Page 28 of How Not to Charm Your Human Colleague (Falling for Demons #2)

TIM!

Kizros

K izros threw the door open, a few demons startling but otherwise paying him no mind. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the aisle of desks that someone called out.

“Kizros?”

He recognized his little sister Hyxe’s voice, but he didn’t slow.

“Wait, you can’t?—”

Kizros shoved open his father’s door, letting it slam against the wall as he stormed to the desk. “You want that chance to repair our relationship?”

Karroth’s eyes widened before he hastily gestured for Hyxe to close the door. “What is the meaning of this, Kizros?”

“Who’s responsible?” Kizros demanded, slapping the papers down on his father’s desk.

The demon frowned, taking up the papers with a cautious hand. He made a dramatic show of smoothing out the wrinkles in the parchment, but as he started reading, his face contorted in disgust. Then horror as he looked up to Kizros. “I would never?—”

“I know, but I’m worried about Aofe’s safety. Find out who agreed to sign off on this, fix the flaw that takes humans out of the reassignment process, and I’ll consider it an apology you’ve yet to attempt after family dinner.”

Karroth set the papers down and leaned back in his seat. “Rosalind warned Argeth about this clause. That’s why they vetted the sponsors so thoroughly.” He let out a sigh, twisting his lips to the side. “I will look into it. Immediately.”

While Kizros wasn’t surprised his father had agreed, the speed in which he’d accepted felt like a shock. “Thank you.”

Kizros turned to leave.

“Wait.” When he looked back, his father had leaned forward in his seat. “Accessibility for the humans will take time, but I have started the process.”

“I know.”

“To prove I meant it, I gave you access to your inheritance fund.” Karroth’s brow furrowed. “Which you immediately drained.”

Kizros’s tail flicked behind him. “I didn’t need the money.” And as much as he wanted to leave, this was possibly the most civil conversation he’d had with his father in years. “ You could have made a show of that money. Put your name everywhere and used it in your favor. But you didn’t.”

A small smile ticked one side of Karroth’s lips. “I know.”

“You know what I did then?”

“Oh, yes,” his father said with a huff of a laugh. “And I look forward to seeing what the both of you create. I hope you’ll let your mother and me visit before… well, I’d like to see what you’ve built with those years of dedication while I was… a fool.”

Kizros stood there, unsure what to do with the immense relief and shock coursing through his system. It wasn’t enough to repair everything that had created the distance between them, but it was something. A start.

A spoken thank you still felt like too much, though, so he dipped his chin.

Karroth’s posture relaxed, and he opened his mouth as if to say something more.

Instead, a boom in the distance shook the building.

Kizros braced his feet as his father steadied himself on the desk. A few confused shouts came from outside the door, but other than the slight rumble, nothing followed.

Karroth jumped from his seat, hurrying to the window. “I don’t see anything. Something must have slipped out of the Dreadmoor.”

Fear gripped Kizros by the throat. “Aofe.”

“Son, she’ll be fine. The guard have protocols for this?—”

He was already running, slowing only to throw open the door.

The office outside was returning to calm, because, as his father had said, there were protocols for dealing with a rogue beast making its way into the Veilwood bordering Heck.

While it wasn’t an everyday occurrence, it happened enough that half the city rarely heard or felt when such a thing happened.

But Aofe didn’t know that.

Kizros was two steps out of his father’s office when a voice stopped him.

“Kizros! Wait!” He turned to find Rosalind chasing after him, waving an envelope in her hand. “Someone mentioned you were here, and I wanted to stop you before you left.”

Fuck, the surprise. The second half of the reason he’d come here today.

She caught up to him, blowing out a breath. “Damn demons and your long legs.” Rosalind shoved the envelope at him. “Everything’s inside. Paperwork went through.”

Kizros huffed a relieved laugh. “Thank you, Rosalind.” He accepted the papers, tucking them into his shirt pocket as he started to retreat. “I’m so sorry, I’d love to stay and talk?—”

She waved him off. “Go. Make sure she’s okay.”

“Thank you.”

“Just invite us over when you get it set up!” she called after him. “You know our deal, but I get first dibs!”

Oh, he would be doing a lot of things for Rosalind in the coming weeks, months, years; all of it would be worth what he’d gone through to get the envelope tucked into his pocket.

Once he was on the street, Kizros sprinted. While the noise had died down—the guard presumably handling the situation—his fear did not.

Aofe would be in the shop, all alone, thinking the worst about that noise.

Maybe even thinking the worst had happened to him.

