Page 16 of Mane Squeeze
“Sure it is.” His gaze dropped to her ink-stained fingers, then back up. “You’re powerful. You don’t hide it. That’s rare.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
So she glared instead. “Stay thirty feet away unless you want me to enchant your shoes to squeak every time you blink.”
He held up his hands in surrender but didn’t leave.
The tension buzzed between them like a brewing storm, but it wasn’t the same sharpness it had been before. It was heavier. The kind that wrapped around her instead of barbing into her.
And she hated it.
7
DOMINIC
Dominic hadn’t expected domestic captivity to suit him.
But here he was—day four in Lillith’s hyper-warded, mood-swingy little cottage—and he hadn’t so much as attempted murder. Not even once. That felt like growth.
It should’ve been torture. No space. No girls. No night patrols or fights with goblin smugglers in the Whispering Woods. Just one incredibly annoyed fae with a vocabulary sharp enough to skin flesh from bone and a wardrobe full of aggressively soft sweaters.
And cats. Magic cats. That judged him like they'd been appointed by the Moonlit Pact itself.
He sat cross-legged on the braided rug in the living room, flipping through a local grimmoire he’d stolen from the bookshelf without asking. The spine crackled in protest—it hadn't been opened in decades. It was filled with swirling script and half-faded ink that talked more in riddles than straight facts. Typical.
“What are you looking for?” Lillith asked from somewhere behind him. Her voice was that usual mix of suspicion and weary tolerance.
He smirked without looking up. “Answers. Forbidden knowledge. Maybe a love potion.”
“I have poison instead.”
Dominic laughed and turned his head. She was standing in the kitchen, her hair piled in a loose bun, glasses perched low on her nose for the intricate things she claimed she was doing, and a tea towel slung over her shoulder like she owned the entire coven council. The sight shouldn’t have done anything to him.
It did.
Everything she did lately…did.
They weren’t fighting like they had at first. Weren’t circling like wolves with something to prove. They still sniped at each other, sure, but it wasn’t as barbed. More… familiar. Teasing, even.
They moved around each other with unspoken ease. She left the sugar out because he hated his tea bitter. He didn’t touch the lavender drawer because she muttered hexes at it when he did.
This weird, enchanted house was slowly shifting. He could feel it in the way doors creaked open more easily when they were in the same room, how the lights dimmed sweetly during their nightly tea sessions, and how the floorboardsdidn’tcreak when they crossed paths now.
It was like the house itself was rooting for them.
A fact he found both hilarious and vaguely threatening.
He shut the book with a thump and stood, stretching. “What’s the over-under on us not committing homicide this week?”
Lillith shot him a side glance over her mug. “Honestly? Better than expected.”
Dominic grinned. “So, I’m growing on you.”
“Like mold.”
“Admit it,” he said, striding toward her. “You’d miss me if I poofed.”
“Only if the poof was dramatic. Smoke, sparkles. Maybe an apology note.”
