You’ve fucked it, Devlin.

The plan was simple.

Set boundaries . All the ridiculous teaching aids had been magicked away— thanks, BooDini —but Jen had made it clear she was comfortable enough watching me jerk off as a visualization aid for her book.

Confirm boundaries. Double-checked. No pressure. No problem. Both of us were comfortable. And if I was being honest... I was maybe even a little eager.

Stick to boundaries. Fucked. It. Up.

Jen agreed to watch me—as Kieran —reenact the scene where he gets off thinking about Mina .

Mina.

Not Jen.

But the moment I wrapped my fingers around my length, my thoughts betrayed me. Every slow, measured stroke, every pulse of pleasure building deep inside me, every ounce of tension tightening in my core— every thought on Jen .

The brief glimpse I saw of her, hidden behind the armchair.

.. the way her lips parted just slightly as she watched me, completely unaware of how badly I wanted to drag my thumb across them, coax them open .

Have them wrapped around my cock. And in that final, shattering moment, when pleasure ripped through me and my body gave in to the release it craved. ..

It wasn’t Mina’s name that left my lips.

It was Jen’s.

The way she looked at me when she realized what I’d done...

Yeah. She was definitely going to kick me out in the morning after she’d had time to stew over it.

And so, I lay in bed, wide awake, my emotions twisting into knots, my gut clenching with anxiety, unable to enjoy what was surely going to be my last night with a roof over my head and a warm bed to sleep in.

Maybe I could plead my case? She still needed help with her manuscript—maybe if I offered to let her out of our bargain, gave her the time to focus solely on her writing, she’d let me stay.

And if I was being completely honest, I was relieved at the thought of dropping my side of the deal. A small part of me— every damn part of me —was grateful for an excuse not to go back into town and attempt to find a date again.

That had been, without a doubt, one of the most painful, excruciatingly awkward experiences of my life. And if it hadn’t been for the fact that Jen was so determined to help me, I never would have gone through with it in the first place.

At some point—I don’t even know when—finding a date had gone from being at the top of my priority list to getting scratched off completely. Because now, the idea of flirting with another woman didn’t feel exciting... It felt wrong .

But the walk home with Jen felt so right.

I’d never been so completely myself with anyone outside of Lochran, Ambrose, Blaise, and Jasper.

With Jen, it had been effortless, so natural that I hadn’t even realized I’d let my guard down until my stomach ached from a mixture of long-overdue laughter and an entirely different kind of pain. A deep, unwavering hunger for her.

Not just to feed from her.

But to feed only from her.

And yet... she certainly didn’t want me in that way.

The moment I’d come to my senses, realizing it was her name I had groaned as I came undone, she had looked at me like a deer caught in headlights.

And while I had sat there—cum-covered, breathless, shame pooling heavy in my stomach, my hand still wrapped around my dick—Jen had jumped up, grabbed her notebooks, and bolted up the stairs just to get away from me.

But she hadn’t said the safe word...

A small spark of hope flickered in my chest. If by some miracle Jen decided not to kick me out in the morning, I was going to have a shit-ton of making up to do. I just needed to ground myself, to shut down every intrusive thought and stop thinking about Jen in a sexual way.

My stomach growled in protest.

I clenched my jaw, trying and failing to steel my mind against the images assaulting me.

Jen, beneath me, her breath ragged, her body arching into mine.

The way her lips looked, so soft, so utterly kissable.

How sweet she’d taste as I’d drag my tongue through her folds, savoring the way her body responded to my touch.

The vision was so vivid that I could almost smell it—the intoxicating scent of amber and jasmine. Another loud, insistent growl rumbled in my stomach as I inhaled deeply—

And froze.

That was actual desire flooding my room.

My eyes flew open, nostrils flaring as I instinctively drew in another breath, letting it curl inside me, heady and addictive, before I realized what I was doing.

Rule number one: keep your senses dampened.

Lost in my own turmoil, I hadn’t even noticed when my control slipped, when the hold on my senses weakened just enough to let her desire flood through me. And now I was overstepping again—crossing yet another one of Jen’s boundaries.

My mind fought back, logic screaming at me as I forced a vise-like grip over my senses, shoving them back into submission. But my body rebelled, desperate to feed from her, to soak in the pleasure that radiated from her room.

A voice in my head murmured temptingly, She mustn’t be too upset if she’s touching herself right now...

I gritted my teeth, smothering the thought before it could take root. Even with my senses now tightly locked down, the phantom trace of her still clung to me, a lingering imprint of amber and jasmine. And no matter how much I willed myself to resist, I didn’t trust myself not to give in.

I needed to get out. Now .

My mind, body, and soul protested as I threw off the sheets, the loss of warmth sending a shiver down my spine.

Every muscle in me screamed to stay, to sink into the temptation of her scent, but I forced myself to tiptoe out of my room.

Jen’s soft moans drifted through the hallway, curling around me, clawing at the fragile vise of my resolve.

I froze, my body betraying me, every cell of my being yearning to just take the few steps to her door. To knock, to whisper her name and beg for her to let me in, to let me be the one to wring those breathless moans from her lips.

I clenched the banister in a white-knuckle grip, my entire body trembling with restraint. With the last shred of willpower I had left, I forced my feet to move. But then I heard it. Soft. Breathless.

“ Devlin .”

I held my breath, and didn’t exhale until I was outside, until I had put enough distance between me and the house that I could no longer see it through the trees. Only then did I suck in a deep breath, the cold night air doing nothing to cool the burning heat coursing through me.

