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“I've got it!”

“You're about to fall.”

“I said I've got—whoa!”

I catch myself on the dresser. We both freeze.

“I had it.”

“Obviously.”

I glare at her and yank my leggings the rest of the way up.

There.

Dressed.

See?

I am perfectly functional. Not panicking at all.

“Besides, if Damian actually thought he'd”—I make air quotes—“claimed me, don't you think he would've mentioned it?”

Clarissa's wings flutter.

“Well—”

“He wouldn't just bite me, roll over, go to sleep, and let me wander home the next morning without saying, ‘Hey, Sweet, just so you know, we're mystically bound for eternity now.’”

Her mouth twitches.

“Maybe he didn’t know you’d sneak out at the ass crack of dawn.”

“Damian knows everything.”

“He definitely thinks he does.”

“Exactly!”

I sit at the vanity and reach for my hairbrush. The woman staring back at me in the mirror looks slightly wild.

Flushed cheeks. Tangled curls. And there, just above the neckline of my shirt—the mark.

My brush stops.

Damian's bite is impossible to miss.

Heat creeps up my neck as pieces of last night flash through my mind.

His arms around me.

The startling gentleness beneath all that raw strength.

The way he looked at me.

Mine.

My stomach drops.