatever was on his face a second ago curdles.

"You reek of him."

"What?"

"Vassard." The name comes out like something he wants to spit. He leans in, takes a slow breath he clearly hates taking. "His scent's worked into you deep. Skin, hair, all of it. That's not an accident—it's a claim. He wants every vampire who gets near you to know whose hands have been on you." His grip tightens. "Like a collar. Buckled tight."

He drops my wrist like it's suddenly hot. Files it.

"There's talk all over the yard." Flat. "That Vassard's claimed his witch for the year. That he's got you in his bed and isn't bothering to hide it."

"That's not—" Heat climbs my neck, fury and something worse. "I'm not bedding him. He hasn't laid a finger on me that wasn't for show. Whatever people are saying, it's a story he's letting them tell."

Kage watches me a beat. Something in his shoulders eases, just slightly.

"Good," he says. "I'd hoped so." Then his jaw sets. "Doesn't change what he's doing. He wants the whole school believing it—wants you marked as his, on paper and in every rumor going. I’ve stayed on him." A beat. "You want to know what I found?"

"You found things?"

The real smirk—smaller than the performance version. "I've been following his messengers. Private couriers, twice a week, moving sealed folders in and out of the city. No house crest, no academy channels. Careful. So I tracked where they go instead of what they carry." He leans back against the workbench. "They don't go to just one place. They go to six. Old families. Banks that don't have signs on the door. A judge. Somebody at the council I couldn't get a name on."