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Whatever my magic took away, perhaps I can outmaneuver it.

I start up that narrow, winding road, heading for the campus grounds. I make it about five hundred feet outside of Peel Academy when my own, traitorous magic halts me. My feet won’t move forward any farther. When I try to fly, my magic bars the airspace around the campus. When I melt into the night, becoming one with it, the darkness still won’t let me come any closer.

I manifest back on the ground, and furiously I bash my fists against the invisible barrier, over and over again until my skin feels like it’s been rubbed away and my bones have cracked themselves open. I might as well be hitting myself. This is my own magic that I’m coming up against.

Angry and defeated, I reluctantly return to my flat.

I run my hands through my hair.

Fuck, fuck,fuck.

I’m only now truly beginning to accept what I realized in that instant my power rose to meet Callie’s final words: my magic granted my mate a favor, and now we’re both paying its tithe.

I close my eyes and hear those last words all over again.

From flame to ashes, dawn to dusk, for the rest of our lives, be mine always, Desmond Flynn.Her voice is like a ghost in the room.

I try to hold onto her words. They’re all I have left of her.

I suck in a breath.They’re all I have left.

Suddenly, I’m desperate to touch every ridiculous souvenir she insisted she buy for me. I’m desperate to see her face in each one of my sketches. I begin to move through the flat, collecting the items I have of her from where they lay. A shot glass from Vegas, silks from Beirut, a beckoning cat from Tashirojima, a lamp from Marrakech, a beret from Paris—the list goes on and on.

I spread them around me, each one a talisman that can somehow protect me from the terrible truth: my magic fucked us both over.

Will Callie still love me once this magical tithe has been paid? Will she eventually piece together what has happened?

I need her to piece it together. Otherwise …

The uncertain future looms large.

You idiot, Desmond. Had you given a little more of yourself a litter earlier, had you explained to her what your true feelings were, this might not have happened.

But what was I supposed to tell her? That she was fated to be my mate? That she really had no choice in the matter because she was mine?

I wasn’t going to put that sort of pressure and those sorts of expectations on a teenage girl. Especially not one who’d only just escaped her stepfather’s abuse.

I sit heavily on my bed.

What was my magic thinking? I gave her all those beads so that I could remain close to her for years to come. Not so I’d be forced to keep my distance.

If only I understood the precise terms of this repayment. But just as the lungs can breathe and the heart can beat even when you’re unaware of them, so too can my magic act without my conscious consent.

It usually doesn’t—like the heart and lungs it only works involuntarily when it needs to. And for whatever reason, it felt this deal was one it needed to make.

I just thought I’d have more time.

Chapter 21

Another Man

3 years ago

Every day Itry.

And every day I fail.

I toss the shots of Patrón back, one after the next, the alcohol burning my throat as it goes down. I don’t bother with limes or salt. I want to feel the bite of the tequila, the burn of the pain.