Confusion crashed over me as Lobato issued a low, warning, predatory hiss. Instinctively, I moved my body to cover as much of my unconscious mate as I could.

“Mr. Cadmus?” I asked, disbelief thick in my voice.

The hooded figure took another step forward, the underbrush crunching beneath his bare feet. Then, slowly, he reached up and lowered his hood.

The old man stood before me, his weathered face illuminated by the flickering glow from the fire.

But there was no malice in his expression—only sorrow.

A deep, aching sadness settled into the lines of his face, the corners of his mouth dipping as though the weight of what he had done had long since crushed him.

“Please believe me, Jennifer,” he murmured, voice heavy with resignation. “It gives me no pleasure to have to do this. It would have been so much more peaceful if you had just eaten the pie. ”

Ice slid through my veins.

“What is going on?” My voice wavered, the question falling from my lips before I could process it.

Mr. Cadmus sighed, his expression softening into something almost paternal. “It was an accident...” he murmured. “My wife... she was confused. And it was an accident...”

Accident ...

Ms. Cadmus had mentioned that word before, over and over again, speaking about an accident in fragmented murmurs.

But Mr. Cadmus had always brushed it off—made it seem like a moment of frailty, an embarrassing lapse of her control.

Had he twisted the narrative, implying she’d soiled herself in front of my parents, something humiliating but harmless?

But what if that wasn’t what happened at all?

What if, in her confusion, she had shifted ?

What if her basilisk stare had fallen upon my parents and killed them?

“Ms. Cadmus... she killed my parents?” My voice was barely audible, each word fragile, trembling on the brink of shattering.

“You have to believe me, Jennifer,” he said, his voice cracking. “She didn’t mean to. She was distraught when I found her.” His throat bobbed, his hands clenching into tight fists before releasing. “And I couldn’t let them take her from me.”

The world around me blurred, the edges of my vision darkening.

“I... I had to do something,” he continued, his voice pleading, desperate for me to understand. “They were already dead, Jennifer. They weren’t coming back. And it was an accident .”

I felt like I was suffocating.

“So you... what?” My voice was hollow. “Framed me for my parents’ murders ?”

Mr. Cadmus flinched but didn’t look away. “I panicked. I found an old box of candy and injected some of my venom into them. Just enough to influence you. Not to kill you.”

The breath stilled in my chest.

“The phone call...” My voice was a whisper of realization. “You didn’t call to tell me they’d be late, did you?”

Mr. Cadmus’s lips parted, but he didn’t answer.

I already knew the truth.

“It was instructions,” I choked out. “You told me to cut their brakes.”

“It was the only thing I could think of,” he said, his voice wavering. “I needed you to confess. To make sure no one looked too closely for what really happened. I pushed the car to my house, put your parents’ bodies inside, and wedged a brick against the gas pedal.”

A cold horror spread through me, deep and unshakable.

“You called the mortal police?” Lobato’s voice cut through the silence, sharp and laced with fury. “You’re the reason they got past the banishing spell?”

Mr. Cadmus exhaled, nodding. “I needed her far away,” he admitted. “The mortal police wouldn’t be able to piece together the venom... or the basilisk’s stare.” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “And my wife would be safe. She could stay with me.”

I clenched my fists, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “Why are you telling me this now? Why try to poison me again? ”

Mr. Cadmus’s expression darkened, the sorrow twisting into something resolute. “Jennifer,” he said, “I’ll always be eternally grateful that you gave my wife comfort in her final moments. But I can’t have you besmirching her memory.”

It felt like the ground had been ripped out from under me. A storm of emotions churned in my chest—shock, grief, betrayal—each one slamming into me like a tidal wave, threatening to pull me under.

Ms. Cadmus had played a part, yes, but hers had been a tragic accident. She hadn’t been in her right mind. I could forgive her for that.

But Mr. Cadmus? He had known. He had covered it up.

He held me in thrall with his venom, twisted my reality until I believed I was the one who had murdered my own parents. And the worst of it—he had used me. My hands. My body. He had made me cut the brakes.

A scream built in my throat, but it turned to ice as the full weight of his crimes settled over me.

He had stolen nine years of my life. Nine years of thinking I’d done the worst to my parents. Nine years where my grief had been warped. Nine years of Devlin thinking I’d rejected him.

