“I don’t want you, or anything, to do with you. It must have been you. I wouldn’t even know where to start with this, let alone what the hell it means now.”
Indignation burns through me as I pull my chest up off the floor, slumping back as I rest on the stones behind me. My body trembles, still sweaty and shaky from exertion but still recovering. Kade glares at me as I fume at him, and my eyes wander over him, noticing his cuts are healing and his bruises fading too.
Finally, he laughs, and its cold, sharp sound slices through the oppressive air of the cave.
“If you say so,” he stands abruptly, pacing in front of me, his movements restless, almost agitated.
“Ebon chains are a fantasy and no one believes any of the stories about them,” I snap, my fists curling at my sides.
He shakes his head. “Oh, they’re real. And since you’ve only heard the fairy tales, we’d better start your education. You’re a goddamn liability without it. A blood weave isn’t some silly magical bond and it can’t be broken. It binds a witch andwarlock in an almost unexplainable way. You’re mine—body, mind, and soul. Unfortunately, it makes me yours as well. We share strength and our magic feeds off each other’s power, heightening and changing it. But it’s not without cost.”
My stomach churns as his words sink in. “Cost?”
Kade stops pacing and turns to face me, his expression dark, almost cruel. “Oh, you’ll love this part. The bond needs to be fed—constantly. If it isn’t, it turns on us. Pain, sickness, madness. It’ll drive us insane until it gets what it wants, and what it wants is us to connect.” His smirk returns, sharp and venomous. “So congratulations, darling. We’re stuck with each other. And your cunt is stuck with my dick.”
Blood rushes to my core, and my head turns light as I shake it. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I was, sweetheart. I really wish I was.”
I sway slightly as the lingering pain fights against the unnatural warmth coursing through me. “That’s bullshit. There has to be a way to break it.”
His laugh is humorless. “The bond severs when one of us dies. But it’ll force the other to do anything to stop that happening, so inevitably we both die together.”
My blood runs cold. “You’re lying.”
“Why do you think I haven’t killed you?” His gaze is hard and unyielding. “I wanted to. I almost did. But then this rush of empathy flooded through me. It was disgusting. Horrific. Sickly sweet warmth combined with a tsunami of guilt that was more than even I could bear.”
I pull back, pushing into the jagged cave wall. “No. No, this isn’t real. You’re lying. This can’t be real.”
The warmth inside me feels like a betrayal, and it coils tight, an invisible noose tightening around my neck, constricting with every breath I take. A foreign presencecreeps under my skin and takes root where it doesn’t belong and the sensation is wrong, invasive, as though I’m being reshaped into something I never agreed to be. It burns in my chest, not with the cleansing heat of fire, but with the suffocating weight of inevitability. Every pulse of that warmth is a reminder that I’m tethered to him now, bound to the last person in the world I want to be.
“You feel it, don’t you, little witch? The pull toward me. The warmth. The way you and I are healing faster than we should. That’s the blood weave working, keeping us alive. Together.” His lip curls, his disdain palpable. “So go ahead, keep rebelling against it. I love a good fight and we’re stuck with each other for an eternity.”
The cave feels smaller, the air heavier, and I realize with a sinking dread that he’s right.
“The bond keeps growing, Zara,” Kade snarls. “It’ll demand more from us until we’re close enough for its liking.” His eyes narrow as he looks away, disgust washing over his face. “We’re going to fuck the shit out of each other over and over, and then we’ll recover and fuck each other all over again.”
