Page 73 of Their World

I scowled at him. “How’d you know about that?”

“Dad told me because your parents had freaked out. You told them you’d been in snake form and digesting, but I knew that had to be a lie, since it doesn’t take you a week to digest anything. Not since you turned twelve.”

He knew me so well; it was really endearing.

“Did you turn him in to get punished?” Trey asked.

I shook my head. “No, I convinced him to keep it a secret and told him if I ever saw him again that I’d give him to Caleb to deal with. Apparently, Caleb is scarier than me, even when I almost beat him to death.”

“I would choose that over Caleb finding out I attacked his daughter for sure,” Piper muttered.

I supposed most would choose me beating them to facing Dad’s wrath. “After it happened, I noticed more powers that I hadn’t had before, like the premonitions and the ability to tell when someone is lying.”

“Wait, what? You can tell when someone is lying?” Trey asked.

I nodded.

“Well, that’s incredibly handy,” he whispered and got a far off look in his eyes, no doubt thinking of ways to utilize that skill.

“What else happened?” Mason asked.

“I was stalked by someone for a short while, but?—”

“What?” Kayden asked and growled.

Mason smirked and asked, “Jealous it wasn’t you?”

I dropped my head down so Kayden wouldn’t see me laugh.

“Shut up, bird brain,” Kayden snapped.

“So, now that this has been handled, shall we go home?” I asked and headed towards the door. “I have a lot of unpacking to do.”

“Yes, let’s go to the house,” Trey agreed.

Once at the house, Trey and Kayden spoke with our new guards while Mason helped me unpack.

“You’ve been rather quiet,” I whispered, and glanced at him. He was also stewing about something, switching between worry and anger, or at least that was how it felt through the bond.

“I don’t like knowing that you were in trouble and we weren’t able to help you or be there for you,” he answered. “If I had just gone to your college, spoken to you and cleared all of this up?—”

“You can’t blame yourself for something in the past and out of your control. There are a ton of things I would change if I could, but what matters is the here and now and our future.”

He set down the picture in his hands and grabbed me in a tight hug, pressing his nose to my hair and inhaling deeply. “The only thing that matters to me is you, Lily. Keeping you safe.Keeping you happy. Being by your side. I should have told you I loved you before you left for college. I should have told you how I felt years ago. But … I was too scared. I was a coward and I’m sorry. I was worried that … if you didn’t have the same feelings and now, I had made things weird, that you wouldn’t want to see me anymore. I’m not going to let my fear stop me ever again. I’m not going to let you get taken away from me ever again. Losing you would be worse than losing my animal.”

I hugged him back tightly, drawing in his scent, letting it ground me as I absorbed his words and the love behind them.

“No matter what happens, you’ll stay by my side?” I asked.

He nodded against my head. “Yes.”

“Even if I chose to live in the demon world?”

He pushed me back to arm’s length and looked into my eyes. “Is that what you want?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what the future holds or what is going to happen.”

Silently, he stared into my eyes for a breath longer before he nodded. “If you stay in the demon world, then so do I. Simple as that. If you want to move across the continent, to another city, back in with your parents, or to the demon world. Wherever it is, I will go with you. My place is by your side.”

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