Page 36
Story: Accidentally Vacationed with an Incubus (Briar Coven #2)
The first rays of dawn slipped through the gap in the curtains, painting soft gold across the room as I replayed last night in my mind for what felt like the thousandth time.
Jen bit me.
And it had taken every ounce of my control not to sink my teeth into her in return, to claim her as she had claimed me.
Because we weren’t mates.
But every fiber of my being desperately wanted us to be.
I had never allowed myself to imagine my fated mate before.
In part, because I knew no fantasy could ever do her justice.
But mostly because I resented her for leaving me behind, for never summoning me, for making me wait in a purgatory of aching loneliness.
I was afraid that if I pictured her, my mind would twist her into something cruel, something unworthy of my longing.
But Jen? Jen was perfect.
... But she wasn’t mine.
My fated mate was a Briar Coven witch. Not some stubborn, reclusive hermit with a vacation home in Headless Hollow.
Except... she’d marked me with a mating bite. And my body had begged me to claim her too.
A treacherous thought crept in. If we claimed each other, would that sever the bond with my true mate?
An all-consuming guilt flooded my veins. What the fuck was I even considering?
Jen shifted against me, her soft snores fading as her lashes fluttered, caught between sleep and wakefulness.
I had never taken a virgin to my bed before.
It was my one unbreakable rule. Not because I believed in the outdated notion of virtue—I mean, I was an incubus, so of course I didn’t—but because a first time should be meaningful.
It should be with someone who made you feel safe. Someone who saw you as special.
Before last night, that wasn’t me.
Every encounter before Jen had been about survival. I was there to feed, to take just enough to keep going, nothing more. But Jen was different. She had trusted me with something precious. And somehow, that trust had mended something deep inside me.
Last night wasn’t just sex for the sake of feeding. Or a bargain struck.
We had made love.
And in a way... I guessed it had been my first time too.
If I had to choose anyone to share that moment with, I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Jen.
As if she sensed my thoughts, her breath hitched and her lashes fluttered open. “Morning,” she murmured through a yawn.
I leaned in, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Morning. How are you feeling?”
She stretched lazily, then rolled onto her side to face me, a slow, satisfied smile tugging at her lips. “Amazing,” she said, eyes still heavy with sleep. I couldn’t help but smile back. “You?”
I traced a slow finger down her arm, searching for the right way to bring it up. Before I could speak, Jen inhaled sharply. Her fingers reached out, brushing over the mark she’d left on my shoulder.
The mating bite.
“Oh! I forgot I bit you last night,” she said, letting out a sheepish giggle. “I’m sorry, Devlin. I don’t know what came over me. Did it hurt?”
Hurt ?
It was a mating bite—a magical claim, a bond forged in the most primal way. The moment her teeth sank into me, I had come undone, spilling inside her with a roar, overcome by a pleasure so intense it had been close to being the death of me.
No, it hadn’t hurt.
It had been perfect.
But... did she not know what a mating bite was?
Of course not, Devlin. She is a witch . Only a handful of magical creatures secured their bonds with a bite—species more primal in nature. Shifters. Demons. Orcs. The kind of creatures bound to instinct.
Witches didn’t bite.
So... why had she?
Something wasn’t adding up.
“It healed really quickly,” Jen murmured, completely unaware of my internal war. Her fingers trailed lower, following the planes of my chest before grazing the thick scar that stretched from my hip, curling down my thigh and around the back of my leg. “How long did it take for this one to heal?”
I barely heard her.
Because all I could think about was why a witch—who clearly had no idea what a mating bite even meant—had given me one.
“A few minutes to close over, but a couple of days to fully heal,” I finally said.
Jen’s brows lifted. “I knew incubus demons healed quickly, but this—” Her fingers traced the scar again. “—looks serious. How did you do it?”
I exhaled, my lips quirking into a wry smile.
“It happened the first day my friends and I were let loose from the Shadow Realm to explore the mortal world on our own. I was about ten years old and, well... I didn’t exactly have a solid grasp on how traffic lights worked. I got run over three times that day.”
Jen’s hand froze against my skin. “Three times?”
I shrugged. “The first two were just cars. I walked away from those without a scratch. But this one...” I ran a slow finger down the back of her hand, guiding it over the length of my scar. “This was courtesy of a truck carrying about fifty tons of logs.”
