Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-one

Hot Pursuit

RILEY

Riley stared at Mila, speechless. Somehow, hearing the words he’d been trying to escape since their first kiss being spoken out loud made everything worse, real, inevitable. They were soulmates.

The bond was as inescapable as Mila’s rage.

“And you know what the worst part is?” she asked in that same hurt voice. “That if I hadn’t found out on my own, you would’ve let me go on believing that this thing I feel inside”—she punched her chest for emphasis—“is fake, not real, the byproduct of a failed magical experiment.”

Better than the alternative, Riley thought.

“What alternative?”

“Gargoyles.” He grabbed the sides of his temples. “Can you stay out of my head for a second?”

“Why? So you can lie more easily?”

“I haven’t lied to you.” He tried to take a step forward but found a wall of solid, angry air blocking him.

“A lie by omission is still a lie.”

“Fine,” Riley said, holding his hands up in surrender. “But can you at least listen to my side of the story? It’s not as black and white as you’re making it out to be.”

Mila shifted her weight from foot to foot, considering his words. Finally, she nodded, and the magical barrier faded away. “Fine. Talk.”

Riley took a deep breath and started pacing the room, needing movement to help organize his thoughts. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he breathed. “I wanted to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Mila’s voice was incredulous. “By lying to me? By keeping the truth from me?”

Yeah, and he still did not know how she’d found out.

Mila narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that all you’re worried about? How I found out?”

Riley’s mind stood blank for a moment, but apparently, even that was wrong because next, Mila was marching toward the entrance door, shouting, “You know what? You get your wish. I’m out of here.”

The door banged open for her, and Mila rushed out of his house just as furiously as she’d come in.

Riley ran after her, but by the time he reached the threshold, bracing against it with open arms, Mila was already straddling her broom.

One kick of her feet, and she was airborne, speeding away into the night.

Darn, stubborn witch.

In a blink, Riley grabbed his own broom and kicked off the ground in hot pursuit.

The chilly wind howled in his ears, and its icy fingers scraped against his cheeks as Riley chased after Mila. But he was too mad to even consider putting a warming spell around himself. He had only one aim in mind: to get to Mila and force her to land. A storm was cooking up, and this was no weather to fly into even under normal circumstances. Add that she was flustered and acting unreasonably, and Riley was really worried she could get hurt.

Even in the darkness, he could see Mila’s silhouette, a small dot in the distance, but he pushed his broom to its limits and closed most of the gap between them.

“Stop!” he shouted over the wind, his voice carrying a hint of desperation. “We need to talk about this!”

But his words must’ve gotten lost in the bellowing air currents because Mila didn’t appear to have heard him.

Riley pushed his broom to the limits of what was sane and desperately yelled at her to stop. Only this time, he used his mind, not his voice.

Mila didn’t slow down, but she turned back. “There’s nothing to talk about, Riley! You’re a liar!” came her telepathic response.

Riley gritted his teeth. “I’m not a liar. I just didn’t know how to tell you. And I thought you were better off not knowing, anyway. And slow down. You’re going too fast. It’s not safe.”

Mila scoffed and shook her head. “Stop chasing me, and I’ll slow down.”

Riley thought fast, trying to come up with something that would make her listen. “Fine,” he said finally. “You want the truth? Here it is. Yes, we’re soulmates. But that doesn’t change anything between us.”

Mila braked, making her broom rear like a horse standing on its hind legs. She turned to face him, her eyes still brimming with anger. “How can you even say that? Everything has changed!”

Riley took a deep breath and looked at her, really looked at her. Even in the dim light of the moon, he could see the pain etched on her face, the hurt in her eyes, the tears streaming down her cheeks that had nothing to do with the cold wind whipping at them, and the way her hair floated around her face like a fiery red hurricane.

“Look, can we please talk about this when we are back on the ground?” he asked quietly. “It’s not safe up here.”

Riley guessed Mila had no intention of listening to him or following him to the safety of firm land by the way her eyes darted to the side, as if to gauge her best escape route.

Okay then, if reasoning with her didn’t work, he’d have to go with Plan B.

Before Mila could move, Riley had already shifted the grip on his broom, putting it in attack mode. All magical law enforcement officers had brooms equipped with special assault gear that would allow them to capture a fleeing criminal.

One second before the magical net spread around Mila, her eyes widened. She’d probably gleaned his intentions from their mental bond. But it was too late. The green net of restraining power flashed out of his broom a second later and engulfed Mila, positively trapping her.

“Oh, you didn’t.” She trashed against the constraints. “You putrid eye of a zombie.”

Now that she was safely in his custody, Riley made sure she was as comfortable as possible, then wrapped a warm blanket around the net.

Mila didn’t appreciate it. “Keep your dirty aerial hands away from me, you ratty hair of an ogre. I hate you.”

Riley ignored the protests and turned them back around toward his house. Throughout the brief journey, Mila screamed insults and threats at him that made being turned into a toad seem not the worst of fates.

He landed on his roof first, and then gently hovered Mila down. He unlatched the trapdoor he kept on his roof for emergency landings and pulled Mila flush to his chest. With a snap of his fingers, the net constraining her disappeared, and then they were falling through the hatch right back into his living room.