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“Oh, God.”

“The curse was her way of teaching you respect,” Mack said. “At least, that’s how she justified it.”

“By turning me into the town joke?”

“She wanted to break your pride.”

A bitter laugh escaped me. “Congratulations to her. Mission fucking accomplished.”

Mack crouched in front of me. “Logan...”

“Does Carolina know?”

He didn’t answer quickly enough.

“Everyone knows, don’t they?”

“I’m sorry.” The look on his face nearly crushed me.

You really don’t know, Carolina had said. Her words rang in my mind. Everything suddenly began to make sense.

She hadn’t been talking about some vague secret. She’d known exactly what her mother had done to me.

The whole town had known.

For a year, they’d watched me stumble through one disaster after another while I blamed myself.

“Logan.” Mack put a hand on my shoulder. “You need to let Carolina go. Jacqueline would destroy you if she found out you were pursuing her daughter. Completely. There wouldn’t be enough left to bury.”

“She already destroyed me once.”

“And now you’re planning to give her a second shot?”

I looked at him, and I knew he was right.

The sensible thing would be to walk away. Forget Carolina. Accept the curse and whatever remained of my empty life.

But I remembered Carolina’s fingers hovering near my cheek. The way she’d looked at me as if I were worth something. The impossible thud inside my chest when she came close.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Logan...”

“I can’t let her go.” I pushed myself to my feet, using the wall for support because I’d learned at least one fucking thing in the past year. “I know it’s dangerous, but when I was with her…” I pressed my hand to my chest. “I felt alive. More alive than I have since I was turned.”

Mack stared at me.

Then he sighed. “The mate bond.”

“What?”

“That’s what you’re feeling. Carolina is your mate.”

I waited for the punchline.

None came.

“Witches and vampires can be fated mates?”