And now, here he was again, willing to kill me, kill my mate. And for what? Just to bury the truth?

My fingers twitched at my sides, aching with the phantom burn of the magic I no longer had. If I had it now, I would have killed him where he stood.

Because forgiveness was a gift I would never grant Mr. Cadmus. Not for this. Not for any of it.

A low groan sounded behind me, and my heart leapt.

My mate.

He was stirring. Relief poured through me, but it was short-lived.

Mr. Cadmus’s eyes flickered toward Devlin, widening in alarm.

The time for talk was over. Mr. Cadmus might have been old, but a basilisk—even an aging one—was still a predator.

Against a witch with no magic? A guaranteed victory.

Against Lobato—whatever kind of reptilian shifter she was—he might have stood a chance too.

But an incubus demon?

If Devlin regained enough strength to summon his shadows, it might just give us the edge.

No light. No basilisk stare. And without his gaze, Mr. Cadmus would have to take all three of us out with nothing but his bite. And he’d realized it too. I saw it in his stance—the sudden coiling of his muscles, the sharp shift of his weight.

BooDini raised its arms higher as if it could physically shield us. But a bedsheet would be no match for a basilisk.

Mr. Cadmus’s cloak crumpled to the ground, the fabric pooling at his feet like discarded skin. I barely had time to register the ripple of movement beneath his flesh before something deadly emerged.

I snapped my gaze downward, yanking myself out of the basilisk’s eyeline just in time to catch sight of its tail.

A barbed, fanned appendage, ridged with thick, overlapping scales that gleamed under the moonlight like polished obsidian.

It flexed once, muscles coiling beneath its armored scales.

It slithered toward us, the thick scaled body slicing a path in the ground with a leathery hiss.

I braced myself for the bite. Eyes clenched shut, every muscle in my body locked tight, I pressed against Devlin in a desperate, futile attempt to shield him, to protect him, when I knew I couldn’t even protect myself.

But the bite never came.

A heartbeat passed.

Then another.

I cracked an eye open, not sure what I would find. I blinked confusedly as my vision was swallowed by gold. My brain scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing as the sound of a knife scraping through leather echoed around me.

A single, wickedly long fang punched through the golden shield, its curved tip glistening with venom. Thick, viscous drops spilled to the earth, sinking into the foliage.

I tilted my head upward, my mind scrambling to make sense of what I was seeing—of what had just saved me.

My eyes traced the vast expanse, following the powerful curve of a bony ridge until it connected with something even more impossible. A colossal, scaled body.

A dragon.

Lobato was a motherfucking dragon .

Her golden eyes locked onto mine, fierce and agonized. Her pupils dilated, then contracted into razor-thin slits as the basilisk venom seeped through her veins, dark tendrils creeping beneath her shimmering hide.

With the last of her strength, she moved.

Her great head dipped behind her wing, her body shifting, muscles rippling beneath her golden scales.

The air filled with the grotesque tear of flesh being ripped apart, the sickening snap of bones crunching.

The basilisk fang—lodged deep in her wing— vanished in an instant.

A choked, inhuman shriek tore through the air as Mr. Cadmus’s tail lashed wildly, writhing in agony.

With a single, earth-shaking heave, she hurled him skyward. The basilisk’s blood-streaked body twisted mid-air, its fanned tail thrashing.

The night erupted into fire. A blazing red fireball engulfed the basilisk, consuming him whole. And when the flames finally died, only ash remained, drifting in soft, weightless flakes to the ground.

Lobato let out a single, shuddering breath, her eyes flickering toward mine for the briefest moment before they rolled back into her head. A tremor ran through her massive frame. Her outstretched wing quivered, struggling to hold its weight. Then it gave out.

With a deep, resounding thud , her colossal body collapsed, shaking the earth beneath us as she crashed to the ground.

***

A low, impressed whistle cut through the night air as the ogre sheriff surveyed the absolute mess before him. His massive, mottled green hand ran along the brim of his sheriff’s hat before he squinted down at his notepad.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said slowly, tapping his pen against the page.

