Marked by My Ex's Biggest Rival novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Not a Treaty

I was out of the truck before it stopped.

"That's my shop," I said. "I live upstairs."

The officer with the padlock didn't even look at me.

"Emergency order, ma'am. Witchcraft materials reported on the premises. The building's sealed until the Council rules."

"Reported by who?"

He just tapped the paper taped to my window.

The chair's signature sat at the bottom of it, big and looping.

Half of Main Street was out on the sidewalks again.

The diner. The hardware store. The woman with the stroller.

Nobody said a word.

Krista came running across the street from the alley with a duffel bag over each shoulder and Gran's glass case clutched to her chest.

She was out of breath and furious.

"They came at five," she panted. "I saw the cars from the back. I got the machines, the cigar box, the moonwort jar and your underwear drawer. I had to make choices."

I took the glass case from her.

Gran's rotary machines rattled inside it.

"You saved her machines."

"I saved your underwear," Krista said. "Priorities."

Roark stood behind us with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the officers.

The bond hummed between us.

He wanted to go through them.

He didn't.

"Come home," he said to me.

He didn't say my house.

He said home.

On Tuesday morning I woke in Addison's spare room to the sound of hammers.

I went out in borrowed flannel and stood in the yard with my coffee.

The big red barn behind the Brannigan house had its doors thrown wide open.

There were about twenty Brannigan wolves inside.

Some were ripping out old stalls.

Some were hauling in lumber off a flatbed.

Two teenagers were up on ladders stringing work lights along the rafters.

Roark was in the middle of it with his sleeves rolled up and sawdust in his hair.

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