Page 117 of Cursed to Be Mine
Her gaze dips to the bite marks on my neck that have broken skin, mementos of the last three days. “Get him to slow down with the blood bond is all I’m suggesting. It’ll give you time to figure out if you really want to be with him or if it’s his blood tricking you.”
I stare at her, wanting to call her a liar but knowing I can’t. Her words stick in my chest as I think back on how I asked Khalid to make me pregnant even though I never wanted kids. My ma was shit. I never knew my father. How can I possibly raise a child of my own with no good experience to pull from? My heart racing, I try to think of why Khalid wouldn’t have told me this when we talked about blood bonds.
Ishe playing me? Is hemakingme fall in love with him? I barely know him. It’s only been a few days that we’ve been together, and yeah, they have been afuckingintensefew days where emotions have beenextreme all around and I might have been half-way in love from him due to me crushing on him for the last three months, but…is it not too soon to be feeling this obsessed with him?
My heart a frantic dance of madness, I force my eyes back to the pieces of paper in front of me. I need to finish organizing them to put in my book of shadows. My hands shake as I rip off a yellow dot.
“Hey,” she says, dipping her shaved head to regain my attention. “Khalid really cares about you. I know that, and I don’t doubt for a second that he will do anything for you. But the men in this family can be really callous and selfish sometimes, so just keep that in mind. I know it can be overwhelming when they focus on you.” There’s a hitch in her words that causes me to look at her and really see her for the first time.
She isn’t much different than me...
“Which one’s yours?” I ask softly.
She laughs briskly. “No one ismine. But I’m engaged to Varius fucking Shadow.” Her head tilts. “You haven’t met him yet, have you?” She nods before I can answer. “Of course you haven’t. Otherwise, you’d understand.”
“You like him though, don’t you?”
She stills, making me confident I hit the nail on the head. Before either of us can speak, Sau comes in with a black leather notebook in her hands.
“Here’s a –Micha, you’re back,” she says as she walks towards us with a smile. “I thought you were out until tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I got back early. With the boys gone, I didn’t want to leave you and Scarlett here alone, what with your curse and all.”
“You’re cursed?” I ask Sau.
She doesn’t look at me, her eyes focused on Micha. “Yes. I can’t use magic without it draining my life, but that doesn’t mean Iwon’tuse it.”
Micha stills, and as the air burns with words unspoken, I shift uneasily in my chair, my earlier fear over Khalid’s absence spiking again. Her gaze locked on Sau, Micha starts to stand. “I know you will die protecting her –”
I don’t want that!
“– but if I’m here, you don’t have to. The wolves –”
“Don’t?” Sau cuts in, the air electrifying like a coming storm.
Micha pauses and cocks her head to the side as her eyes fly to me. “Did I say that?”
I nod, a ball of knots pulling tight in my stomach.
When Micha straightens suddenly, her face losing her joking manner, Sau moves between the two of us with inhuman speed. I jump to my feet, not liking the feeling in the air. The tightness. The electricity.
Micha turns to us, her brow furrowed a second before she’s launched off her feet by a ball of magic Sau threw at her. Grabbing my hand, Khalid’s ma pulls me from the room as howls chorus a scream of pain.
My heart slams into my ribs. “What’s going on?” I cry. “Why did you –”
“Micha broke the protection spell keeping the wolves away, and with the boys gone, they’re going to come for you.”
“Oh...Scarlettttt!” a familiar voice coos outside, making my body jerk in terror. My mind flashes with the wolf on the van who teased Detective Henry with his dying wife. “Let’s finish our game, shall we?”
He laughs as his face slams against a window in the hall we’re running past, pressing his cheek against theglass. His wild eyes fly to me, pinning me in place, and I scream as the wall behind us rains plaster and wooden splinters as a werewolf smashes a hand through it.
“Don’t stop!” Sau hisses as she drags me down the stairs. “We need to get to the basement before –”
Her fingers fly free of mine when she suddenly twists and jumps back the way we just came.
The air electrifies as she grunts, holding back a blast of magic that ripples with dark energy. “Keep going!” she snaps. “The stairs are just there. I’ll hold Micha off.”
“But –”