“Almost a decade ago, his wife”—he jabbed the pen at the pile of ash that used to be Mr. Cadmus—“accidentally shifted into her basilisk form while your parents were there, and they died from her stare. Then he”—another jab at the dearly incinerated—“decided to frame you for their deaths by spiking candy with his venom because he could exploit your, quote, unquote, ‘addiction to candy.’”

My eye twitched, and I only just swallowed the urge to say “I do not have an addiction to candy. It’s a healthy appreciation.” I managed a nod instead.

“So, then he called you—now under the thrall of his venom—and gave you instructions to cut the brakes so your memory would implicate you. Then he took the car, staged the crash, and called the mortal police instead of us because we would have immediately realized it was supernatural-related.”

“Yup,” I said.

He sighed, flipping a page. “And you were taken into mortal custody, where you confessed and then spent nine years in a human prison.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where the warden of the prison just so happened to be a dragon—” He waved his pen vaguely toward the cluster of healers surrounding Lobato.

Lobato, despite being barely conscious, managed to lift a weak hand and wave.

One of the healers grabbed her wrist and forcibly put it back down.

The ogre continued, “—who then made you part of her hoard, which she conveniently keeps stashed beneath the prison—”

Lobato groaned loudly at the location of her precious hoard being announced so casually.

The sheriff ignored her. “—which resulted in your magic being suppressed for almost a decade.”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

He turned the page again. “Then, once you were finally released, you came back to your”—he checked his notes—“sentient magic house, which is haunted by a living bedsheet named BooDini—” BooDini, who was hovering close to Lobato, overseeing the healers, issued the sheriff a little wave.

“—who had hidden the functional CCTV footage that could have proven your innocence all this time, because it was sulking for being chastised.”

BooDini casually floated behind the cluster of healers and out of sight.

“So then,” he said, “you come home and find an incubus demon living in your house—”

“Vacationing,” Devlin corrected from where he lay slumped on the couch, having refused to leave my side.

The sheriff gave him a dry look. “Right. Vacationing in your family home. Who just so happens to be your fated mate—who you couldn’t summon because of your prison-slash-dragon-hoard situation.”

“Uh-huh.”

The sheriff blew out a long breath and tapped his pen against his chin. “And then your stalker—”

“Only in the technical sense of the word,” I interjected.

“—dropped off the mortal police files, which poked holes in the evidence. And Mr. Cadmus”—another jab at the ash pile—“found out, panicked, and decided to spike a pie with his venom to knock you out, presumably to murder you and your mate before you could besmirch his wife’s memory.”

“Yeah.”

The sheriff flipped to his final page and skimmed it before shaking his head. “But he didn’t count on the fact that when he showed up to enact his double homicide, the dragon prison warden would be paying you a visit.”

“Exactly,” I said.

The sheriff glanced between me, Devlin, Lobato, BooDini, and the remnants of Mr. Cadmus, his brows furrowing like his entire career had just peaked in this one absurd moment.

Finally, he let out a low exhale, stuffed his pen behind his ear, and muttered, “Yeah. That all makes sense.”

I blinked. “... Wait, really ?”

He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. But,” he said, leveling me with a serious look, “we will need to run some tests on that pie, and we’ll wait for Warden Lobato to regain her strength to corroborate your story.”

Lobato managed a weak, “Sabbatical.”

Which earned her a tight-lipped, “You are going nowhere until you’re fully healed,” from one of the healers.

He flipped his notebook shut. “You’re part of the Briar Coven, yeah? And your head witch is a Ms. Lily Cole?”

I nodded.

“We’ll be contacting her with our findings. She’ll decide if there’s gonna be a trial. Until then, I suggest you don’t leave town while we process all this.”

I nodded again.

The ogre tipped his hat. “Alright, Ms. Myers. That’s all we need for now. I’ll be in touch if we have further questions.”

With that, he turned back to his deputy—who was currently shoveling Mr. Cadmus into an evidence bag.

I took a seat beside Devlin, who placed his hand weakly on my lap. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

Devlin’s head lolled toward me, his eyes heavy-lidded. “Like my entire body is made out of limp spaghetti,” he said, lips twitching into a slow grin.

I snorted, smacking his arm lightly. “You should go with Lobato and the healers.”

Devlin let out a weak laugh, his arm trembling as he lifted it to rest over my shoulders. “A blaze of wild dragons couldn’t take me from you, mate.”