by Nadine Mutas
Everyone close to him had always blamed him for whatever went wrong, had treated him like trash that was staining their lives. Wasn’t she the one person who should have given him the benefit of the doubt? She’d claimed to love him. And yet, when he’d needed her the most, in the moment she should have been there for him, should have shown him what trust and belief in someone’s character felt like, she’d rejected him—like everyone else. Yes, she’d been in shock and recovering from a horrific injury, but she hadn’t even given him the chance to explain, hadn’t probed deeper and tried to discover the truth.
“This isn’t who I am,” she whispered, and set down the pot she’d still been holding in her hands.
“What did you say?” A frown creased Aunt Madhuri’s forehead.
Snapping back into the here and now, powered into action by a sudden urgency, Anjali pushed the towel into her aunt’s hands. “I gotta go.”
“Wait—what? Where? Anju!”
But she barely heard Aunt Madhuri anymore. She was already out the front door, having grabbed her coat on the way, and pulled her cell phone from her jeans pocket. With one hand she dialed the number she hadn’t had the heart to delete yet, with the other she unlocked her white Nissan parked in front of the house. The garland with its tiny bells hanging from the rear view mirror jingled when she slid into the seat and banged the door shut.
Phone held to one ear by her shoulder, she started the car and drove off in a manner that probably would have a cop plastered to her tail in no time. All the while she listened to the beeping of the call going through to the other side. He didn’t pick up.
Dammit.
She tried twice more before she stuffed the phone away for the time being. Better not catch any attention from the police for real. Fifteen minutes later, she parked her car in a free spot on the street a block from Thorne’s apartment building. She jogged the rest of the way.
The front door to his building gave in with a jiggle—as always—and she took the old-fashioned, dark cherry wood stairs two at a time. Her breath was heavy as she reached his door, her hand trembling as she knocked.
Heart hammering in her chest, she waited.
And waited.
A sinking feeling swirled in her stomach. Was she too late?
“If you’re looking for the guy who lived there,” a neighbor said, walking past her to his own door at the end of the hall, “you’re out of luck. I heard he just moved.”
No. She swiveled around to question the man further, but he’d already closed the door to his apartment behind him. Dismay jacked up her pulse. She scrambled for her phone, called Thorne again. No answer.
He’s gone.
Her breath caught in her throat. Weighed down by disappointment, she sagged against the wall. Too little, too late. She’d pushed him away, made him believe she thought him the evil poison he’d seen himself as all his life. Her eyes burned, tears prickling at the corners. Pressure built in her chest, squeezed, squeezed, squeezed until she gasped.
Something stirred deep inside her. A soft pulling sensation, as if someone tugged at a thread attached to her innermost core. Shock unfurled along a connection she hadn’t been aware of. The shock wasn’t her own. Whipping up her head, she stared at the man who’d rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. Ice-blue eyes wide, black hair tousled invitingly, Thorne stared back.
She felt his heartbeat as her own.
Swallowing, he shifted his stance. “Do it quickly.” He let both hands fall to his side.
“Do wha—” Even before she finished her question, realization dawned on her with a painful sting. “I’m not here to kill you.”
His brows drew together.
She stood, wiped an errant tear from her cheek. “Tell me how my mother died.”
Skin tingling, a chill crept into Thorne’s blood. He hadn’t yet recovered from the shock of seeing her again, and now she’d hit him with a new surprise that set his heart to racing. He’d only come back to the apartment to pick up the one book he’d wanted to take with him—a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems—but had forgotten last night when he’d packed his things and left in a hurry. He absolutely hadn’t been prepared to run into her, much less face a request like that. How could he tell her of the event that had torn a hole in her life and left a stain of guilt on his soul?
Seeing tears in her eyes, feeling the echo of pain and grief along the mating bond, the least he could do for her was to give her that information.
“Let’s go in,” he said and nodded at his apartment. His lease was still good until the end of the month.
She followed him inside, glancing around as he closed the door behind her. “You would have left all your books.”
“Not all of them.” He strode to one of the piles, picked up the volume of Rilke poems and wiggled it before stashing it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “I let the landlord know that some volunteers from the library would come get the rest of the books.”
Bitter pain radiated along the mating bond. The link between them—which only carried emotions if both partners were in close proximity—would fade over time once he’d made his exit from her life. For her anyway. Being human, she’d be able to bond with someone else after a while. Thorne, however, would live out his days unable to mate with anyone else. Not that he wanted to.
Drifting through the room, she grazed her fingertips over the heaps of books. “Tell me.”
He took a deep breath. No use stalling. “I was about seven. I’d just gotten out of the doghouse for killing my cousins—”
“You didn’t kill—” She broke off, her hand clenching around the back of his kitchen folding chair. Impatience pulsed down the link between them. She waved her hand. “Go on.”
“As I was saying, I’d just been allowed back in the house—”
“Wait.” She turned to him, slack-jawed. “They literally put you in a doghouse?”
“Yes.”
“Out in the yard?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes just kept on widening. “For how long?”
“A month or so.”
