“So I could see how he did it. Confirm what it took and ensure it could never be done to me again,” he said. “So I can make sure killing you will end this blood bond.”
I knew this would be the finish line, but crossing it is more of a burden than the race. Because everything that’s been demanded of me disappeared along with the infinite string of possibilities.
“Or, I could revise it,” I whispered.
His laugh was dry. “Revise it?”
“People revise contracts all the time. If both parties agree…that’d be doable.”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t fucking trust you. After what your uncle figured out, I don’t trust anyone with your blood running through their veins. I’m bound to a life of deals, but I refuse to play the game with humans who bend the rules. As far as I’mconcerned, you both entrapped me. And I’d be ridiculous to take a chance and leave my fate in the palm of your trembling hands.”
“Then you will have to fight,” I reminded him. “You will have to fight Rae and whoever else she can call if you want to kill me. You will have to fight me.”
He scoffed. “It’s not that hard.”
“Your months-long track record says otherwise,” I said in a cutting tone. I clasped Rae’s necklace that was somehow still around my neck. It warmed underneath my touch, offering me strength and the comforting reminder that she was still with me even now.
Negotiation was over. I’d spent months worrying about my ranch, fighting off nightmares he fed to me, living in fear that I’d have to leave another place because it didn’t belong to me.
But I was sick of flight. Sick of hiding. I’d rather go kicking and screaming than let go of a home again. Because to hell with the thought that I didn’t deserve a place to call my own. I was wholly human, part of the ground I walked on, the air I breathed, the stories I lived through. If worthiness came from something more than simply existing, then perhaps it itself was a myth. And I had no interest in chasing fairytales. My dreams were solid; I’d built them and possessed the calloused fingers to prove it.
A vibration echoed off my body, originating from my fury and projected by Rae’s necklace. It shoved against his energy. In no way was mine as strong as his, but it shielded me enough to offer a distraction. A chance to see the cabin on the edge of the field where we stood. The cabin I’d been having nightmares about since I was a child.
I stepped closer, and he shrank back, confused by the nudge of my energy. “I will either find a way todrain you completely as the years go by. Or I will find a way to free you. Whichever comes first. And since you’re not working with me, well…I suppose I’ll have to take my pick.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he argued.
“We both do,” I promised.
THIRTY-ONE
“There’s a summoning trap here.”Nico picked at the wooden planks from the loft’s collapse.
I barely looked up from Octavia. She kept going in and out of consciousness. Sometimes it was her; most times it was the demon. They spoke in incomplete sentences. I attempted to string words together but kept getting slowed down by knots.
“It’s…not like anything Daylan’s research covers,” Nico said. “I think it’s the contract. Or part of the contract?”
December crouched on the other side of Octavia, placing two fingers on her wrist as she counted the drum of her pulse. I squeezed her other hand, hoping for a squeeze back.
“It’s like a wheel,” I whispered to Octavia. “You take it and you keep a hold.”
“She’s still not awake,” Jonah spoke to Daylan. Our demon expert went quiet for a few minutes after learning the demon possessed Octavia. Getting him to speak again had been a battle I didn’t have the energy to expend. They’d have to deal with him. Deal with everything happeningoutside of Octavia because I refused to leave her side for a second. If they couldn’t figure out how to save her, I’d do it on my own. Fix this whole nightmare with my two bare hands. But first, I had to make sure she didn’t give up and didn’t relinquish full control.
“He says we need to restrain her.” Jonah knelt beside me, whispering in reverence as if the woman who lay before us was dying.
My jaw ticked, but I nodded. “So go get what we need and bring it here.”
Jonah and December jumped into action, disappearing out of the stable. Nico continued pulling out the planks, setting them together like puzzle pieces.
“It’s in here,” Nico was saying. “The contract. It’s here. Someone sealed it here, and from the looks of it, they knew exactly what they were doing. There are…edits, I think. They didn’t just seal the contract, they connected it to something.”
“Can we destroy it?” I cupped Octavia’s face when her brows furrowed. She tried to shake her head side to side. I didn’t let go for fear she’d bash it against the ground.
“Maybe,” Nico grunted as he reorganized the planks. “I need you.”
