Page 115 of A Witchy Spell Ride

He looked up, finally, suspicion flooding in. His head snapped toward the door. He froze—caught between checking the sound and keeping his hand on me.

He chose wrong.

I made my wrists small and slipped the right free, blade already palmed. His thumb pressed hard on the bone where it meets the base of my palm and I leaned into it, borrowing his leverage. I brought the flat of the blade up—not to stab, not yet—but to lay it along his wrist like a warning.

“Touch me again without my consent,” I said softly, “and I’ll decorate your altar with your fingers.”

He went very still. The candles threw his shadow enormous on the wall—a saint of nothing.

“I love you,” he said, one more weapon.

“You don’t,” I said. “But for what it’s worth?”

He waited. Hope is loud.

“I believe in monsters,” I said, and smiled like a lit match. “And I brought a bigger one with me.”

Something clicked at the door. Not a bang. Not a battering ram. Just the quiet sound of a lock deciding it liked someone else better.

Briggs finally moved—to the knife on the altar.

I moved faster.

I kicked the chair back, the metal screeching, the sound I wanted. He grabbed the blade; I grabbed his wrist. He was stronger than he looked, but not stronger than a woman who’s been told to be small her whole life and learned to make rage into leverage.

We went sideways, a tangle of breath and devotion and hate. He hissed my name like a prayer, and I laughed, breathless.

The door opened.

Vex popped the flickering security light outside with a gloved fist; it died like an omen. The blue door spilled shadow.

Ghost came in low and left, a storm on legs, Reaper’s gravity behind him, Bones somewhere like a wall with a pulse.

Briggs looked up and saw what I’d promised him.

He let go of the knife.

I didn’t let go of him.

“Hi,” I said, smile all teeth. “You’re late, baby.”

Ghost’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something better. A man who’d just been handed back his heart.

“Get your hands off my woman,” he said to Briggs, polite as a funeral.

Briggs tried to speak. Ghost didn’t need him to. He took his wrist and language out of the equation in one clean motion. The blade clattered harmless. Vex had zip ties on him before the candles could finish trembling.

Ghost cut the last of my ties. The nylon fell away. Blood rushed where fear should have been.

“You hurt?” he asked, voice a rasp.

“Annoyed,” I said. “Hydration would help.”

He handed me a bottle from nowhere like a street magician and tucked me under his arm like I’d always fit there. I letmyself lean, just enough to remind my body we were done being hunted.

Reaper’s shadow filled the doorway; Bones hauled the jittery driver past us by the hood like a cat with a mouse. Cross’s voice in someone’s ear said,I’ve got the feed.Briar’s voice in my head said,About time,and I smiled.

Briggs watched me like I’d betrayed a map only he could see. “Selene—” he started.