Page 110 of Caged

I take deep breaths and close my eyes.

It feels like the softest of fabrics brushing against my soul. I feel him—his urgency, his desire to be near me, his confusion.

Is this what a Mate Bond is supposed to feel like? This all-consuming impression of having someone living inside you, yet still not feeling close enough?

Taking another steadying breath, I lean my forehead against the door, the only real physical barrier separating me from Caelan.

Caelan…

Caelan.

His name is a prayer. An incantation.

I sense him coming closer. He’s leaving the study, walking down the hallway.

Towards me.

The joy of knowing I’m so close to him is exhilarating. Happiness bursts through my chest like fireworks, and I let myself bask in the sheer novelty of the sensation.

My lips curl into a smile. The movement is strange and new but not unwelcome. I can feel the skin around my eyes stretching from the force of my grin.

A startled laugh of delight escapes, and I bite down on my lower lip to stifle the sound in case someone hears me.

Pressure builds behind my eyes. I’ve been conditioned to choke back my tears, but this time I don’t. For once, I give my emotions the freedom to swell. I let happiness and love grow and crash and spill out of me until they’re rushing toward Caelan through our Bond like an offering.

I’m yours. I’ll always be yours.

The knowledge hums through my blood with certainty.

He is mine, and I am his. The how and why don’t matter.

I’m a girl raised on fairy tales and my mother’s whispered hopes. I don’t need logic to recognize magic when it finds me. I don’t need answers to tell me what my soul already knows.

I’m so caught up in the warmth swirling through my soul that I nearly miss the shadow bleeding into the light.

I don’t know what it is, but I feel it creeping into my joy, and it’s… wrong. Dark. It shouldn’t be here.

I frown and push it back, but the shadow is stronger than I am and floods in through the cracks—a warning my instincts refuse to ignore.

No, no, no.

The anxiety that was thrumming under my skin earlier comes roaring back like a wave crashing against the shore. It erases every bit of my joy, snatching it without mercy and yanking it into the undertow.

I feel Caelan’s confusion, followed by a punch of unmistakable urgency.

My eyes snap open.

Something is wrong.

No.

Something is coming.

Tires crunch and an engine roars outside. Gravel pings against the concrete and underside of a vehicle as it squeals to a stop with so much force I can feel the vibrations in my bones.

My lungs stop.

Father. He’s back.