My head spun, my thoughts a relentless loop of Jen’s soft moans, of her body arching, her fingers moving inside herself... all while thinking of me.

My cock throbbed painfully, the need to relieve myself almost overwhelming. I pressed my back against the nearest tree, sucking in deep, ragged breaths, fighting the urge to do the one thing I knew would only make the situation worse.

The sound of bark splintering shattered the quiet, echoing like gunfire through the forest, but I barely noticed. Not until I looked down and saw that my talons had embedded deep into the trunk, the raw force of my restraint splitting the wood apart beneath my grip.

I needed to get it together. I needed to focus on something else.

Anything else.

I strained my ears, focusing on the soothing sound of the night forest. Tree branches groaned in the wind, their skeletal fingers reaching toward the sky.

A cricket chirped rhythmically from somewhere in the underbrush, blissfully unaware of the sharp tic-tic-tic of a bat circling overhead.

The haunting screech of an owl sliced through the air like a blade.

The sound sent a ripple of uneasy silence through the woods, the soft rustling of foraging creatures suddenly ceasing as if they, too, knew something lurked nearby.

A crackling hiss, the distinct shift of foliage shifting as something large moved, echoed through the forest floor.

My ears pricked, every sense snapping to attention. My eyes flew open, narrowing as I scanned the shadows between the trees, searching for the source of the disturbance.

Panic flooded my veins, my every fiber screaming You need to get back to Jen .

I freed my talons, slowly retracting them from the deep gouges they had carved into the tree.

My ears stayed pricked, every muscle coiled, waiting for any sign of the lurking creature in the forest. A thick, unnatural stillness blanketed the air.

I stood poised, scanning the shadows, every nerve tensed as I readied myself to sprint back to the cabin.

Then I saw it.

What I had assumed was a fallen tree jutting from the underbrush wasn’t a tree at all.

It was a body. A massive, scaled form, its length blending seamlessly into the darkened forest floor.

Its scales gleamed, pulled taut over an uneven, bumpy crest that ran along its back, the sides lined with a series of ridges, jagged and precise, tapering down from the raised spine.

The creature let out a low, leathery hiss, its body flinching ever so slightly, a movement so unnervingly slow that it sent a sharp prickle of warning down my spine.

I followed the movement, my gaze catching on the tapered end of its tail, where a fan of lethal spikes and tattered, frilled membranes fanned out like a deadly warning.

Basilisk.

I willed my heart to slow, forcing down the instinctive panic clawing its way through me.

Calm down, Devlin. You already know that Mr. Cadmus is a basilisk.

And you’re right outside his home. He probably just shifted into his basilisk and went for a nighttime slither through his own territory, perfectly within his rights.

He was nice to you the other night. He felt sorry for Jen.

It is highly unlikely he is about to try to kill you.

And even less likely that he poses a threat to Jen.

All you have to do is not react. Don’t startle him.

Don’t give him a reason to attack. And then slowly make your way out of his territory, head back to the cabin, check on Jen, and in the morning, you’ll both be laughing over breakfast about your nighttime adventure. .. if she lets you stay, that is.

I barely had time to register the flash of fangs before I clamped my eyes shut and braced myself for the bite.

But the bite never came.

Eyes still firmly shut, I strained my ears, listening intently to my surroundings. A low, aggravated hiss vibrated through the air, accompanied by the fluttering sound of a sheet caught in the wind.

A moment later, the soft crunch of leaves and the snap of twigs signaled movement—the basilisk was slithering away, its heavy form shifting through the underbrush. Only when I heard the last rustling fade did I finally crack an eye open.

And there, standing between me and where the basilisk had been, was BooDini.

Its blisteringly white form hovered in the moonlight, arms outstretched in warning, shielding me.

BooDini cast a glance over its shoulder, its cutout eyes furrowed in concern, silently checking me over.

Once it determined I was unharmed, it turned and glided toward the underbrush, where the last flicker of the basilisk’s fanned tail was disappearing into the scrub.

With a gentle shooing motion, it waved its little ghostly arms, ushering the creature deeper into the forest before following after it, vanishing into the shadows.

I let out a long, unsteady breath, pushed myself away from the tree, and sprinted back toward the cabin.

Despite my promise not to, the moment the house came into view, I let my senses slip, just enough to catch the soft, dewy scent of chamomile seeping through the walls. The scent of deep, peaceful sleep.

Relief crashed into me, my knees buckling as the weight of my earlier panic finally hit. I reached out, gripping the nearest tree, steadying myself as I exhaled through the lingering tension still thrumming in my chest.

Fuck, Devlin. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.

All I’d done was bump into her neighbor in his shifted form. He probably hadn’t even been trying to attack me if all it took was a damn bedsheet to send him slithering back into the forest.

I forced myself to breathe, to clamp down on my senses once more, locking them away before they could pull me into another spiral of overreaction.

I was about to head inside when a faint sound echoed through the night.

.. the unmistakable rhythm of distant footsteps, fading into the shadows of the forest.

My eyes snapped to the front door, panic rising once more, only to land on a battered police file sprawled across the doormat. Its edges were scuffed, smeared with smudged fingerprints, its pages slightly crumpled, as if someone had tried and failed to shove it through the letterbox.

But my attention locked onto the bold red “CONFIDENTIAL” stamp glaring up at me like a silent accusation.