Page 192 of Problematic

I had a mate mark now. I had hunger. I had glowing eyes sometimes.

I braced both hands on the shower wall and breathed until the panic backed off enough. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered.

The water answered by going cold. Just wonderful. Cheap rent and hot showers that didn’t last long enough for a full crisis. That should be my life. Not . . . this. I was no demon lord’s mate. Me?

When I turned to shut off the water, something brushed the back of my leg.

I froze. Something moved again behind me. My stomach dropped so hard I grabbed the shower wall. The thing brushed my calf, and I screamed.

I spun around, slipped, slammed my elbow into the tile, and grabbed the curtain like it would save me. The rod tore halfway from the wall. Water splashed across the floor.

Something pink flicked near my hip. I screamed again.

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.”

A tail. I had a tail. A pink tail.

It curved out from the base of my spine, slick from the shower, thin and flexible, with a tiny, heart-shaped tip. I slapped both hands over my mouth.

The tail curled around my thigh. I jumped and hit my elbow again.

“Ow. Stop touching me.”

I staggered out of the shower, water everywhere, grabbed a towel, dropped it, grabbed it again, wrapped it around myself backward, then forward, then realized the tail made the whole process a logistical nightmare. I turned in a circle, trying to see it, which made the tail curl away, which made me spin faster. I was chasing my own ass in a bathroom the size of a coffin.

“This is fine,” I panted. “This is normal. People grow tails all the time.”

The tail flicked water onto the mirror. Demons could have tails, wings, horns . . . I just never developed any of those traits and never cared enough to consider the what ifs.

I stared at my reflection through the fog.

My eyes glowed pink.

I gripped the sink with both hands. My wet hair clung to my shoulders. The mate mark on my throat pulsed in raised lines, dark and pretty and vicious. Behind me, the tail swayed, heart tip twitching.

Succubus.

The word crawled up my spine.

I knew it. Lux had told me. Kalon had told me. My body had proved it in the worst freezer incident New Abaddon City Coffee had ever seen.

Knowing was different from standing naked in a broken shower curtain with a tail trying to make friends with my thigh.

“No,” I said to the mirror. “Nope. No, thank you. I reject this upgrade.”

The tail lifted.

“Do not sass me.”

The heart-shaped tip twitched.

I pressed both palms over my face and laughed, because the other option was sitting naked on the floor until the building rotted around me.

A knock hit the front door.

I screamed again.

“Liv?” Sam called through the door. “Open up.”