Page 78 of The Oath We Give

“I love the smell of breaking and entering.” Rook howls as he slings an arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder.

Getting used to seeing Sage Donahue was one of my hardest challenges after I got out of the ward. She’s the twin of my dead ex-girlfriend. For the longest time, all I ever saw when I looked at her was Rosemary, but time had been a secret blessing.

I no longer flinch when she comes around or avoid looking at her. All of their differences in appearance started to become more clear. She’s snarky and sometimes overdramatic, while Rose was more relaxed. Their hair is separate shades of red, eyes different colors, noses various shapes. She slowly became just Sage, no longer a mirror image of the love I’d lost.

It brought me peace that a part of Rose, no matter how small, got to live on in her happiness. I know it would make her sister happy to see her becoming the person she’d always thought her twin could be.

“It’s not breaking and entering if you have keys.” Alistair shakes the keys in his hand with a smirk before shoving them into his pocket.

“Is that my shirt?” Briar says, tilting her head to look at Sage’s outfit.

“You literally have on my jeans.”

I shake my head in amusement and let out a little puff of air from my lips as I look back over to Coraline, slowly making her way across the lot toward our group. The girls rush to her side, smiling while Coraline looks terrified from the attention. Nervous even, as if she’s not already one of them.

She’d been accepted the moment she punched a grown man in the face for Sage.

I watch them interact, drowning out the sound of the guys, her shoulders starting to relax, a smile tugging at her lips before her laugh echoes to my ears.

Coraline could be happy if she believed long enough she deserved it.

When they start to walk a little closer, her eyes flicking to mine, I let her watch me drink her in.

Her sun-kissed limbs are displayed in her barely there black shorts. A tight matching black Thrasher crop top stretches across her tits, putting a graphic image of my dick wedged between them in my mind. My cock stirs behind my jeans at the thought.

This town tells me I’m dead. For a while, a part of me was.

Coraline Whittaker has woken something up in me.

Desire, longing, need.

An ache I’ve never felt for anyone before. I don’t need her to love me. It isn’t about love.

I need her to be mine.

“Rook has the same shirt,” Thatcher says when she gets close enough to hear him over the howling wind, leaning on the car next to me, Lyra falling into his chest as he wraps his around her front.

“Must have good taste, then,” she snips, adjusting the leather jacket on her shoulders.

“Debatable,” he mumbles before pressing his nose to the side of Lyra’s head, burying his nose into her loose curls like a psycho. I joke that he’d live inside of her body if he could.

Which turned into a long-winded debate about a vore kink.

“Now that everyone is here, let’s go over the rules.” Lyra rubs her hands together. “We get thirty minutes to hide. When the time is up, we each send a text message to our seeker with one clue. If you can’t find the person hiding, you’re allowed to call them for some direction. But they can only say hot or cold.”

“Who’s looking for who?” Coraline asks, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking around at the group for someone to give her an answer.

When her gaze stops on me, the realization dawns on her.

“It’s a couple thing, got it. Stupid question,” she says as she nods. “So you’ll be—”

“Hunting down my fiancée.” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, preventing a smirk.

Lightning cracks across the sky, breaking across the horizon like a jigsaw puzzle, accompanied by roaring thunder, warnings for the storm rolling closer.

“You guys have thirty minutes to find us,” Briar says, continuing the rules, “and you can’t help each other. You gotta hunt all alone, boys.”

Coraline raises an eyebrow. “What do the winners get?”