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I could have fought. Maybe I even wanted to. But Logan was inside, close enough to become collateral damage, and Jacqueline never hesitated to punish the nearest available target.

So I let her win.

For the moment.

I walked away with my mother at my side and Delia trailing behind us. The bond stretched tighter with every step, an ache threaded through my ribs.

At the corner, I looked back.

Logan stood in the bar’s doorway, one hand braced against the frame. He looked confused, lonely, and stubborn enough to follow.

I gave the smallest shake of my head.

Don’t.

He understood. His jaw tightened, but he stayed where he was.

My mother smiled beside me, convinced she’d won something.

She hadn’t.

She had only given me my first reason to stop being afraid of disappointing her.

Chapter Three

Halfway home, I saw a flash of red hair disappear into the alley behind Paws, Claws & Fangs. Carolina had come back alone, without her mother or the cousin who had escorted her away. The alley smelled like stale beer and old magic, and I was trying very hard not to think about what I was doing there.

I leaned against the damp brick, my breath coming too fast for someone who technically didn’t need to breathe, my fingers digging into the crumbling mortar until the edges bit into my skin. The pain helped. It grounded me, reminded me that I was still here, still real, still capable of feeling something other than the constant humiliation that had become my default state.

I didn’t know why I’d followed her out here.

I mean, I knew. Obviously, I knew. I’d watched her walk past my stool with that straight spine, and that don’t-fuck-with-me stride, and something had happened in my chest: a tug, a pull, a knowing that went deeper than logic or reason. But knowing why and understanding why were different things, and I was still working on the second part.

What I did know: Carolina Fortman. Witch. Red hair like fire. Blue eyes like summer lightning. The only woman in town who had looked at me without laughing.

She hadn’t looked at me with pity, either. She’d walked right past, close enough that I could smell jasmine and ozone, close enough that my fangs had ached with something that wasn’t hunger and everything to do with wanting. But she hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t smirked. Hadn’t made a comment about the clumsy vampire or the walking disaster or the guy who couldn’t cross a room without finding the one thing to trip over.

In this town, that counted as kindness.

My chest felt strange. Tight. Like someone had threaded a hook through my ribs and started reeling, slow and inexorable, pulling me toward something I couldn’t see but somehow knew would change everything. I’d felt it the moment she passed my stool. Felt it intensify when she walked out the door. Felt it become unbearable when she turned the corner and disappeared into the night.

I’d told myself I was leaving anyway. Told myself I’d had enough of the pitying looks, the whispered jokes, and Dean refilling my beer like another drink might make the evening less humiliating. Told myself I was going home to my empty apartment to spend another night staring at the ceiling and wondering how being dumped at the edge of Arrhythmia with two blood packets and a duffel bag had become the closest thing I had to a life.

But my feet had carried me here. To this alley. To this brick wall. To waiting for a woman I didn’t know and had no business following.

What are you doing, Logan?

The question had become background noise, a constant hum of self-doubt that I’d learned to ignore. A year of being the town joke had taught me that much: how to keep moving when every instinct screamed at me to hide, how to show my face when I knew what was coming, and how to pretend the laughter didn’t cut even when it did.

But this felt different. This felt like standing on the edge of something, and I couldn’t tell if I was about to fall or fly.

A shadow moved deeper in the alley.

I straightened, my heart doing something it definitely shouldn’t have been doing: stuttering, stalling, then hammering against my ribs like it wanted out, like it had suddenly remembered how to beat and had decided to make up for lost time. The sensation was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure, like being alive again, like having something to lose.

She stepped into the dim light, and I forgot how to breathe.

Her blue eyes caught the neon glow from the street, reflecting it back in a way that made them look lit from within. Her red hair was a halo of witch-fire, wild and untamed, the kind of color that didn’t come from a bottle but from something deeper, something magical and ancient and terrifyingly, impossibly beautiful.