Page 41 of Foretold

Shifting in my seat, I take another sip of the pixie goodness for some liquid courage. “Kai commented about you being into ropes, so…”

Some pretty women come over and distract August, Axe, and Kai, leaving Bane and me to finish the conversation alone. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he replies, watching me take another small sip.

“The ropes were all beautifully knotted…”

He nods, his lip twitching. “Interested, are you? It’s a style of decorative bondage.”

My now empty glass sits on the table, and heat pools in my lower stomach. I’m glad I didn’t have any more because no one told me it would make me fucking horny. Or is that just the conversation? An image of me tied up in that red rope flashes through my mind before I can clear it. Bane orders two glasses of water and hands me one. “Thank you.”

“How do you feel?” he asks, watching the others being dragged to the dance floor.

I lean closer to him, and he does the same. “Don’t let me drink any more of it.”

He laughs while his shoulders shake. “I told you. But no, you wanted to be stubborn.”

“I just wanted to try it, and now I have,” I say, shrugging. Turning, I watch as August dances with a pretty demon, lookingaway as she starts to grind her ass on him.

“He had no chance with you… you need to let him move on,” Bane says quietly.

Sighing, I shift to his side of the table, taking Kai’s seat so I can be closer to him. “What do you mean? He’s been moving on for a long time now. He just sees me as a friend, which is how it should be.”

“You’re his first love. If he had the chance, he would still want to be with you… trust me.”

“Pandora—”

“A distraction,” he says, his eyes going to the dance floor. “If you told him you wanted him right now, he would jump at the chance.”

“He’ll meet his mate and be glad we didn’t work out,” I say, watching him laugh as the demon whispers something in his ear.

“Not all of us meet our mates, Princess,” he replies, pushing a long lock of hair off my face.

“August will, and she’s beautiful,” I reply without thinking, freezing when I realize what I let slip. “I mean, that’s what I think will happen.”

Damn this pixie drink.

Bane studies me briefly, and I purposely look anywhere except at him. “We should dance. You might get lucky and find someone to tie up tonight.”

His fingers tighten on his glass, but he says nothing, his mood darkening. Then, he stands and offers me his hand, pulling me to the busy dance floor.

“Prince Bane, dance with me,” a woman purrs at him, her red eyes giving away what she is.

Not wanting to cockblock him, I step away with a wink. “Enjoy yourself. I’ll be fine.”

For some reason I don’t want to acknowledge, I leave so I don’t have to watch him with her, finding myself at the bar,ordering some wine. My skin strums with magic as lust swirls around me. I feel alive but also fucking horny. I’m considering zipping back to Rave and jumping him when I see a familiar face out of the corner of my eye.

Laurel.

The Shifter King’s seer is a woman I spend a lot of time thinking about. The few times I’ve seen her, she wouldn’t even respond when spoken to, and she appeared haunted. Broken. She nods her head to the ladies’ bathroom, and I quickly follow her there, closing the door behind us.

“Are you okay?” I ask, noticing the usual bags under her eyes. Her brown hair is tied back in a ponytail, and her skin is pale.

“I don’t have much time before he notices me gone,” she says, letting me hear her soft, almost childlike voice for the first time. She pins me with her dark, empty eyes. “I had a vision of you last night.”

A shiver ghosts down my spine. “Aren’t you a battle seer?”

She nods. “But I see all. Just like you.”

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