Chapter 7. Caitlyn
My mouth opened, closed, and opened again.
I’d never been entirely sure what meeting your mate was supposed to feel like. I’d imagined something like a quiet knowing. Two souls recognizing each other and thinking, Ah. There you are.
What I hadn’t expected was for my usually calm succubus side to lose her ever-loving mind.
The word mate slammed through me, echoing from somewhere deep and instinctive, radiating through to my very bones. A sharp hunger flared, coiling low in my gut, demanding him with zero interest in subtlety.
And all I could do was stand there, dumbstruck, as he held the car door open for me like this wasn’t the most destabilizing moment of my life.
He was stunning, the most handsome person I’d ever seen. The evening sun caught in his golden hair, setting it alight, his eyes practically glittering as he looked down at me.
I suddenly felt ridiculous in my burgundy cord overalls, floral top, and battered Converse—especially when he was dressed like that. Crisp white shirt. Black tie. Leather gloves. Pants that clung to the curve of what promised to be a truly unfair ass.
Come on, Caitlyn. Words. Use them.
“I... you're... I mean... you're—” I started, helpless.
Sentences, Caitlyn. Try full sentences.
“An incubus demon?” Blaise supplied, his lips tilting into a goofy grin that did absolutely nothing for my ability to think. “We don’t usually advertise it on our website—it discourages the weirdos with kinks. But if you read the small print in the contract, it does mention—”
“—my mate,” I blurted.
Blaise blinked once. Then again. His gaze sharpened as something guarded flickered behind his eyes, disbelief creeping in where amusement had been a moment before. Or was that annoyance?
His lips pressed into a thin line as he tilted his head slightly skyward, as if sending a silent prayer to the heavens. My gaze betrayed me, sliding down the thick line of his throat as he swallowed. Just above the collar of his shirt, a sliver of silvery scar tissue caught the light.
I gulped.
Incubus demons were almost indestructible. For one to carry a scar like that, whatever had done it must have come terrifyingly close to killing him.
A heartbeat later, Blaise lowered his head. The scar vanished beneath his collar, his expression smoothing into careful neutrality.
“Ms. Myers,” Blaise said, every trace of humor stripped from his voice.
“I appreciate that meeting an incubus demon for the first time can be disarming. And while I don’t necessarily mind a little light flirting on the job, I do expect to keep things professional.
What I do mind,” he continued evenly, “is joking about fated mates.”
Joking? He thought I would joke about something as monumental as this?
“Okay, so you’re not from a clan of incubus demons who are all fated to witches born into the Briar Coven?” I asked, irritation bleeding straight through my tone.
Did he really not feel this? That pull as he sucked me into his orbit? That humming of something primal pulsing between us?
It was Blaise’s turn to look thrown. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again before he finally managed, “But... you didn’t summon me.”
My thoughts exactly.
“Yeah, no shit,” I blurted out, and then immediately regretted it. It wasn’t his fault.
We stood there in silence, staring at each other while my mind tried and failed to make sense of the situation.
Of all the ways Fate could’ve introduced us, I’d accidentally employed my mate and met him in the middle of a field, after a nine-hour road trip, probably dusted in roadside snack debris, wearing my tattiest clothes, and facing down the very real prospect of sharing a two-person tent with him for the next three weeks.
What a romantic meet-cute, a sardonic voice in my head observed.
My gaze drifted back to Blaise. Instead of looking dazed or awestruck like a demon who had just found the one person on this earth that could complete his soul, he was biting his bottom lip, staring somewhere over my shoulder, brows drawn tight, like someone locked in an internal war with himself.
“I... um... I mean, I can always cancel the job if you’d prefer to wait until next Samhain to get to know one another?” I said, instantly regretting it.
No. Absolutely not. Now that I’d met him and seen his face, my body was already rebelling. I wanted answers to all the questions that had haunted me for years. What would it feel like to kiss him for the first time? Did he have any kinks? What did his shadow form look like? Did he like candy?
Blaise took a slow breath before finally meeting my gaze. “No. Of course not,” he said, his features softening just a little. “I’m just...” He paused, clearly choosing his words with care. “... working through something in my personal life at the moment.”
His lips pressed together, like he was holding back far more than he was willing to say right now.
Okay. So my mate had some personal shit going on that he wasn’t ready to open up about.
That was... fine. I guessed. I mean, I was practically an open book, but I’d grown up in a coven of friends and family—there weren’t really any secrets to keep.
Blaise, on the other hand, had spent the last nine years out in the big wide world on his own.
And judging by the edge of that scar I’d glimpsed on his neck, it hadn’t been a walk in the park.
Guilt hollowed out my stomach.
He’d had to do that because of me. Because I’d chosen stupid candy over summoning him.
My gaze flicked back to him, and this time I noticed the other scars. Fine, spiderweb-thin lines crisscrossing his skin, only visible where the setting sun caught them just right.
All your fault, Caitlyn, I thought.
“You don’t have to tell me right away,” I blurted out, the words tumbling over each other. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear exactly what I’d put him through just yet.
