Page 7 of Accidentally Vacationed with an Incubus

Jasper’s lips quirked into a half-smile. “You haven’t changed, Shadowman.”

“I can’t say the same for you.” I gave a vague gesture at all of him—the size, the authority, the fact that he could probably bench press me without breaking a sweat.

Jasper chuckled, “Well—”

Static filled my ears as Jasper presumably divulged information about his pack. I let him talk, his lips moving in a way that was unreadable. Whatever Jasper was saying about his pack, I wasn’t meant to hear it. Anyone outside of the Hell’s Gate inner circle never did hear it. And so, while Jasper went on about whatever it was he was saying, my mind wandered back to the first time I met him.

Seventeen years ago, the older, unsummoned demons of my clan decided it was time for the younger demons to start“exploring the mortal realm,”which, in reality, meant throwing us headfirst into an unfamiliar world with minimal preparation and hoping for the best.

It went about as well as you’d expect.

I was ten years old—fully grown in body, yes, but with the survival instincts of... well, of a naive incubus demon who had never left their realm before.

Which was how I managed to get hit by three separate vehicles before noon. The first two were cars, and I think I did more damage to them than they did to me. But the third was a truck carrying what must have been a metric shit-ton of logs, straight out of aFinal Destinationpremonition.

And it almost killed me.

Okay, maybe that was a tad dramatic. Incubus demons were notoriously difficult to kill. But the truck did drag me across the asphalt and shredded the skin from my hip to my knee. I healed relatively quickly—thank Hades for that—though I still bore the jagged scar running the length of my thigh. I dusted myself off,and with a much deeper respect for crosswalk signals, limped into the city to work on my ability to read emotions.

That was how I found Jasper, a seven-year-old wolf pup, radiating fear so thick it nearly drowned out everything else. I followed the feeling into an alleyway, where I found him hunched against a crumbling brick wall, standing over a pile of his shredded clothing, his small frame tense and shaking, his hackles raised, his teeth bared.

Lost. Alone. Fresh from his first shift. The fear seeping off him was the kind that made everything look like a threat.

So, I did the only thing that made sense.

I sat down beside him and started to talk.

I told him about myself, about the Shadow Realm, about the Samhain summoning, when I would be meeting my fated mate in just eight years’ time (or so I’d thought back then). I told him how I had spent the day getting hit by multiple vehicles, and how after I helped him, I was going to meet some of my friends because one of them was going to see how high he could fly with his shadow wings.

And when he finally calmed enough to shift back into his human form, he was just a scrawny kid with wild dark hair, sharp eyes, and full lips quirking into a grin.

I handed him my jacket and offered to take him home.

At seven years old, Jasper had been too young to be affected by the static-inducing magic that now clouded everything about his pack.

So, he’d been able to tell me everything.

About being part of the Hell’s Gate pack. About what they guarded—a dragon. Though had I known at the time that he was ominously referred to as “Death on Dark Wings,” I probably would have just found the nearest pay phone instead of apparating us both directly into the center of the pack’s territory like an idiot.

And about why he had run away.

Apparently, his super overprotective stepmom had decided it was time to secure his future, which, in her mind, meant trying to set up a future match with his best friend, Billy.

“She told me Billy would be a good mate,” Jasper had grumbled, pulling my too-big jacket tighter around himself, like it could shield him from the awkward horror of forced matchmaking. “But Billy’s my best friend, and I don’t want to marry her.”

Even at ten years old, I had already known that my fated mate would be my everything. The idea that someone else could be pushed into that role? That had never even crossed my mind.

As my shadows cleared to reveal the shocked faces of Jasper’s pack mates, I offered them a friendly wave as I held their missing pup in my arms. And, for the second time that day, I had been about yea-close to becoming shadow-meat. I think it was out of sheer surprise that I wasn’t immediately torn to shreds. Though a silver-haired, red-eyed pup did manage a heartfelt gnaw at my ankles.

Fortunately, Jasper managed to blurt out the brief version of his rescue before any of the adult wolves attacked, and I was allowed to leave the pack with my limbs intact—under strict threat of death should I ever utter a word about their whereabouts.

A decade later, Jasper and I bumped into each other by chance. While he was now fully under the influence of whatever magic protected their pack, we became best friends, meeting a few times a year, and always the day after Samhain.

“—going on with Billy.”

“You know I didn’t understand a single word of that, right?”

Jasper shrugged, completely unbothered. “I know. But I had to get that off my chest to someone.” He stretched back in his seat, his broad shoulders rolling with the kind of ease that camefrom knowing he could take out half the bar without breaking a sweat. “We’re a day earlier than usual. Everything okay with you?”

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