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“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “I’ve spent my whole life following her rules, being the perfect daughter, preparing to take her place. And then you stumble into a bar, literally stumble, and suddenly I’m sneaking around behind her back, meeting vampires in libraries, feeling things I’m not supposed to feel.”

“What things?”

She didn’t answer. The silence stretched between us, charged and heavy, and I felt the bond pulling tighter, demanding I close the distance, demanding I touch her, claim her, make her mine.

“Carolina...”

“Don’t.” But her voice was breathless now, not firm. “Logan, if you kiss me right now, I won’t stop you. But it won’t be just a kiss. It’ll be... it’ll mean something. To the bond. To us. To her, when she finds out.”

“Then let her find out.”

She set the book on the windowsill. I moved before I could think better of it, closing the space between us, cupping her face in my hands. She went still, her eyes wide, her lips parted in surprise.

“You’re sure?” she whispered.

“No,” I admitted. “But I’m tired of being careful. Tired of being cursed and alone and afraid. If I’m going to fall, let me fall for something real.”

I kissed her.

It was like coming alive. Like breathing after drowning. Like every cliché I’d ever laughed at because I didn’t believe in them. Her lips were soft and warm and tasted like honey and magic, and the bond between us flared bright and hot, a connection that went deeper than flesh, deeper than fate, into something that felt like destiny.

She kissed me back, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer, and for one perfect moment I wasn’t cursed. I wasn’t clumsy or broken or the town joke. I was just Logan, and she was just Carolina, and we were perfect together.

Then the book fell.

I don’t know which one of us knocked it off the windowsill. Maybe both of us, maybe the universe itself intervening to remind me that I was still cursed, still graceless, still doomed to humiliation. But the heavy leather volume hit the floor with a sound like a gunshot, and we broke apart, breathing hard, staring at each other with wide eyes.

“Someone’s coming,” Carolina breathed.

Footsteps approached, heavy and deliberate. We scrambled apart, putting a respectable distance between us, smoothing our clothes and our expressions just as the librarian rounded the corner.

“Everything all right back here?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Fine,” Carolina said smoothly, her voice betraying nothing. “I was just helping Mr. Richards find a book on vampire history.”

The librarian’s gaze flicked between us, noting my flushed face and Carolina’s swollen lips, but she didn’t comment. “We close in ten minutes,” she said finally. “You should wrap up your... research.”

She walked away, but the moment was broken. The spell shattered.

“I have to go,” Carolina said, standing, not looking at me. “Logan, we can’t do this again. It’s too dangerous.”

“Carolina...”

“Don’t follow me this time.” She finally met my eyes, and I saw fear there. Real, genuine fear. “Please. For both our sakes.”

She walked away, her steps quick and controlled, and I sat on the windowsill alone, my lips still tingling from her kiss, my chest aching with the weight of everything we couldn’t have.

The curse struck as I stood to leave. My boot caught the leg of a chair, and I stumbled, catching myself on a bookshelf with a curse that echoed through the empty library.

Alone again.

But this time, I had something worth fighting for.

Interlude: Carolina

By the time I reached the coven house, my lips still tingled from Logan’s kiss and every nerve in my body had apparently joined a marching band.