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“If this is you feeling like you have to love me because?—”

I let out a sigh.

“I know what I feel!” I said. “And it has nothing to do with what you have done for me. Yes, I am grateful you saved me at the auction, but even before, I knew how I felt about you.”

A smile slowly spread across her face.

“Love?” she asked. “My little pet loves me?”

I nodded.

“Have you ever seen it?” I asked. “Felt it? In the memories?”

She shook her head and pursed her lips.

“No, but… I think Aris loves your friend,” she said. “I think I saw it in the way she looks at her. Not like a pet. Not like food. She fears for her safety. She cares about her. Like I do about you.”

My friend. I guess I wasn’t the only one who was falling in love with their demon.

“Then don’t ever say that again,” I said as I grabbed her robe. “Let me show you what love means. Let me stay with you for as long as I live. Let me live in your world with you and come up with more competitions so we can both be distracted and find more uses for your shadows. I don’t ever want to be without you.”

Yien shocked me by picking me up and crushing me to her.

“Whatever my little pet wants,” she said with a laugh, placing quick kisses all over my face.

A giggle spilled from my lips. I never thought something silly as that could bring me such warmth, but it did.

“Take me home,” I told her, grabbing on tighter. And this time, I wasn’t planning on ever letting go.

Not until I was old and gray. And even after my soul drifted from my body, I would stay with her, waiting until the day we could be reunited again, no matter how long it took.

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