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“It’s done,” I whispered, leaning against the doorframe of my bedroom. I looked at my friends. Aggy and Lola were exhausted. Mia had soot on her palms from the fire escape, and Kingy had a cobweb stuck to his ear, but they were all wearing the same grim look of satisfaction.

The sun had been down for hours when I finally left my friends downstairs and collapsed into my bed, Violet curled into the crook of my knees, her ears twitching in the dark.

Thud.

A heavy, deliberate footfall on the roof tiles directly above my head. Then another. A metallic scrape followed the sound of a crowbar trying to pry at the skylight frame.

I didn't panic. I didn't hide under the covers. I sat up, watching the glass above me, a slow, predatory smile spreading across my face.

“Go ahead,” I whispered to the dark. “Touch it.”

A muffled shout erupted from the roof, followed by a blinding flash of blue light that turned the room midday-bright for a fraction of a second. It wasn't a fire. It was a massive, magical surge. I heard the distinct, sizzling crack of the ward's fence connecting with physical flesh.

The weight on the roof vanished instantly as the intruder was bucked backward. A second later, a heavy crunch echoed from the alleyway three stories below. The unmistakable sound of someone hitting a dumpster at high speed, followed by the frantic, panicked scrambling of boots on pavement as they fled.

My mobile phone buzzed on the nightstand with a text from Mia, who clearly hadn't gone home yet.

MIA: 10,000 volts of 'Stay-The-Hell-Away' confirmed. One enforcer down, one running for his life. 10/10. Sleep tight, boss.

I lay back down, the hum of the shop’s new defences vibrating through the pillow like a satisfied purr. So, the Council wanted to see what I was hiding? They’d just had their first taste of the fight I was willing to have.

The Cold Suite

Lucien

The sun didn't rise for me; it simply reported for duty.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse, buttoning a charcoal-grey shirt with clinical, practised precision. Usually, my mind was an impeccable tactical grid, a calculated blueprint of High Circle politics, multi-million-dollar land acquisitions, and keeping Ebonvale’s more volatile power players under my thumb.

Today, the grid was a total wreck.

Every time I closed my eyes, the numbers and sigils vanished, replaced by a flash of silk and a chaotic storm of red, wild curls. I saw the way Ivy had looked at me over the candle’s glow. She hadn't cowered. She hadn't bowed. She’d met my gaze with a sharp, inquisitive fire that made my pulse thrum with a sudden, electric spark I hadn't felt in decades.

My phone buzzed on the marble island, a sharp intrusion in the quiet suite. I didn't need to look at the screen to know it was a security readout from my team flagging energy spikes near Moonveil Books and Craft. I ignored it. I didn't need a digital monitor to tell me what my own skin already knew.

My predatory senses had turned against me, every nerve ending painfully tuned to a frequency only she emitted. I could still taste the sharp, metallic tang of her wild magic lingering on the back of my tongue. I could still smell her—a crisp, mountain-air scent that cut through the stale city smog and settled deep in my lungs. Even the fine hairs on my arms stood on end, reacting to the phantom static she’d left behind in my space. To my human security team, she was just an anomaly on a thermal map. To the puma inside me, she was a quiet catastrophe that had permanently branded my shadow.

The rest of my day at the office was a blur of high-stakes boredom. I sat through a gruelling three-hour briefing with the High Circle, nodding in all the right places and playing the stoic financier they expected. But under the glass conference table, my thumb was absent-mindedly tracing the rim of my crystal glass, mimicking the exact line of Ivy’s jaw from the night before. I was a hundred years old, a creature of patience and absolute control, yet I was sitting in a boardroom daydreaming like a novice.

By the time I returned to the penthouse that evening, the space felt suffocatingly hollow. The silence was too loud, the sleek modern lines too cold. I poured two fingers of neat bourbon and sat in the dark, staring out at Ebonvale's sprawling skyline. Somewhere out there, in a warm, cluttered shop that smelled of old paper and sun-drenched yarn, was a woman who had managed to do what no High Witch or Circle lord ever could: make me yearn.

I wanted to throw my coat back on. I wanted to walk right back into that colourful sanctuary, if only to see if those green eyes would light up with the same dangerous curiosity as when I walked through the door.

I picked up my phone, my fingers hovering, tempted to break my own rules and call her. I forced myself to set it back down.

I wasn't a man who rushed. I was a predator who stalked his prey with infinite patience. But more than that, I was a man who eventually got exactly what he wanted—and I wanted Ivy Thornton.

The Day After the Siege

Ivy

Iwoke up the next morning feeling like I’d been hit by a freight train made of static. Every muscle ached from the hours of incanting and climbing the fire escape, but as the sunlight hit my duvet, a slow sense of triumph washed over me. We had made our message loud and clear. We had survived, and we had bitten back.

I checked my phone. No more messages from Mia, but the ward was still purring, a low, rhythmic vibration beneath my feet that told me the perimeter was secure. I thanked the gods it had been a Sunday yesterday, the only day of the week my shop was closed. It allowed us to turn the place into a tactical disaster zone without any humans wandering in to ask for the latest bestseller.

“Alright, Violet. I heard you,” I groaned as the calico began a persistent rhythmic thumping against my bedroom door.

The cleaning frenzy lasted two hours, including a frantic scrubbing effort to make our makeshift war room look like a bookstore again. Kingy’s ancient tomes were hauled back to the office and placed in the hidden safe. Empty lemon tart boxes hit the trash, and the shelves of yarn, which were shuffled during our perimeter checks, were smoothed back into a spectrum of soft wools. By the time the clock struck ten, the scent of lavender and cedar had finally won the war against the metallic tang.