Page 83 of Bound

“Wow.” He rubbed his eyes. “Really not making this easy on me, are you?

Which was when I saw what was scrawled in black Sharpie across the inside of the crown.

Witch King-EXPOSED

Den of Nazgul-TAKEN OUT

What do you say we make this official with one onion ring to rule them all?

Beneath it, he’d drawn two stick figures, one with elf ears, one down on its knees holding out a ring. Two rather adorable dragons, helpfully labeled Dean and Castiel, circled overhead. My heart fluttered like it had suddenly sprouted wings in the cage of my ribs.

“Did you really just Fangorn Forest propose to me on the back of a Burger Kingcrown?”

He smothered a laugh. “Please. You have so many books your brothers don’t even bother going to the library. They just come here. You own the regular and extended edition of every Lord of the Rings movie—”

“They have different special features.”

“Like you’d ever go for the sort of guy who took you out to a fancy dinner with candles and food you couldn’t pronounce. That’s not you. You’re lazy Saturday afternoons in flip flops browsing Zombie Books. You’re Friday nights cheering for your kids at the football stadium because your dad was there every single week for your games. And I don’t think Dean is ever coming out of that fleece turret you and August built onto their cage.”

“It suits his inner dark side.”

“He only bit me twice last week.”

“I can’t even say that.”

Topher snorted.

“I’ve spent so long convinced my magic was a curse to bear,” I said softly. “But now I think that was just the lie I was telling myself so I wouldn’t have to open myself up to the possibility of being hurt.”

His eyes shone. “And now?”

“Aside from your driving? I’m good.”

He kissed me softly, smiling against my mouth. “I’ll have you know my team’s average response times on scene are down by ten seconds this past month.”

His lips caught mine again just as my phone buzzed. I swiped to unlock the screen.

Dallas: Lacey’s having contractions. Austin is a no-go. Here’s the new game plan…

* * *

On Monday morning, I went down to the portable buildings that housed district administration and was told to take a seat at a long rectangular table with so many plastic water bottles towered around it like chess pieces, I wanted to ask if maybe rather than expending so much energy on cleansing the planet of werewolves, the school board would consider funding the garden the Howlers green club wanted to build instead.

The meeting started. HR politely tried to get me to resign without coming right out and saying it while my lawyer coldly lined up five years of my exemplary teaching evaluations on the table between them and then detailed all the ways we would be suing the school district if they fired me. Ximena Sanchez was a petite woman in her mid-forties, who told me in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t care less if I turned into a poodle at the full moon, but if I even thought about pulling out my phone and checking my status updates while we were in there, she was walking out. I sat silently while she argued with the school district’s attorneys, thinking about how today was supposed to be vocab Pictionary day, that I had donated gift cards from Zombie Books for the winning teams, and instead they were stuck doing worksheets with a sub while I waited to see if I would ever set foot in my classroom again.

By the time the bell rang after school I was seriously contemplating violating the promise I’d made not to bite anyone. I hurried out to the faculty parking lot, clicking my remote to unlock Cedric, who was mercifully unharmed today. My phone buzzed.

August: This whole labor thing sure does take a while.

West: Yeah, cause you’re doing the heavy lifting on that one. Do y’all need anything? I’m headed over.

August: Can you pick up food? Everyone’s getting kind of peckish. Brody and London are here, too.

West: On it.

“Mr. Caldwell?”

Quickly, I shut down my phone. Jeremy White stood at the edge of the faculty parking lot, searing Texas sunlight glinting off his freshly polished silver mellophone. The rest of the Howlers marching band was making their way out to the soccer field, where they learned new drill on Monday afternoons.