Demon and the Mage (Jeongcheol)

Seungcheol

Spain. 1988

It had to be a coincidence. It had to be.

"You must've been young then, practically a baby." Jeonghan looked like he was in his early thirties, so it was a solid assumption.

"Mm-hmm," Jeonghan said, still drawing shapes on the window. I got the sense he wasn't paying attention to me, which was good because I was fairly sure my freakout was written all over my face.

"And you've lived in Southampton since?" I persisted, sweat beading at my temples.

"Yeah. Well, aside from when I've been travelling. But this has always been home," Jeonghan said, finally turning to look at me. His brows drew together. "Are you okay? You look...freaked out."

"I'm fine," I said shortly. "Just...making conversation."

I could feel Jeonghan's eyes burning into the side of my face, but I refused to acknowledge him. I was too busy processing what he'd told me.

You see, I also moved to Southampton in 1988...from Spain. Not that odd on its own, I guess, but when you take into consideration what we'd recently learned about mates, it became more suspicious. When we'd arrived in England in the eighties, Joshua had immediately headed for the Welsh valleys while Vernon settled in Farnborough. In 2006, Vernon moved to Wales to join Joshua before they both relocated to Southampton.

And guess who else also followed their exact moving patterns?

That's right—their fated mates.

Fate, our demonic instincts—whatever you wanted to blame it on—had ensured my brothers were living within a five-mile radius of their mates from the moment they'd been born.

That wasn't what was happening here. Jeonghan wasn't my mate.

This was just a coincidence...a rather cruel one, honestly. It was almost like fate was taunting me by dangling the possibility of Jeonghan in my face. I could almost feel it whispering, Look at this gorgeous guy...he could be yours. But he's not.

Jeonghan reached over timidly and laid his hand on my thigh. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yep," I said, using the excuse of needing to change gears to knock his hand away. I couldn't have him touching me. It was too much of a reminder of what I could never have. Not with Jeonghan, anyway. "Time to stop for the night."

We could've kept going. We were only a few hours outside of Edinburgh. We could've been there already, but the weekend traffic had fucked us over. If I had to endure another second with Jeonghan in this enclosed space, I would lose my mind. Fuck finding a hotel either. As much as I tried to not pay attention to Joshua and Seungkwan when they got chatting about romance books, some of it slipped in. There'd be none of this only-one-bed shit happening here. No, we'd camp under the stars. We were in a rural area, not having even passed a car for several miles. That might be enough to send Jeonghan running for the nearest train station. Maybe without him here, invading the car with his scent, I'd be able to think clearly.

It wasn't long before I found an uninhabited field and parked up. It was far from any houses, and with one of my wards surrounding us, we wouldn't be disturbed. My skills with warding weren't on par with Joshua's, but they were good enough to divert disgruntled farmers who'd be pissed off to find someone camping on their land.

Grabbing my one-man tent from the boot, I ignored Jeonghan while quickly assembling it. It was only after I shoved my bag inside that I spotted what Jeonghan classed as camping equipment.

"You've got to be fucking joking."

"What?" Jeonghan glanced around like he had no idea what I was referring to.