Page 55 of Grabbed By the Guard

I could go back to New York. One day, I will. The upside of bonding with a demon is an immortal partner. With forever stretched ahead of us, there’s not the same urgency to go home. With Sierra’s confession that she’s happy with her own demon mate, that she plans on retiring from show biz as soon as she fulfills her obligations, and the relief I felt as hearing that, while I fought to get back to New York to shield her from Trevor’s obsession, she handled that without me… I can stay. There’s nothing pulling me right back, and with Sierra having her own demon mate and a pathway back to Sombra, she can visit me as often as she wants.

She can bring Three, too, since our pampered kitty seems to lord over Sombra in the bubble backpack.

Who knows? I can have her adopt a cat for me and Glaine—maybe call it Four—or I can take a page out of Kennedy’s book and tame one of the ungez like her pet, Freya.

There’s so much I can do, and it starts with finding Glaine and letting him know that I’m ready to accept him as my mate. I’m sure, in his cocky way, he’ll gloat that he was always right… but if that’s the case, why did he so easily return to the palace without me when the demon duke summoned him?

I’m not sure, but I remember what he told Apollyon when we first came to stay at Nuit.

Where I go, she goes.

Same, demon. Same.

Right. Problem-solver mode. Glaine took a portal back to Mavro with a different purple-eyed demon. I grab Sierra, knowing how eager Kennedy will be to finally meet her idol, and basically throw my best friend at my new one. With both women distracted, and Dagon tending to Three in his carrier, I march over to Loki and jab my pointer finger in his chest.

“I have Glaine’s essence. If you open a portal with your magic, can you bring me to him?”

Loki looks down his nose at my finger embedding in the first inch of his shadowy covering. He growls softly.

I don’t give a shit. I dig my nail deeper, not bothering to hide my impatience. “Kennedy is spending time with another human mate. Trust me. She won’t even know you’ve left if you hop to it, pal. Okay? Open the portal, drop me off, and if I have to walk back to Nuit with Glaine, just let Sierra know to expect me in a couple of days.”

“Glaine is in Mavro?—”

Duh. “I know that. I don’t care. He needs to be here.”

With me.

Loki’s cheeks hollow as he stays silent for a moment. I know his story. Kennedy told me all about how he went demonic after a spell gone wrong, all because he was desperate to find his mate. He knows what it’s like to be separated.

He also knows that, if a demon goes too far from his mate, he’ll burn.

That happened to Loki. When Kennedy needed some space from him before they were bonded—but after their essence exchange—she tried to walk away, and he went up in smoke. That’s how she discovered that the ‘shadow’ in shadow demon has two meanings: they can turn to shadow, and when they’re trying to bond their mate to them, they are a shadow.

Is Glaine burning up now? When Kennedy would sit with me and Freya in her house while Glaine was helping Apollyon out as Nuit’s security, she told me everything I could expect of being a mate. With a tablet from the village healer, he could extend the tether between us from ten feet to closer to a hundred-and-fifty… but Mavro is way farther than that.

Unless he’s in chains again, dampening his demon aura, he might be, and that’s all the more reason why I have to go to him.

Loki nods. “I will lead you through the portal. After that?—”

“You can go. I’ll be fine.”

I’ll be with my mate.

Up until the moment that Loki opens a portal on the other side and I get spat out from the shadows of his spell into very familiar surroundings, I think I convinced myself that Glaine took the first opportunity to be rid of me and high-tailed it back to the duke. After all, being the head guard was his identity. For centuries, that’s all he was. Behind his shields, Glaine couldn’t hide how much it hurt when Duke Haures released him from his duty. I should’ve known he’d go back if he could.

Isn’t that what I was trying to do? Instead of taking the chance to have a new life, a new future, I was desperate to return to my old one. I was the Whiskey Rose’s manager, right? I had the world at my fingertips. The power and prestige that came with the title… wasn’t that what I fought so hard to see again?

That sounds terrible. Like I don’t care about Sierra when the truth is that our lives were so intermingled, it was hard for us to just be Billie and Sierra. We were Whiskey Rose and manager. That’s it. Having some time when I could be Billie again… it was good for me. Just like how I see the light in her eyes for the first time in years now.

She’s happy with her mate. A workaholic to the bone, she won’t dip on being Whiskey Rose and disappoint her fans, but she’s looking forward to her future with Dagon.

And now that I’ve seen her and realized that I can have a life of my own, I want to share it with my own demon mate.

I only hope that I’m not too late. I wasn’t playing hard to get all along, not really, and I regret to think I was leading Glaine on by acting the part of his mate these last few weeks without actually finalizing our bond, but I’m ready to do that now. So long as he’ll still have me, I’ll make him mine.

I thought my biggest obstacle would be that Glaine finally gave up on me and rejoined the other soldiers at the barracks—and then I see the narrow cat, the bars on the cell door, and Glaine crouched in the far corner, the front pair of horns in his chained hands, and I gasp.

I was wrong. Way wrong.

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