Page 66 of Dating the Dealing Demon

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re my sister. You and Nic are all I’ve had for decades.”

She wipes her hands against each other, gathering some of her usual composure. “Don’t trust Dupree. I don’t care what happened with the cyclops. Don’t let him near your mate.” A thread of tension shakes her voice, a rawness so unlike Gilly that it triggers alarms within me.

My gut twists with dread. “What did he do to you?”

Looking away, Gilly curls her claws into fists and wraps her tail as though putting a physical barrier between us. “He’ll betray you,” she says, her tone numb,hollow. “He’ll betray us all if it’ll get him the crown.”

“Tell me why you hate him so much?—”

The shriek of a monster—something big and terrible—has me cutting off my question. An enormous portal, bigger than the burned-out wing of the manor, shimmers into existence behind Gilly.

Giant snakes slither out from another dimension, winding across the garden. One wraps around Gilly. “Theo!”

My heart dives at the pain and fear in her voice as she screams for me to save her. She’s suddenly my vulnerable little sister again, the one who looked up to me and counted on me to watch out for her.

I fly toward her, claws shredding the scaled beasts who reach for me, but in an instant, they recoil, yanking back into the portal, taking Gilly with them. Faster, I fly, tucking my wings for speed. But the portal closes as quickly as it opened, and I arc through empty air where it was a second ago.

Gilly’s gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Val

Ihaven’t seen Theo in days.

He returned after making promises of filthy, sexy times, and damn, if my demon didn’t treat me as if he barely knows me. The distance he slammed between us felt like we’d gone back to the beginning with me reaching for a knife to carve the smug apathy from him. Except his arrogance had been gone.

In its place had been guilt so thick I almost choked on it.

They’d stolen Gilly, and with her, they’d taken his pride.

I never thought I’d miss his swagger, but I do.

I’d offered to help him find her, to track them to the ends of the universe, to be in this together. But when I’d moved to hold him, the bastard pulled out of reach. As though I’d taken Gilly. Or that somehow her disappearance had been my fault.

The fuck it was. I’d been stuck in bed recovering from stopping him from torching Shadowvale. And what did that get me? A coldness and brush off so brutal I wanted to cry and stab at him all over again just to seesomeemotion in his gaze.

Here I thought we’d been mates—destined for each other. Wouldn’t real mates want to share their burdens and work together to fight their common enemy? Instead, he treated me likeI’mthe enemy.

Then he’d left.

I can’t even think about him without launching into a tailspin of doubt because what did I do wrong for him to ignore me? He went from handsy, slipping a tail under my skirt to indifferent. I guess he hadn’t gotten whatever he wanted out of the mating magic, and he was done with me.

“You going to stay in the lab all night again?” Nic asks from the doorway.

I turn down the volume on my blaring angry rock music. “Maybe.” She doesn’t need to know I spent most of last night doodling, procrastinating, wondering about her brother, and picking at my cuticles which are now a bloody mess. Deep breath, I tell myself, pushing past the overwhelm. “It depends on how long the gel rig takes. I’m running another analysis for repeated sequences on the DNA comparison between what you got me from recent unauthorized portals and the reference samples family members gave you.”

“You mean the ones Theo clawed out of them? Because he definitely has more power since you two made your mating official.”

“Yeah, that.” I’m not going to ask her how he has proven his level up with mating magic or even what he’s been up to since she has clearly been talking to him, but my so-called fated mate won’t bother to say hello to me. “Anyway, this could take a while.”

Monty zooms past in the tunnels overhead in full mongoose glory with the toy unicorn galloping close behind. At least someone’s having fun.

Nic crosses her arms over her chest, propping her human glamour form against a counter. “Don’t let my brother’s stupidity keep you locked in here. You could summon him, you know.” She nods toward the bracelet I’ve worn since the haunted house, the one I should’ve torn off the moment he broke his promise and didn’t come back.

But I can’t.

“I won’t,” I tell her.

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