Page 105 of House Ignis

I turned slightly, caught in the crossfire.

Asher was leaning casually against the table, drink in hand, watching us with the detached interest of a predator. He didn't look angry; he looked bored, smirking like the smug bastard he was, his silver eyes tracking the way Jeremy's hand gripped my waist.

I scowled at him, but the bond only hummed with a wicked, electric amusement.

"Asher," Jeremy said flatly, his voice dropping into a dangerous register.

Asher raised his glass in a silent, mocking acknowledgement. "Jeremy."

That was it. No shouting, no blows—just a tension that crackled between them like wildfire through my blood. Jeremy didn't rise to the bait. Instead, he turned back to me, leaning in until his lips were brushing the shell of my ear.

"Dance with me?"

My breath caught. I looked up into those emerald depths, my heart thudding wildly against my ribs. "Of course, my prince."

He smiled, and that smile was nothing but trouble.

As he led me away from the group and toward the heart of the dance floor, I glanced back—just once.

Asher stood exactly where I had left him, unmoving. The shadows at his feet weren't just curling anymore; they were lashing out in low, jagged spikes, licking at the marble like they ached to follow. Through the bond, I felt it—a thick, suffocating tension that tasted like ozone and bruised silver. It was jealousy, raw and serrated, but beneath that was something far more dangerous. Something that felt like a predator watching its prize walk into another's territory.

Good, I thought, straightening my spine as Jeremy's hand slid lower, pulling me flush against his heat.

Let him feel every jagged edge of it. Let him know that while he might be stitched into my soul, I am the one holding the needle.

I do own him.

•••

The drinks flowed, and so did Jeremy's hands.

Gods, the male could dance. He was never one to let loose in public—usually the composed, restrained future prince with a glass smile. But tonight? This wasn't a royal ball. This was his territory, his house, and his world. Here, he was real. The way he smiled at me was slow, crooked, and heavy with mischief. He kissed me as if he had been waiting years for the privilege, claiming me with bold hands and lips that trailed a path of fire down my neck.

It made me fall in love with him all over again. That spark I'd buried—the one that had died with Jax—was suddenly back, roaring to life. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was just Jeremy. Him. Here. Us.

Shot after shot blurred the world into a beautiful haze. Our group had spilled onto the dance floor in a tangle of limbs and laughter. Maddy and Ryven were lost in each other, while Ezra and Ember had taken on Darcy and Asher in a game of beer pong that involved a lot of shrieking protests and smug, shadowy cheating.

Sera and Mavrik were deep in conversation, her laugh bright and frequent. And me? I was lost in Jeremy.

He was behind me now, his hands a firm, bruising weight on my hips as his body moved in perfect rhythm with mine. My fingers tangled in the thick silk of his hair, my head falling back as his lips dragged hot, humid breath across my throat. It was intoxicating. His scent—moss and wild, deep roots—clouded every breath I took. My body hummed, molten and electric, until I felt seconds away from total combustion.

I closed my eyes, swaying with him in the dim, pulsing faelight. And then, I opened them.

The table was different now. Ezra and Ember were gone. Darcy was already chatting up someone new, and Maddy was nowhere in sight. But he was still there.

Asher.

He was sitting alone at the table, a drink held loosely in his hand. He wasn't playing anymore. He was just watching me. He sat with the terrifying patience of a predator waiting for the exact moment his prey exhausted itself.

Our eyes locked across the crowded floor. My stomach dipped, a sickening, thrilling freefall. He didn't move. He didn't blink. He just stared, his silver gaze cutting through the strobe of the lanterns like a blade.

I didn't look away. Instead, I smirked. It was a dangerous, provocative expression. I ground my hips harder into Jeremy's, moving with a deliberate, slow friction as if to prove a point. As if I wasn't unraveling. As if my traitorous heart wasn't pounding double-time under the sheer weight of that silver stare.

Jeremy's hands skimmed higher along my thighs, his touch possessive and warm, and I let my head rest on his shoulder with my lips parted in a silent dare.

The bond didn't just stir—it lunged. A jagged, territorial snarl in the back of my mind, a cold shadow wrapping around my heart even as Jeremy's heat tried to burn it away. Asher's grip tightened on his glass until his knuckles turned white, and I knew—right then—that the boundaries I'd set were the only things keeping him from tearing the dance floor apart.

Today I was learning something new about the bond, that you could shield your emotions from it, just like a mate-bond. Asher was a master at it—a fortress of ice and shadow, his feelings kept buried so deep I could never reach them. He had walls that felt infinite.