Love, Laugh, Lich (Claws & Cubicles Book 1)

This is the last straw. I’m spitting mad, but at the same time, it’s tearing me apart inside thinking that this is the last straw. I am standing at the edge of a precipice here, metaphorical, literal or whatever.

I march into Soven’s office and all but shove the heavy doors behind me closed. They pivot slowly on their hinges and don’t slam quite as much as I want for dramatic effect. I bristle and cross my arms at the Lich in front of me.

“What the hell was that about?” I snap at Soven. I’ve never raised my voice so angrily at him before, and yet this does not seem to shock him.

“Downsizing,” Soven growls, throwing off his cloak of shadows, revealing the beast underneath.

I gawk for a moment, and all I can seem to gather up to return is, “It’s wrongful dismissal, and you know it!”

Soven avoids looking at me as he stalks around the darkened Sanctum. He makes a noise like a wrongful dismissal suit isn’t a problem. And under the Evil Regime, it probably isn’t.

But that’s not the point. Or maybe it is. All I know is all my barely contained emotions break through to the surface, and suddenly it’s about us.

“No, you can’t do this to me!”

“Do what,” he growls, less of a question and more bait.

“This, all of this, you can’t disregard my personal agency and throw Randall down a pit! It’s insane and I don’t want any of it!” I snap, looking wildly at Soven, stomping my way over to him.

He draws himself up to his full, ridiculous height at my, quite frankly, comparatively tiny fit. Soven holds me in his gaze for many long moments, during all of which I’m fuming.

“You enjoyed the flowers, I assume?” he says at last, thumbing the fur at the end of his jowls.

I nearly roll my eyes. “That’s beside the point, everyone likes flowers—”

“But not the intern,” he interrupts, “Who you refuse to delegate assignments to.”

“No—”

“And you accepted the five-year-gift.”

“I did, but—”

“But not the office. Even though you’ve wanted a real office of your own for years,” he says, like this is some kind of gift. I’m surprised he knew, but that doesn’t get him out of trouble for going ahead and changing things around without my knowledge. He could have at least asked!

“You can’t – push the intern onto me, or move my desk where I can’t see people, or banish someone for asking me out!” I nearly shout in response, because clearly he isn’t getting it. I don’t know what the norms are for hooking up with a Lich, but I did not sign up for unprovoked territorialism.

“If I cannot share my pleasures, my power, my privileges with you—” Soven starts, and I cut him off instantly.

I pull out the chair from his desk, and stand up on it to look him in the eye.

“But it’s not sharing, is it? If it’s pushed upon me without consultation, then what am I but another piece in the hoard you control? How am I supposed to be ok with us, when there isn’t any respect between us? I barely even feel like there is an ‘us’!”

I see the flame spark in his eye at that, and clearly I’ve touched a nerve. I watch him struggle internally for what to do with his hands, his claws flexing dangerously at his side before he paces away, tearing them through his mane.

“Respect? How can you bring up respect when you accept his advances? How can you—” he looks away from me, struggling for the words he wants. “—After all I’ve shown you?”

Shown me? What?

I stare at him, indignation and upset bubbling up among some new heartbreak as I realize his meaning, the implication of his feelings.

No, he doesn’t get to make this my fault. Not when this is the first time he’s even broached the idea that he can have feelings for me.

“You’ve shown me nothing, no hint about what you’re feeling. For all I know, I’m only skin and sensations for you to take from. And you—you put my shiver in the storage closet, you didn’t even use it!” I say, and those are the words that finally exhaust my anger. That there could have been feelings between us this whole time, and I’d been locked out of them, that I’d been made to feel like I was just another piece of office supplies to him. “I gave my body to you, and I would have given you my heart too, if I thought you wanted it. But I can’t give it if it’s just going to be part of your hoard,” I say, and that’s all I can get out as my voice wavers dangerously. Ok, I might cry at work. But I won’t cry in front of my boss.

I can’t look at Soven after that. I turn on my heel and leave.