Page 68 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

I blow out a breath and try to control the rage that’s still pumping through my veins. She looks unharmed. My brain doesn’t get the memo from my eyes. My wings and tail refuse to disappear.

“For all I knew, the shrouding spell that you expected them to put on you worked, and you forgot everything from the past few months,” I say slowly.

“You haven’t been in our pocket realm to let me know you’re okay.

You won’t answer when I mind-talk to you.

Was this your way of testing me, too? Did you really think I would just…

what? Not check on you whenever I can? Go back to the separate lives we used to live? ”

Her eyes soften, and she walks forward to grab my hand then tugs me toward the bed.

The bed that’s messed up enough to make me think my first instinct was the right one—that kelpie had a real good time tonight. With my mate.

“I’m so sorry, Duke,” she whispers, guiding me to sit on the edge of her mattress. She even holds my stupid wings up so I won’t sit on them. “I thought I prepared us both enough, but I was obviously wrong.”

“Please,” I rasp as I grip her hips to pull her closer to me. “Please just tell me what’s going on.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew I was gone for her. Hearing myself beg for any scrap she’ll give me startles me anyway. I’m so fucked. Completely at the mercy of this witch. No matter what she tells me, it won’t matter. Not for me anyway.

She laughs a little, “What’s going on is you’re not supposed to be here. If anyone saw you barrel into my house with your wings and tail out, we’re screwed.”

“I couldn’t stay away.” I groan as she rakes her nails through my hair. I rest my forehead against her soft stomach and try my damnedest to release all the tension that’s been building in me for weeks. “I tried, Cordie. I really did.”

“My poor monster,” she murmurs as she continues to calm me with her touch. Louder, she says, “Cornelius. You were supposed to help him.”

“I am a witch’s familiar, not a fae’s,” he answers, annoyed. “There is only so much I can do, my darling. ”

“Stop calling her pet names,” I growl.

“Shh,” Cordie murmurs in her most soothing voice. “You can’t help your nature. I know.”

I don’t think she does. Hell, even Wallace admits that all he knows about mates comes from old stories. He doesn’t know shit about half-fae. It’s apparently illegal for us to breed outside our kind.

“I have to know,” I whisper. “I don’t want to, but I need to. I’m trying to understand you, too. You’re a witch, not a fae. I get it. You don’t owe me anything, but I have to know what he was doing here all night, Gingersnap. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not going crazy,” she insists, moving her fingers down my neck to my shoulders. She kneads at the knots in my muscles, and it’s still not enough to loosen them. “I don’t know how long we have until he questions whether he might be, though.”

I pull back enough to stare up at her face. She’s chewing on her lower lip the way she used to chew on mine.

“What does that mean?” I question very slowly. I’m half-drunk from her attention, but I can’t afford to miss anything important. I’ve already screwed up by barging into her new life.

“He was here all night,” she admits, meeting my gaze. “He believes that he accomplished the job he was paid to do.”

Cornelius leaps onto the bed to sit beside me. “What did the coven pay him to do, love?”

My eye twitches, but I let the pet name slide. Mostly, because I want the answer to his question, too.

Cordie sighs so deeply that all the tension she worked to ease rears its ugly head again. My teeth ache as they lengthen into sharp points. I will kill anyone or anything who fucks with my mate.

“After a few glasses of spelled wine that he didn’t suspect as anything more than foreplay, he confessed that they paid him to get access to the library,” she says, way too calmly.

Foreplay? Over my dead body.

“They can’t have the fucking library,” I growl again.

The words don’t sound like much. I’m losing the ability to talk.

My skin itches as fur spreads along my limbs. My muscles ache as they shift into something bigger, something more dangerous than I could ever be even with a real, honed sword.

Cornelius digs his claws into my thigh, but it doesn’t help. I’m too far gone now. All I can smell is another male’s scent on my mate’s sheets. I barely have enough sense left to pull my hands away from Cordie’s body before I stab her with my talons.

Cornelius’s voice sounds lethal for a little furball when he asks, “Are you harmed, my witch? Did he bleed you?”

I see red at the thought of someone else stealing my mate’s blood.

Cordie squints at nothing. “Huh. You know, that would’ve actually been way easier than what they ordered him to do.”

Cornelius and I exchange a glance before he asks her, “Which was…what?”

She licks across her teeth, then sticks her tongue in her cheek. “Impregnate me.”

