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The bond punched hard, clean through my chest. My fingers flexed without my permission.

Another stupidly shaped mug sat on the table, ice cold ring of something dark at the bottom. Tea or cocoa or whatever she used to bribe her body through the night. Next to it, her laptop glowed, screen turned toward her, casting soft blue across her face.

“What are you up to, Little Flower,” I murmured, too low for her to hear.

I bent down, drawn in before I could stop myself.

The screen reflected in my lenses. I expected some trash romance forum or a chapter of whatever book she was too broke to buy in print.

To my surprise and delight, I got my own face.

Demonopedia. My file, still open. Lux Draven, “Nightmare Hound,” glaring back at me from a high-resolution mugshot someone thought looked intimidating.

I huffed a laugh under my mask.

“Getting curious, are we?” I said.

She’d scrolled down. The text on the screen was the boring part. Designation. Abilities. Unknown. She’d highlighted “Nightmare Compulsion” before she passed out. Of course she did.

My gaze dropped to her.

Up close, she looked younger. No makeup now. No work smile. Just soft lines and shadows. The hoodie was zipped up to her chin, swallowing her in faux fur, sleeves covering her hands. Her bare legs stuck out from under the hem, knees tucked up, one sock on, one off.

There was a little crease between her brows like her dreams were annoying her.

I shouldn’t be this close.

I knew that. I knew it, but I still leaned in, tracking the slow rise and fall of her chest, the way the panda ear shifted with her breathing. The mark at my neck burned. What would hers look like when it surfaced? My pattern. My teeth. My claim.

I imagined my hand under that hood, tipping her chin up. The way her mouth would shape my name. The bond surged, heat and hunger and need, and that was what snapped me back.

She shifted.

A small movement, a tiny sound in her throat, but it jolted through me like a gunshot. I straightened too fast, my thigh catching the edge of the low table. It jerked. The mug teetered, slipped, hit the floor with a crack.

She jerked upright.

Big brown eyes, glassy with sleep, snapped open and locked right on me.

Hood up. Mask on. All black, standing in the middle of her living room like every warning story she’d ever been told about demons in the dark.

For a second, nobody moved.

Bond to bond, heart to heart. Her pulse spiked, a wild rabbit thrum that slammed into my own chest, and my dick got hard. Fear poured off her, sharp and bright, but underneath it something else flared.

Recognition.

Faint. Instinctive. Not enough to complete the bond, not with the mask, not with the shadows wrapped around me, but we both felt it.

Mine.

Fuck.

“Go back to sleep, Little Flower,” I whispered.

I vanished into the darkness before I did anything worse.

My shadows leaped to obey, swallowing me whole and dragging me back toward the kitchen, toward the shitty back door off the fire stairs. To her, I was just movement, a blur. A shape slipping out of the corner of her vision.