For a whole ten seconds, she simply stared at him. The intensity of the hurt and anger vibrating along the bond had him catching his breath. “Those fuckers,” she growled, a flush creeping up her neck and face.
He couldn’t help finding her coarse outrage inappropriately sexy. Down, boy. This was not the time to indulge in a mental slide show of how he could transform that spark into sensual passion between the sheets. Or against the wall. Or bent over the couch.
Dammit, focus.
Inhaling through her nose, her lips pressed into a thin line, she closed her eyes briefly, massaged her temples, and then faced him again. “Tell me the rest.”
Dredging up the memory of that ill-fated night wasn’t hard. It had always been just underneath the surface, lurking behind a thin veneer of lies and denial. Casting its shadow on his love for Anjali. “After the whole thing with my cousins went down, I was eager to prove myself to my family. So when my grandfather took me on one of his jobs, I was happy to help him out. I was supposed to sneak into this store, get the money out of the cash register, and then meet him outside again where he was waiting in the shadow.
“What I didn’t know when I left the building was that my grandfather had spotted your mom and attacked her, and she was running from him—right into me. My grandfather yelled at me to grab the witch and keep her from escaping. I didn’t know what was happening, and the next second your mom crashed into me—she hadn’t seen me exit the building. I…panicked and tried to grab her. She got tangled up in me, I got tangled up in her, and then I somehow hit the floor. Next thing I know, your mom is stumbling over me. There was a staircase behind me, leading to the basement delivery entrance of the store.” He paused, his hand clenching to a fist. “When I got back up and checked, I saw her crumpled on those stairs. She wasn’t moving anymore. My grandfather whooped when he realized she was dead. Said I’d finally
done something useful.” He thumped his closed fist on the back of the couch. “We left her there. So that’s it.”
Silence.
For the longest moment, he didn’t dare look at Anjali, could only stare out the window into the night. When the silence stretched on too long, he scrounged up his courage and glanced at her.
She stood still, staring at him with an unreadable expression. Even the mating bond didn’t betray any of her feelings. “So you’re telling me,” she said slowly, her voice controlled, “that my mom tripped over you and broke her neck.”
He swallowed, his throat turning to rock. “Yeah.”
Closing her eyes, she repeated, “My mom tripped over you?”
What more could he say? His whole being ached with indelible guilt. “I made her fall. I—I’m sorry, Anjali.”
She uttered an unintelligible sound close to muffled laughter—which couldn’t be true, maybe he was losing his grip on reality here—and turned away. Sniffing, she pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbed her eyes, and huffed. “This is even worse than I thought.”
Dammit, he’d completely broken her now. He scrambled for words, for some eloquent apology for that which could never be forgiven, but came up empty. There was nothing he could say to her that could ease her grief, the pain he’d caused her.
“Good gods,” she whispered and buried her face in her hands.
“Anjali, I—”
She rounded on him, her eyes glittering with shed tears and her roiled emotions. “I thought it might have been at least something like self-defense. Or maybe some misguided attempt to live up to your demon nature. But you didn’t even do anything.”
“I made her—”
“Fall? Yeah? Did you trip her on purpose?”
“Well, no, not really. But if I hadn’t been there, she could have escaped.”
“Just like your mom would still be alive if you hadn’t been born?”
He flinched. The reminder stung, and he clenched his jaw so tight it hurt.
Her face softened, and she closed the distance between them. “Stop wishing yourself out of this world, Thorne. Stop thinking everything would be better if it weren’t for you. I told you this before, and I’ll tell you again, and again, and as many times as you need to hear until you believe it: bad things happen, that’s just the way life goes, but it’s not all your fault.”
He opened his mouth to say something, as she held up a hand, and caught his gaze. “Listen to me. You were a kid. You were trying to hold on to your only family. I don’t blame you for trying to tackle my mom when your grandfather told you so. And I sure as hell don’t blame you for existing, and for being right there when my mom stumbled. I—” She gestured wildly. “I actually lack the words to describe how tragic it is that you believe you killed her. It wasn’t your fault.”
She was a vision of trust, her eyes a shimmering sea of green, open, believing, the emotions that pulsed along the mating bond…
“You don’t hate me,” he rasped, his voice failing him.
“Of course I don’t. Am I sad that my mom is gone? Absolutely. I miss her every day. But I don’t blame you for her death. I know you’re good. I felt it, even when you were a scared, dirt-smeared boy. It’s what made me spare you. You’re not evil. You’re not poison. The only reason you think like that about yourself is because you’ve been conditioned to see yourself as toxic trash from the moment you were born. Your grandfather twisted your mind.” She touched his temples. “I think it’s time you kicked him out of here. Stop believing his lies.” Rising up on her toes, she placed a gentle kiss on his lips. “You’re better than that.”
And she really, truly believed that, he felt it with every beat of her emotions along the mating bond.
His throat closed up. His eyes stung with wet heat. He turned his head, not wanting her to see the evidence of his weakness.
“No, uh-uh,” she said, cupping his face with both hands, gently forcing him to look at her. “You don’t get to turn away from me. We’re mated now, you know.” The corners of her mouth quirked up in a tiny smile that stole his heart all anew.
