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To his credit, Silas tried to entertain them.

Until they made the seemingly fatal mistake of bringing up the concept of love or, heaven forbid, soul ties.

He was a love-hater, pure and simple.

I turned the volume down when he went on a particularly long-winded diatribe about dating apps.

Because, hey, no one liked them. But in a modern world where everyone worked too much and didn’t have a third space to hang out in afterward, where else were people supposed to meet someone?

Maybe I shouldn’t have been defending the damn things when my last relationship that crashed and burned started on one of them. But, well, I was choosing to remain a hopeless romantic about love. And not just because I was really trying to make romance my livelihood.

I glanced at my phone, feeling a familiar pit in my stomach from the email I’d received that morning. Another rejection. Another “It’s good, just not for us” for a book I’d poured my heart and soul into.

I was trying not to take it personally. Every writer faced rejection. It was all part of the process. It was more likely that my story just didn’t fit in with the publisher’s catalog, or they already had something similar coming out. That didn’t mean my book wouldn’t find the right home eventually. I just had to keep my head up and keep trying.

And, you know, avoid the negativity that came from jaded late-night radio show hosts.

“Are you still here?” Grum asked, making me wonder how I’d been so distracted that I’d missed his thumping footsteps down the hall.

“Just trying to catch up.”

I got a harrumph to that before a book landed on my desk, all heaving bosom and a broken spine.

“Read that.”

“Good one?” I asked, reaching for it.

“Fiery heroine. Cold highlander hero. Got all the right stuff.”

With that, the troll lumbered off, leaving a small trail of leaves in his wake.

I grabbed the book, flipped it, and read the blurb, then decided to call it a night earlier than usual. I could go home, toss some banana bread in the oven, and read until my eyes were too blurry to make out the words anymore.

As I grabbed my umbrella from the stand in the lobby, I heard Silas’s voice drifting out through the speakers.

“Love is the most elegant form of self-sabotage humans have ever invented. Next caller!”

I sighed at the words.

But a strange little shiver moved down my spine at the voice they were spoken in.

I was going to go ahead and not let myself think about that.

CHAPTER THREE

[ “It’s crazy—we say we want loyalty, but we ghost faster than we text back.”

— Alpha Mindset - Episode 134]

Maggie

“Ugh!”

The door slammed as I pulled the banana bread out of the oven.

Turning, I saw my roommate, Tess, making her way into the apartment in a tight little black dress and thigh-high wine-colored boots. The red matched her long, wavy hair and the hint of the same shade around her irises.

She was part of the duo behind the most popular podcast at KPRN. Hell & High Notes was a modern dating podcast featuring Tess, who was half-demon, and her friend Margo, a banshee. It was messy, hilarious, and often insightful.