The Bound Witch (The Osseous Chronicles, #3)

by Ivy Asher

I take another second to be sure any slow-moving lava lamp bits have time to catch up and reattach to me before I move. I definitely don’t want to get up too fast and realize that I left a tit in the ley line. Running my hands over my body, I double-check that everything is where it’s supposed to be, and then realization dawns. Holy shit, I really did it. I just rode a ley line.

He cups my face, his fingers threading through my curls. His kiss is exultant, his tongue composing hymns of moans and needy exclamations with mine. He tastes like the antidote to a poison that’s been threatening my very soul.

“I love you, Lennox,” he tells me evenly with absolutely no hesitation. “I love you in the way that grows as we grow together. The kind of love worth fighting for, that has me waking up every day grateful and willing to do whatever it takes. I know what you did for Elon, because it’s the same thing you did for me. You’re the light in the darkness. The stars that guide you home when you’re lost. You carry the broken from battle and lift the drowning from the clawing cold that’s trying to claim them. You slay the demons.”

“You, Lennox Marai Osseous, are everything. It scared the shit out of me before, but I’m not scared anymore. I love you. I feel it in my blood, in my bones, in my very soul...and I know you feel it too,”

This is the be-all and end-all kind of love that can only be nurtured with patience and understanding. This is the good shit that takes work and time, but when you truly give it everything you have, it’s the epic kind of love that will sustain a soul even in the darkest of times.

“Because I had met someone who made me want to run to them instead of away...and then I lost her. I was fed up with backing down and fleeing. It was time to make them pay.”

He was going to go to war for me. I’d died and he was going to burn it all to the ground, fed up and ready to dish out some much deserved retribution. Well, if that isn’t the most romantic damn thing.

“Of course I still love you, Lennox. You’re it for me. Good days or bad, sleep or no sleep, cuddle slut or pouting on the other end of the couch. It’s you and me forever.”

Despite my newfound demon blood or the crazy magic that’s currently spinning in my veins. Regardless of how heinous my morning breath can be or my unhealthy addiction to coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches. My cuddle slut ways when I’m tired and the fact that I’m a nighttime farter don’t matter one little bit. Because I can see it as plain as day in Rogan’s gaze, just like I could in Dave’s when he looked at Alora. Rogan loves the ever-loving shit out of me, and don’t I just love the ever-loving shit out of him right back.

My name is Countess Lennox Marai Osseous, and I don’t even know what the hell I am anymore. What I do know is that I hated magic until I learned how to make some of my own. Then I discovered that love truly is the greatest magic of all. Now I’m tethered to the man of my dreams, surrounded by family and friends who I would die for—and have—and I wouldn’t want it any other way…moon shits and all.