He imagined a few vials would be broken, if they’d been on the edges of their shelves, and there were probably a few plants that would have retreated or gone into their protective states.

Blazes, what if she’d been handling one when the shaking had happened?

And now he was terrified she was bleeding out in the shop with a terrified plant’s spike through her chest, Attie whimpering next to her.

When Perennial Bloom came into focus, Kizros nearly crashed through the door.

“Aofe? Aofe!” he shouted, then stuttered to a stop in the dark interior.

Dozens of vials had been shattered. One bookcase was tipped into another that was barely holding upright. Soil and glass littered the floor at his feet, and the ceramic was…

Tim .

And next to his shattered pot, was one of Aofe’s crutches.

“Aofe!” Kizros screamed, gaze darting through the mess to see if she had been caught under the bookcase.

Until there was a muffled, “Over here.”

The moment he heard Aofe’s voice, he was running again, slipping as he scrambled behind the desk to find a ball of silver fur tucked into the gap underneath.

“Attie, Attie,” Kizros urged, fingers digging for anything solid to help the atteapir get unstuck. Finally, he managed to pull a leg free, and then blue hair spilled out.

Aofe sucked in a wild breath from where she’d been smooshed into the tight space. “Farting fudge, fresh air.” She smiled weakly up at him. “Attie needs a bath.”

Kizros continued to help Attie free from the confines, and then he was dragging Aofe out as gently as he could.

His hug, however, was not as gentle. His arms nearly wrapped around her twice, his tail filling in where he couldn’t hold her, and he buried his face in her neck to ground himself with her scent of sweet sunshine.

“Oof,” Aofe grunted, her arms wiggling from where he’d trapped her. “Kiz, we gotta check Attie. She got scared with that noise, and I thought it was a quake so I figured this was safe, but she got wedged.”

He nodded, reluctant to let go, but the moment he did, Attie was nuzzling between them, her whimpers traded for what sounded like relieved coos.

Not a scratch or injury on her, only a little bit of dirt in her fur.

Kizros gave her a rub behind the ears as she nestled her head on their laps, but the moment he looked up, he sent her flying off.

“Aofe!”

His hands shot out, gripping Aofe’s tear- and soil-stained cheeks.

He pulled her face closer, noting the redness under her eyes and the scrape below her chin.

Her freckles seemed unharmed, at least, but her sweater was ripped at the shoulder, red blood staining the fabric, and around her neck was a blooming bruise.

“What in the blazes?—”

“There was an incident, but I’m okay,” she said, grabbing his cheeks in turn. She squeezed, sending his glasses askew. “Kiz, baby, I’m running on so much adrenaline right now. I need you to listen before I start freaking out.”

That was going to be very hard when he wanted to eviscerate whoever had hurt his beautiful human, so he clenched his jaw hard enough he might crack a fang.

“Tholvich attacked me when you left, trying to get back at you because he’s jealous, but he failed, okay?

” Aofe squeezed harder, like she knew his anger was starting to take over his rational thought process.

“He chased me through the shop, breaking things to make it look like it was unsafe to work with you, but it’s okay now. ”

“ Okay ?” Kizros blurted, fangs elongating as he snarled. “He attacked you, hurt you. How is that?—”

“ Kizros ,” Aofe urged, shaking him gently. “I mean, it’s okay.”

Only then did he notice her eyes darting up to the ceiling. “What are you looking at? Why are you— Tim ?”

He’d barely noticed the darkness in the shop, too worried about finding Aofe, but now he could see the real cause of the darker-than-average interior.

Tim’s dark purple vines pulsed across the ceiling, woven so intricately the glow of Kizros’s magic lighting the shop couldn’t escape. Leaves fluttered in a nonexistent breeze, nearly three times the size they were supposed to be.

And trapped within them, completely helpless, was Tholvich. His eyes were wide, a thin gash across his forehead and two snapped horns, while his arms were splayed out in opposite directions, legs and tail bound tight. For good measure, a vine had wrapped around his mouth, keeping him quiet.

Kizros’s gaze dropped back to Aofe who was still clutching his cheeks. “But Tim’s pot?—”

Her grin against his palms was wide. “I did a rune.”

“You did a—” Kizros spluttered, then nearly squealed his excitement. “A rune? You did a rune? That one? You made Tim into an actual guard plant?”

“Yes, yes,” Aofe was laughing after each of his questions. “In his soil. I was so scared, Kiz, but I just kept thinking about how much I didn’t want to be taken from you, how much I loved this place, and the rune worked. Tim was so amazing, pulling Tholvich away from me and?—”