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“I gave them their order, but then people started dying.”Another pause.“So I broke into the main dealer’s house, and I stole it back.”

“You did what?”

“I couldn’t let anyone else die because of me.But now I owe them a lot of money.”

“Then give them their money back and come home.”

He sobbed again.“The money’s all gone.I used it to buy the ingredients, then Evie took the rest of the cash, and she’s not answering her phone.”

That fucking bitch.

“They’re gonna kill me, Sut.They said they’re gonna kill me if I don’t give them their money back.I’m so scared.I don’t know what to do.”

He was spiraling, and I had to pretend I wasn’t because he needed me.Gods.I was so angry at him for doing something so stupid, but he needed me to be strong right now.

“You need to get as far away from Roxburgh as you can until I work out what to do.Lie low until I can get the money together, then we can get you out of this mess.”

“It’s a lot of money.It’s so much money, Sutton.”

I had some savings.If I had to use some of it to get him out of this, then that’s what I’d do.“How much?”

“Fifty grand.It’s fifty fucking grand,” he gasped out, sobbing harder.

Holy shit.I sure as hell didn’t have that kind of money.“Right…okay.I’ll work something out.”I had no idea how, but I would.

“I have to go.They could be tracking me.I’ll buy a burner and call you when I’m safe.”

“Luke, hang on?—”

The phone went dead.

Shit.I paced across my room to the window and stared out to the dark street.

Where the hell was I gonna get fifty thousand dollars?

It turned out, drinking didn’t solve all your problems.

It also didn’t magically help you figure out how to find fifty thousand dollars and save someone you loved from possible torture and death.What it did do, however, was stop you from having an epic panic attack, so I was calling it a win.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and the longer I stared, the angrier I got.I didn’t get angry easily.I tried to be positive, but there was no positive angle in this mess.And who the hell did these assholes think they were, anyway?Luke had been pushed around, cast aside, and had been forced to live on the streets like I had.He’d made a mistake, a really, seriously bad one—people had died—but I couldn’t let him die as well.

My fingers curled into tight fists.Everyone in this coven had suffered in one way or another.We’d been treated like pariahs, cast aside because of what we were or how we looked—never good enough, never catching a damned break.

I knew that firsthand.My family thought I was disgusting, a blight on their perfect coven.No one talked about the fact that I was born this way, with demon blood, because my mother had an affair with afreaking demon!No one cared about that part, oh no, just that I didn’t look like them, that my eyes and veins were a huge flashing red light telling everyone what my mother had done, and we couldn’t have that now, could we?We couldn’t have that shame staining their precious coven.

She literally fucked around and got found out, but I was the one who paid the price for her selfishness.There’d been nights of fear on the streets when I didn’t think I’d survive, so much loneliness, years of self-loathing, something I still struggled with, then I found my coven and everything got better—until a monster broke in and cut me up.The fates giving me another giantfuck you, Sutton.

And then came Jagger, and I thought, yeah, finally.Finally.Something was going to go my way.I’d truly convinced myself that the fates thought,hey, that Sutton got a pretty rough deal, let’s give her something good to make up for all that crap we threw at her—but, no.Instead, they decided to serve me up a whole lot more.

They dangled that hound in front of me, and just when I thought I was going to get my happily ever after, finally, they snatched him away—but not completely, not straightaway, first they humiliated me, then they made me think he’d changed his mind,thenthey snatched him away for good.

Grabbing the glass off my bedside table, I downed the last of my drink.That one might have been a little heavy on the vodka.I was still seriously tipsy.Well, there was only one answer for that.Dance it off.

I dragged myself off the bed and turned on some music.Boo was in his “cave,” a little hidey-hole I’d made him to sleep in during the day.It was basically soundproof, and he didn’t stir.

I did an experimental twist of my waist.My ribs hardly even hurt now.Thanks, vodka, I knew I could count on you.No one was here to annoy with the volume, so I turned it up.I tried not to think about Luke afraid and alone, or the shit Bonny had said to me the last time I saw her, while I was saving her freaking boyfriend’s life—or Jagger in the bathroom with me, washing my hair, or the way he looked standing in the doorway in only a towel.It didn’t work and I shivered when I thought about him basically begging me to let himmake mefeel good.

His voice rang through my mind over and over again.