If that’s true, shit just got a whole lot more complicated…
Haley shook her head and laughed. “I’m totally blaming the heat on that one. It’s gotta be at least two hundred degrees out here, and your girl iswilting. How do any of you survive this place? Guess I dodged a bullet, huh? Okay, I need to get inside that house before I melt. Assuming I make it through the day without getting arrested for murdering a fae and a demon, I’ll stop by and visit again later. Maybe find some hedge trimmers for those creepy roses.”
She reached for me once more, this time placing her hand flat against my chest, her palm still wet with blood.
A bolt of electricity shot right through me, jolting my heart and sizzling across nerves I didn’t even know existed.
She felt it too—I could see it in her face. Her eyes widened, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
Thing is… In my stone form? I shouldn’t have been able to feel it. Shouldn’t have been able to hear the sudden jackhammering of my heartbeat.
It shouldn’t have started beating at all. Not until the sun dropped and I shifted into one of my other forms.
But there was no denying it. Inside the stone shell, I was fucking alive.
She kept on staring at me with them wide eyes, her hand trembling against my chest, and Iknew. Sure as I knew every chip in my stone gargoyle form, every notch and tear in my wings, every scar and line of ink tattooed on my human chest.
I hadn’t experienced anything like it in nine centuries. Nine fucking centuries, and I’d damn near forgotten how it felt. Forgotten I was even capable of it. Forgotten it was a real thing and not just some story I’d picked up along the way and turned into a false memory.
But suddenly, at the press of her hand and the touch of her blood on my stone, there it was.
The bond.
If I could’ve roared right then, I would’ve.
Unlike Jax and Saint, I was born in Midnight. Bred in captivity to serve as a guardian to the original Midnight royals—the most honorable gig our kind could’ve hoped for in that hellhole.
Fucked up as it was, the place was home—only one I’d ever known.
Until two years ago when I was betrayed by my own kind, and Saint smuggled me out to save my ass from being pulverized. Not even Jax knew the whole story, but we weren’t about to leave him behind. Saint made the arrangements for all of us.
Blood before roses—the three of us were tight like that.
So last night, when my boy said he needed help with this mission? I was all in, no question. Ain’t never turned my back on him, not once. On top of that, throw in a chance to go back and hunt down the motherfuckers that’d taken everything from me? Done and done.
But now? Shit just got real in a whole different kinda way.
The bond only meant one thing.
Haley was fated for me.
My charge.
My twin heart.
My mate.
No, I wasn’t talking about love and marriage and all that happy horse shit. Fate had a fucked-up sense of humor, and it didn’t always work out the way you thought it oughta. More often than not, a gargoyle and his fated matedespisedeach other.
Didn’t make a damn bit of difference to the bond, though.
Whether she ended up hating me or loving me, whether she wanted to be my friend or something else entirely—good or bad—fate had just sent me a message.
I was chosen as her guardian. She was chosen as mine to protect.
Non-negotiable.
Starting right now.