Jen’s entire body went rigid. The color drained from her face, her breath stalling as her fingers trembled against my skin.
I immediately lifted my hand, cupping her cheek, trying to soothe whatever storm had suddenly overtaken her.
“Don’t worry,” I murmured, brushing my thumb across her skin.
“Incubus demons are practically indestructible. My friend Lochran once got caught in a storm, struck by lightning mid-flight, and plummeted Hades knows how many thousands of feet to the ground. It took him a little longer to heal, but he walked away with nothing but a crooked shadow wing and a scar on his temple.”
Jen didn’t react.
Her breathing was shallow, her wide eyes distant. Her bottom lip quivered, as if she were piecing something together.
“Jen?” I whispered, my voice careful. “Are you okay?”
At last, she looked at me. Her hazel eyes were raw, glassy with something that made my stomach twist.
In a voice barely more than a breath, she asked, “Could a car crash kill an incubus?”
I had just told her I’d been run over by a truck. That my friend had plummeted thousands of feet to the ground after being struck by lightning and walked away from it. Of course a car crash wouldn’t kill an incubus—
The realization struck like a lightning bolt to my chest.
Everything clicked.
Jen’s father wasn’t a warlock like I’d assumed. He was an incubus demon. She was part of the Briar Coven witches.
And she had bitten me because she was my mate.
But I had no time to dwell on the fact that I’d accidentally stumbled across my fated mate, that I had spent the last few days falling hopelessly, irreversibly in love with her.
Because Jen had just realized something else entirely.
She couldn’t have murdered her parents.
I’d already thought it was strange when I assumed both of her parents were witches, why neither of them had been able to summon a single spell to protect themselves during the crash.
But now I knew the truth. Her father had been an incubus.
Which meant he should have walked away from that crash without a scratch.
My throat tightened. Words failed me, and I could only shake my head.
Jen’s eyes were wide, the whites tinged with red as tears welled, threatening to spill. And then, in a voice that shattered me to my very core, my mate whispered, “Can you read the police files?”
***
I returned to her room some minutes later, a cup of chamomile tea in one hand, the police file in the other.
Jen had dressed, her tattered black hoodie swallowing her frame as she sat curled at the foot of the bed, arms wrapped around her knees.
She faced away from the door, as if even glimpsing the files might shatter her completely.
I stepped forward, wordlessly offering her the tea. She took it with trembling fingers, pressing the warm ceramic to her face, inhaling deeply, as if she could will the scent to steady her.
“Maybe I should read these in another room,” I murmured.
Jen didn’t speak. She only nodded as silent tears spilled down her cheeks.
And I wanted nothing more than to toss the damn files aside, pull her into my arms, and promise her that everything would be okay.
But she needed me to do this. So instead, I pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, ignoring every instinct screaming at me to stay, to hold her, shield her, comfort her.
Then I turned and left.
My bedroom was silent, save for the soft squeak of the mattress as I settled onto it. I took a slow, steadying breath. And then, with a sinking feeling in my gut, I opened the folder.
The first two pages contained the autopsy reports—one for a male, the other for a female. Two anatomical figures, each marked with a handful of carefully drawn wounds were accompanied by terse medical descriptions.
Both of Jen’s parents had sustained lacerations to the forehead—her father from impacting the steering wheel, her mother from the dashboard.
Evidence of a crash. A note from the medical examiner stood out, a small annotation in the margins: Minimal blood present at the wounds.
No indication either individual attempted to brace for impact.
The autopsy results revealed internal trauma consistent with a collision, though significantly less than what was expected.
A toxicology report confirmed no drugs, no alcohol, and nothing out of the ordinary.
At the bottom of each form, the mortal medical examiner had been cautious, indicating that the cause of death, the final blow that meant her parents couldn’t have walked away from the crash, was inconclusive.
However, they had seemed certain of one thing and had ruled that the manner of death was homicide.
My eyes drifted reluctantly to the sticky note on the first page, scrawled in almost illegible handwriting—Rowan’s, presumably.
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Jen’s mom didn’t try to cast a spell. Jen’s dad didn’t even start to heal. They didn’t throw their arms up to protect themselves—Dead before the car crashed?
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Table of Contents
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- Page 36 (Reading here)
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