He frowned. “And you want to be? I never asked you—there wasn’t time…”
“Ask me now.”
He cleared his throat. His heart threatened to thump out of his ribcage. “Will you mate with me?”
“There’s nothing I’d like more.”
She was rising on her toes to kiss him, when he stopped her with his hands on her shoulders. He peered at her, his head tilted. “Really? Nothing? Not even erasing the memory of the dino porn you read?”
She choked on a giggle, laughter bursting forth and transforming her face into a storm of light and happiness. Her amusement tickling down the mating bond made him grin despite his best efforts to keep a straight face.
“This,” he said, tracing the laugh lines on her cheek, “this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Make you laugh. See you happy.”
Fresh tears glistened in her eyes, and the surge of love and joy that pulsed from her had him reeling. He actually swayed a little. Not that it bothered him. Not in front of her.
Because, as she’d shown him, as he was learning more and more, with Anjali he could be himself, no need to hide, no reason to pretend. With her, he could start believing he was worthy of love.
And he claimed that love with a kiss that had his witch swaying against him.
Epilogue
The unusually warm spring night a silken caress on her skin, Anjali weaved her way through the late evening crowd enjoying downtown. Give Portlanders a little warmth, and they all flocked outside, the dreary winter days forgotten.
Kiran walked beside her, checking the streets for any signs of demons trying to take advantage of the bustling human crowds. Earlier, her cousin had covertly singed a kobold that had been in the process of tying together the shoelaces of a man sitting at the outside table of a cafe. The small demon the size of a fire hydrant had let loose a tirade of grunted complaints but scurried off.
Good thing most humans lacked the ability to see the more magical-looking otherworld creatures. Anjali didn’t want to imagine the uproar and panic that would spread if humankind became aware of all the supernatural species that shared their world.
They were rounding a corner when the familiar black silk of her favorite demon’s shadow cloaking wrapped around Anjali. Thorne pulled her into his arms, her back to his front, and nuzzled her neck. Hot tingles traveled down her skin, igniting fires of pleasure.
“Anjali?” Kiran had stopped and looked around, searching for her.
Thorne dropped his shadow cloaking, mindful to do so in the recessed corner of the building he’d pulled her into, so as not to draw too much attention to his sudden appearance.
“I’m here,” Anjali said, tapping Kiran on the shoulder.
Her cousin whirled around and glared at Thorne. “Stop giving me heart attacks, demon.” Kiran’s words and the expression on her face might have been stern, but her voice betrayed her growing affection for the erebos. In the past four weeks, Anjali had gently insisted she spend time with her and Thorne, and the more Kiran had gotten to know him, the faster her old prejudices had melted away to give rise to grudging acceptance and—eventually—good-natured teasing.
Thorne’s eyes glinted with amusement, though his features remained serious. “How about I give you some information instead?”
“Whatcha got?” Kiran put both hands on her hips.
“There’s a couple shedim planning to ‘grow their food supply’ by abducting drunk humans on their way home. They’ve got a really nice strategy laid out, which they discussed in detail. I could give you the rundown of it, but I think you’d rather have their address and just squash the lot.”
Kiran whipped out her phone. “Shoot.”
Thorne rattled off the address while Kiran jotted it down then called Aunt Madhuri to get reinforcements to take care of the shedim demons.
Snuggling into her mate, Anjali marveled
at the changes of the last few weeks. Convincing her family that Thorne was good and worthy to be by her side hadn’t been easy—it was still a work-in-progress—but the fact he had offered to put his spying abilities to the witches’ use had definitely smoothed the way a bit more.
Nani Shobha remained adamant in her refusal to let Thorne into her house, although she’d at least stopped threatening to turn him into a couch cushion. Aunt Madhuri treated him with cold civility, while her cousin Jaya seemed to have developed a crush on him—whenever she saw him, she blushed a blazing russet.
The reaction of Anjali’s dad, though, had been the biggest surprise. Upon meeting Thorne for the first time, her dad had clasped his hand and quietly asked, “You saved my daughter’s life?”
Rattled, Thorne had nodded.
“Will you protect her?”
“Always.”
Her dad had studied Thorne for a long moment, and even though as human he lacked any magical abilities, Anjali could swear he’d just performed the most thorough mind reading ever undertaken. Apparently satisfied with his findings, her dad had nodded and stepped back. “Good. You have my blessing.”
The rest of that scene had dissolved into a blurry mess due to the happy tears invading Anjali’s eyes.
“All right,” Kiran said, pocketing her phone, “looks like I’ve got some work to do.” She wiggled her fingers and stretched her hand in a showy preparation for throwing some spells. “You gonna be okay, Anju?”
“I’ve got it from here.” Thorne pressed Anjali closer, nibbled on her neck and kissed her ear, making her giggle.
Kiran rolled her eyes. “Get a room.”
“I know something better.” And with that, Thorne enveloped her in shadow.
Her cousin shook her head, her lips tilting up at the corners, and took off.
Alone with her demon in a sea of people who walked by without seeing them, Anjali turned in his arms, her fingers trailing a line from his lips down his chin to the pulse on his neck. It sped up under her touch.