Relief flickered across his face.
“And we can take things as slow as you want to,” I added.
Something complicated crossed his expression, like slow was exactly what he needed, even if it seemed as though slow wasn’t what he wanted. But after a moment, he nodded, his shoulders easing as some of the tension drained from him.
Silence stretched between us, long and awkward and charged.
Then Blaise cleared his throat. “You gonna explain why we’re standing in an empty field?”
My brain short-circuited. I lurched forward without thinking and promptly smacked my head on the door frame as I attempted to retrieve my phone in a panic.
It seemed to knock some sense into me, because I remembered that, after Blaise had called, I’d been so flustered by the way he’d said “It’s fine, Caitlyn” that I’d forgotten to put my phone back into its dock and had instead slipped it into my pocket.
“I... um...” I started, fingers fumbling uselessly through the ridiculously overstuffed front pocket of my overalls.
I moved aside candy wrappers, lint, and something sticky until finally my fingers closed around my phone, and I let out a breath of relief.
“Just—just give me a minute to try and coax the house here.”
“Coax the house here?” he repeated, watching me carefully as I edged away from the car and took a few tentative steps into the field.
“Um. Yeah. You’ll see in a minute,” I said, then added under my breath, “Hopefully.”
I typed in my landline number, hit call, and waited. It rang and rang, then rolled straight to voicemail. Teeth clenched, I shot a glance at Blaise, whose brows were drawn together in clear confusion.
I tried again.
This time, Creep picked up. The only sound on the line was the low crackle of the living room fire.
“Um, Creep?” I said, keeping my voice carefully neutral. “Were you, uh, planning on joining me?”
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone, the hollow hum of disconnection ringing in my ears, and briefly considered driving the nine hours back to the coven purely to commit arson.
Breathing in through my nose, I dialed again.
It rang. And rang.
Just as I was about to give up, the call connected.
“It’s just,” I blurted, rushing the words out before she could hang up on me again, “I kinda accidentally stumbled across my fated mate, and I’d really love for you to meet him.”
A long silence followed. I half wondered if Creep was as stunned as I’d been. Then there was the soft rustle of fabric—and the line went dead.
I slipped my phone back into the front pouch of my overalls, rubbed at my stinging forehead, and silently prayed to Hecate that curiosity would outweigh spite. With a doubtful sigh, I turned toward Blaise, who was still watching me with a look of mild disbelief.
“I, um... I don’t know if you’re aware,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the empty space behind me, “but Briar Coven witches all have a, er, sentient house.”
Blaise tilted his head, causing a lock of golden hair to slip out of place. My fingers twitched at my side, itching to see if it was as soft as it looked.
“I think one of the older demons mentioned something about magic houses when I was younger,” he said slowly.
“Not just magic—sentient,” I said. “They have minds of their own. They’re meant to be... well... the house equivalent of a fated mate. A kind of shared magic that belongs to both of us. Anyway. A few months ago, one of those dormant houses decided I was her witch.”
Which, I realized, was maybe a sign that a fated mate would be arriving shortly in my life, summoning or not. Stupid, Caitlyn.
“Okay,” he said carefully.
“And let’s just say, I think it chose wrong,” I added, grimacing. “It’s been a rough few months. My house doesn’t really like me.”
“Okay. So, you have a house back in the coven that doesn’t like you. What has that got to do with—”
The cracking sound of wood splintering echoed across the clearing.
Blaise spun instantly, arms flaring out as shadows surged from him, instinctively placing himself between me and the sound. Any other time, I would have found it unbearably romantic, the way his body moved to shield mine without hesitation.
But the crackle of static magic in the air, the bite of it along my skin causing my hair to stand on end, meant only one thing.
Creep had decided to join us.
And suddenly, I wished I’d coaxed Creep here a day or two later. The thought of spending a couple of nights in my emergency tent, getting to know my newly discovered mate, felt far too appealing right now.
Blaise’s brows lifted, his attention snapping past me. I followed his gaze and my brows furrowed.
A pitch-black spiral had opened in the center of the clearing, its edges crackling with flashes of red static.
I knew for a fact the houses could materialize in a split second. Creep was deliberately drawing this out, and I couldn’t decide whether she was trying to impress her newly acquired incubus... or if this was a display of dominance.
I watched as the darkness churned. It wasn’t like Blaise’s shadows, which now curled softly around us—careful and restrained and never quite touching me.
The sound of splintering wood tore through the clearing again, growing so loud it set my teeth on edge. And just as I thought my ears might actually implode—
Bang.
The house erupted from the black mass.
Its towers burst outward first, stretching impossibly, like the neck of some wrong, half-remembered creature, before snapping upward into place.
The walls followed, unfolding rather than forming, the windows bending without shattering, catching the last of the sunset and flaring orange-gold as they locked into position.
And then it was done.
Completely out of place against the warm autumn leaves and golden sky, my house sat there, solidified, silent, and deeply unwelcoming.