Page 96 of Cursed to Be Mine
“Hello to you too. Xander, huh? Pity, I liked him.”
“I’ll be back in half an hour after I pack Scarlett’s stuff. Get a stone from the vault.”
“Varius sign off on that?”
My jaw clenches. The alexandrite is fucking precious,and Varius would have given me a stone if I was allowed to use one. But I’ll argue my case with him later. “I want this done today.”
“Ah...so you can come home and fuck your girl, right?”
My eyes narrow.
“You gonna ask me how she is?”
I hang up on him before he can say anything, a cold jealousy eating its way into my chest.Needingto ask my brothers oranyoneelse howmygirl is, is making my knuckles turn white.
Magic bunching inside my muscles, feeding on my frustration, I head for the door. A few minutes later, I arrive at Hannah’s house and grab everything of Scarlett’s to chuck into my shadow. My hand lingers on her diary instead of tossing it in.
Opening it to the last entry, I read about the car wash.
How she wishes she could have done more than just feel my cock through our clothes.
A smile curls my lips.
My girl has a dirty imagination.
Thirty minutes later, I’m back at the house. Maddox meets me at the door with Varius behind him. Of course the fucker ratted me out.
“You wanted this done quickly,” I say to Varius.
“I wanted you to interrogate him. He’s been with us a long time.”
“Not as long as Uncle Myers.” For twenty-three years, he was like a father to me. He helped raise us even when Father walked out – not as much as Varius did, but his presence was always there. And now it was snuffed out, never to be felt again except for in thedreams that didn’t let me sleep.
His lips tighten. “I still want to know why he’s turned traitor before we kill him.”
“BeforeIkill him,” I say, my desire to have this over and done with bleeding into my words.
Maddox steps back, moving out from between the two of us on a low whistle.
“He is the only one who knows about that witness,” I push, my tone a bit more respectful, knowing it’s the fastest way to convince him.
He doesn’t say anything, but he does step aside. “Carve a message into his flesh. Tell him to come in, and he’ll be shown mercy.”
I nod, not caring if he lives or dies. As long as my role is done, I’ll get to see my girl.
Maddox heads upstairs, then continues past my room to the newer extension of the house, built a few decades ago when the twins were born. My eyes linger on my door, and the bond connecting me to my girl hums with a need to detour inside.
Rolling my shoulders, I walk past it.
Maddox’s room is a shrine to various metal bands, the walls painted a dark maroon to highlight the numerous black posters he has taped to the walls. As I start to shut the door behind me, he strips off his pants. Xander is six inches taller than him, and to quote my brother, “I don’t like my pants riding up my ass and squishing my balls.”
I wait as he cracks his neck from side to side, rolls his shoulders, and exhales. Magic hums in the air, electrifying it in a cloud around him.
His body shudders as his muscles rip and his bones break beneath tearing flesh. A black vortex opens beneath him, his magic feeding on the slices of meathe’s left in a locker in his shadow. We might be witches, but we can’t create things from nothing. Magic requires payment, and Maddox’s extra six inches and extra bulk requires human flesh to make.
A pained groan breathes through a pair of new lips as an exact image of Xander stands in front of me. “One of these days, I really need to learn how to change just a part of me. Just like, a hair or something…”
It’s not outside of the realm of possibility, but he has centuries of study before he gets there.