Get on your back and spread your thighs right now , I demand. I will lick his cum out of you until nothing of him remains.

She laughs until she’s wheezing. She thinks I’m joking.

I’m not.

“I’m fine,” she says out loud, clutching her stomach with one hand and waving the other around between us. “He never touched me. He only thinks he did.”

“How did you manage that?” Cornelius asks. “Mind control is a very advanced spell for a witch who has had precious little practice at casting.”

She shrugs, but there’s a gleam in her green eyes that says everything her mouth doesn’t.

Is that why I felt extra annoyed all night? I ask her. Were you tapping into my powers somehow?

The little witch winks at me.

I’m so proud.

A little terrified, but mostly proud of her for figuring so many things out way faster than I could ever hope to. We’ve been thrown into the deep end of a magical well that we never knew existed before. She’s swimming like a champ. I’m over here drowning .

That’s it. Come here. Sit on my face now. You deserve a reward, and I’m still going to lick every drop of his imaginary cum out of you.

She laughs again, like she hasn’t spent the past six weeks in the kind of agony that feels like it’s eating me alive, bite by bite.

“He didn’t lay a finger on me. I swear,” she emphasizes, swinging her gaze between me and Cornelius.

She chews on her lip and tips her head to the side.

“Of course, once I found out why he was here, I knew I couldn’t let him go back to his overladies empty handed.

They would just send another sperm donor to finish the job. ”

I growl.

Cornelius hisses. “They will send another anyway. The coven is nothing if not thorough. They will not stop until your belly swells with a child who can unlock the library with your shared bloodline.”

Cordie shakes her head and stares at a space somewhere over my head.

“That’s another thing I can’t figure out.

If a witch gains power when she becomes pregnant, but they don’t want me to know that I’m a witch, then why would they risk a pregnancy that would increase my powers?

Wouldn’t that theoretically be a danger to the shrouding spell they believe they cast on me? ”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Cornelius says. “They can simply continue recasting the spell.”

Cordie. My furry skin prickles with awareness. I rise to my feet and scan the room with heightened vision. Why would the coven tell a hired thug about the library? That’s need-to-know information, and he didn’t.

Cornelius stands on all fours, fur bristling on his back as he hisses. “A fae approaches.”

I shove Cordie behind me then relax.

“Wallace?” she asks when she tugs my wing aside to see who’s standing in her bedroom doorway. “What are you doing here?”

He frowns. “I knew Duke wouldn’t be able to stay away. I’ve been preparing for this moment. Quickly, gather your things. The coven has been alerted. We haven’t much time. They will not make the same mistake twice with you.”

Cordie bounds into action, disappearing into the bathroom again.

I spin in a circle. I can’t do shit with these claws, and there’s no way I’m going to calm down enough to shift back. Not now. Not when I’m the one who blew Cordie’s cover.

“How will we get him out without drawing more unwanted attention?” Cornelius gestures toward me with a paw.

Wallace waves his hands in a fluid motion.

I glance down to find myself fully dressed in my human form.

“It’s only a glamour,” he warns me. “You’ll find out soon enough when you try to stuff your wings into my SUV. Be careful, and don’t break anything.”

Cordie emerges from the bathroom wearing a pair of wrinkled pajama pants and an old t-shirt. “Let’s go.”

“There’s nothing of value you need to bring? We may be unable to return.” Wallace leads us back down the hallway toward the front door.

Cordie grabs her purse that’s hanging on a row of hooks by the door. “Got everything I need.”

“So be it. My car’s just down the street. This way.”

We file down the sidewalk, heads swiveling toward every shadow.

Cornelius keeps pace, racing beside us at our ankles. “Three witches approach from the east.”

“Who?” Cordie asks.

“My recognition is limited to magical signatures,” he pants. “I cannot identify them beyond that.”

“Never mind,” Wallace says. He holds a key fob in the air. The lights flash on a dark blue SUV a few paces ahead. “We will be gone by the time they arrive.”

He wasn’t kidding about my wings being a tight fit.

I’m not sure that I don’t break anything, because I can’t get in the vehicle on my own.

All three of them have to help me. Since they can’t see what they’re grabbing hold of or bending at an awkward angle, it’s a miracle we pull away from the curb before the witches show up.

We hold our breath until we hit the highway. Wallace turns onto sixty-four, headed west.

Cordie breaks the silence first. “Where will we go?”

“Somewhere safe,” Wallace answers, meeting my gaze in the rearview mirror .