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Then something yanked it away.

I crashed back onto the bed, shaking. The candles went out. The runes blackened. Carolina caught my face between her hands, blue eyes wide and furious.

“My mother is reinforcing the coven anchor herself,” she whispered. “It isn’t sitting on you anymore. It’s feeding through her power. The bond can fight it, but it can’t sever the source while she’s holding on.”

“So true love loses on a technicality? That’s some bullshit.”

“No.” Her expression hardened. “It means we made it bleed.”

The apartment door exploded inward.

Wood splintered across the floor. Jacqueline Fortman stepped through the ruined frame in crimson silk and enough fury to make the temperature drop twenty degrees. Her gaze swept over the dead candles, the scorched circle, and the two of us tangled on the bed.

“You attempted a mating rite with my daughter.” Her voice was quiet. That was worse than yelling. “You tried to use her magic to break mine.”

Carolina climbed off the bed and planted herself between us, barefoot, half dressed, and magnificent. “We love each other. Your curse has no right to survive that.”

“My magic survives because I say it does.” Jacqueline lifted one hand.

The curse slammed into me again. My legs went numb. Pain surged through my bones, slow and vicious, and I rolled sideways with a strangled groan. Carolina’s magic erupted in a blaze of gold, forming a brilliant sphere around us. Ribbons of light raced across its surface, weaving themselves into a protective shield that hummed with power.

Jacqueline lifted one elegant finger.

The golden sphere cracked from top to bottom, then shattered into a thousand burning sparks.

“Stop!” Carolina shouted. “You’re killing him.”

“Not yet.” Jacqueline looked at me with glacial satisfaction. “But he wanted to test the limits of my patience. Now he knows where they are.”

Carolina took my hand. The bond flickered between us, stubborn as hell even while the curse tried to crush it.

“If you hurt him, you lose me,” she said.

Something cracked in Jacqueline’s expression. It was gone too quickly to name. She lowered her hand, but the damage remained. My legs were dead weight. Bruises were already spreading beneath my skin.

“Then perhaps you should reconsider what he is costing you.” She turned toward the broken doorway. “This is your final warning, Carolina. Come home, renounce him, and I may restore what he has lost. Defy me again, and the curse will finish what it started.”

She vanished in a thunderclap, leaving the taste of ozone and rage behind.

Carolina dropped beside me. Her hands moved over my legs, searching for sensation that wasn’t there. I wanted to tell her it was fine. I wanted to make a joke, because jokes were armor and I was naked without them.

“Well,” I rasped, “on the bright side, I can’t trip over my own feet if I can’t fucking feel them.”

Her laugh broke in the middle and became a sob.

“Hey.” I pulled her down until her forehead rested against mine. “She didn’t break us.”

“She almost broke you.”

“Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

Carolina kissed me, fierce and furious, and the bond answered. It wasn’t enough to lift the curse. But it was enough to remind me that Jacqueline had failed at the one thing she wanted most.

She hadn’t made Carolina choose her.

And she sure as hell hadn’t made me stop loving her daughter.

Mack arrived with Audrey before the shaking stopped. The sensor had caught the surge, but Jacqueline was already gone. His portable emitter blunted the remaining flares while Audrey helped Carolina get blood into me. Carolina pieced the door and frame back together, leaving fresh seams in the wood and the old security chain hanging crookedly above the lock. An hour later, the emitter had burned out and my pain had settled enough that I insisted I could stay home. Mack left to rebuild it. Audrey went with him for more supplies, and Carolina stayed until I could keep another blood bag down.