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Chapter Thirty-Three
Jack
“It’s a good thing you don’t drink alone,” Sebastian said as he took a seat across from me.
The scenario was becoming too familiar to me. Me drinking my troubles away. Sebastian showing up as I was attempting to drown myself in liquor. The scene likely ending with me wanting to punch the blasted warlock.
“What have you got to tell me this time, Cavanaugh?” I spat, wanting nothing more than to return to my brooding. I’d spent the last few days focusing on every feeling I felt coming from Claire. The first day after the incident at the station, I’d felt nothing but devastation from her. It had been enough for me to want to throw myself into traffic.
Instead, I’d parked at the end of Claire’s street, watching her house like some pathetic stalker. But my body demanded to be closer to her. It wasn’t all my body needed from her, but I knew it was the only thing I was going to get from her anytime soon.
“Honestly, I don’t have any big news or plans,” Sebastian said, watching me. “One of my men said you were down here moping. I figured I should come over here and see it for myself. Big bad Jack Beaumont moping like a teenage witch. The same warlock they claim took down the Ripper.”
“You’ve got your men watching me now?” I looked around, spotting one of the big goons standing near the bar. He looked away as soon as he saw me watching him. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered that I’d clocked him. Had I been less in my feelings, I might have noticed him before Sebastian had pointed out his existence.
“Careful, Cavanaugh. People might think you care.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened as he watched me. “You’re the witchkind eyes and ears of the Mystic Springs PD, Beaumont. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have to depend on the lackluster humans who run the show over there.”
“Trenholm and Jackson not suit your fancy?” Carson Trenholm and Sara Jackson were the only other witchkind on the Mystic Springs police force.
“Trenholm is too busy making babies with his mate to be of any use to me,” Sebastian said and my head swam with images that I didn’t want to entertain. “Sara? Well, she and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment.”
“Gods, Sebastian,” I said, Sebastian’s eyebrow raising at my use of his first name instead of last. “Tell me you didn’t.”
The warlock shrugged. “I came in to talk with you one day. She was damned close to her heat.”
“No wonder she walks out of the room anytime someone mentions you. I figured she was like Rainbow and hated the sight of you.”
The warlock rolled his eyes. “She likely hates the sight of me now, even though I gave her no reason to. I know how to treat a witch. The problem was that she got attached. Rainbow hates me because she’s an annoying little witch who likes to cause problems. Two different stories.”
I suspected the story between Rainbow and Sebastian was much more complicated than that, but I didn’t push it.
“But forget that. Why are you moping? Last I heard, you were deep in a heat with Claire Landon.”
Just the sound of her name made my cock twitch and my heart thump harder in my chest.
“We’re not speaking. Right now, I’d say she’s feeling pretty disgusted with me because I can feel it from here.”
“And why’s that?”
I shrugged, not wanting to get into this with Cavanaugh.
“I suspect that I’ll never have a mate,” Sebastian said when I offered no further elaboration. “But I liked to think that if I was feeling her disgust for me from across town, I’d damn well want to do something about it. If for no other reason than that would be fucking annoying.”
“She’s not my mate,” I said, the words catching in my throat. They sounded bitter and acidic.
“She’s not?”
“You know how this whole thing began. The drug forced her. She had no say in the matter.”
“Ah,” Sebastian said. His grin was so damned annoying, I nearly reached across the table, grabbed him by the collar and punched him until I felt better. I pushed down the urge, remembering how that went the last time.
“What’s the shit-eating grin for, Cavanaugh?”
“I suppose I should have given you the other years of research my chemists have done on those drugs instead of the specifics you asked for. Would have saved you from being such a stupid, miserable fuck.”
“What are you going on about?”
