Page 130 of The Harbinger

She was mine.

And not even the gates of Hell could take her from me.

Chapter 30

Mia

“I’msorry,Mia.Inever would have suggested it if I knew that would happen.”

Katya pressed antiseptic ointment into my days-old branding like she was a nurse instead of my friend.

I winced as she pressed it harder. “How could you have predicted his father would show up?”

It was the question I’d asked myself and Sacha countless times in the last three days. There was no way he would’ve known we would be there unless someone told him.

What was a powerful man like that doing in the grocery store? It wasn’t for shopping, and it wasn’t as if he was looking around for some chips and spotted me with Sacha’s men. No, he walked straight towards us with direct knowledge of our whereabouts.

It wasn’t a coincidence. Of that, I was certain.

“I couldn’t, but look at what he did to you.”

I reached up and stayed her hand. “Listen. Sacha didn’t do anything to me I didn’t want.”

“But a binding sigil… with his crest beneath? Do you know what that means?”

Nodding, I released her and stared past her toward the mirror. “Of course I do.”

He’d reminded me of its significance every time he pressed into me, released inside my body, or took me by the hair and ravished my mouth with his tongue. It was something he’d never let me forget.

It wasn’t just a reminder for myself but for him as well. If he understood that I was his, and his alone, he’d never abandon me like in my darkest fears.

“He’s never done this before.”

“Done what?”

“Attached himself to someone so permanently. This has more regard than a wedding ring, Mia.”

I glanced down, hiding my smile.

More important than a wedding ring?“Why?”

“Because,” she pressed again, then tossed the cloth in the trash bin. “A wedding binds you together in this plane, but a sigil binds you together forever on all of them.”

“I’m not following.” I winced as I pulled my shirt over my shoulder.

“Our world is made up of one reality, but several planes. The plane of existence we walk on, and then the plane or dimension we move on to in the hereafter.”

“I don’t understand how you can believe in this stuff.”

“It’s all I’ve ever known.” She pulled up her sleeve, revealing her black tattoo with two rectangles at the bottom and a vertical line at the top as if I hadn’t seen it before. “We are all a part of it. Everyone in this household and outside of it. You don’t come to work for Sacha and Ruslan Vladomirovich without taking the oath.”

“What oath?”

“Loyalty to the Unholy Ones, and everlasting servitude to them.”

“And I thoughtIwas losing my mind…” I shook my head. “Why would you do that?”

“We all have our reasons, Mia.” She pulled her shirt sleeve down, hiding her espousal to them. “Why didyou?”

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