Page 118 of Bad Demon

We had a couple of drinks here at the coven house most Friday nights.

“So, has Relic calmed down about the whole work thing?” Phoebe asked.

I grinned. “Yes, he has. Well, he still calls and texts me a million times a day to check on me, but he’s stopped sending Brick to secretly watch my shop.”

After I’d called him out on his overprotectiveness and told him that he needed to calm the hell down, he’d sent Brick to “guard” me instead.

“I have a feeling it’ll take time after everything that happened for him to relax a bit, especially about my safety.” I winced. “Though, according to Willow, hounds only get worse, and when you have pups, the overprotective thing reaches a whole new level.”

“Pups? Are you—”

“Noooo. Not looking to add a baby into the mix just yet. I’ve barely lived, you know? I just want to be with Relic for a while before we have kids.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Sutton said, pulling her phone from her pocket when it chimed. She stilled as she looked down at it, her eyes widening.

“What is it?”

She looked up. “Jagger just followed me on Nightscape.”

“He did what?” Phoebe said, looking as shocked as I felt.

Sutton held up her phone, showing us his profile, and Phoebe and I leaned in to check it out. No profile picture, no posts, no followers—and he was now following one person. Sutton.

“Is he back?” Sutton asked.

I shook my head. “He’s still in Hell.”

Jagger had been in Hell for two and a half months, helping Maddox with some training for the younger hounds, apparently, and not even Relic knew when he was coming back.

“I can’t believe he did that. It’s almost as if …”

“As if he created the profile just to follow you,” Phoebe said, taking the words right out of my mouth.

Sutton frowned, and her cheeks turned pink. “Why would he do that?”

Relic and I had a theory, but he’d told me not to say a word, that these things had to unfold on their own. “He likes you,” I said because that was obvious, right?

She huffed out a laugh. “The guy scowls and snaps at me whenever we’re in the same room. I piss him off more than anything.”

He’d also held her in his arms like she was his whole world, desperately licking her wounds to heal her after we had found her in that room, after the torture The Chemist had put her through. I didn’t know if she remembered, but she’d made it clear she didn’t want to talk about what had happened during those days with The Chemist, so I hadn’t shared what Jag had done while she was unconscious.

“Are you going to follow him back?” Phoebe asked. “I kind of feel bad for him.”

Phoebe was far too sweet for her own good.

“Why do you feel bad for him?” I asked her.

“He obviously doesn’t know how Nightscape works. His account isn’t even private, and I get the feeling Jagger’s a private male. I also doubt he knows we can see that Sutton’s the only person he’s following.”

I thought she was probably right.

“Should I follow him back?” Sutton asked, biting her lip. She had a major thing for him, but wasn’t admitting it, not even to us. “I should, right? Fuck it,” she said. She hit the Follow button, then quickly put the phone on the coffee table like she was afraid it would bite.

There were so many things I wanted to say, but I held them back, for now anyway. “Right, well, I’d better get going. Relic’s taking me for a ride tonight.”

That had become a tradition as well, one I absolutely loved, which included a ride through the city, before finding a secluded spot on the way home so we could tear each other’s clothes off. Our very first ride had been a bit different, though. That time, we’d ridden out to where The Chemist had kept me prisoner for so much of my life, and I’d watched as Relic blasted it with hellfire, flames pouring from his palms until the place was completely engulfed. He’d held me in his arms, and we’d watched it burn.

My friends walked me to the gate, and Sutton’s phone chimed with the distinctive Nightscape notification sound. One guess who that was. As I opened the gate, I bit back my smile.

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