Diablos
Chapter forty-four
Being back in King’s office after everything that happened felt surreal. I was the same, yet in a way, I was also different, and it was time for us to talk. We sat on the couch in his office, and I stared at the bookshelf, wondering how to begin.
“Whenever you’re ready, I’m here to listen,” King said softly.
“I haven’t forgotten. I’m not sure I ever will,” the words slipped past the walls around my heart.
“What do you mean, son?”
“What you told Dagon at the hospital. It wasn’t an infatuation.
It wouldn’t have been a mistake, and the only reason it might have broken our family was if you chose for it to happen.
Why? Because both Dagon and I cherish our family way more than you probably realize.
Even if things hadn't worked out for us, we would've still done the best for our family.”
I stole a glance at King. He looked defeated, his shoulders low, eyes cast to the floor. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have no excuse.”
"No. You don't."
The words came out colder than I meant them. Or maybe they came out exactly as cold as I meant them and I was the one not ready to hear myself yet.
"You don't have an excuse. You have a reason, I'm guessing, and we'll get to that.
But there is no version of what you did that has an excuse.
I want you to keep that with you while we talk.
I'm not here to absolve you. I'm here because I'm your son and you're owed a conversation. Not absolution. Are we clear?"
King didn't answer for a long moment.
Then he nodded once. Slowly. The bow he had given me in the gaming room, the angel bowing his head to his children, surfaced again in that nod. He was receiving what I was saying. He wasn't fighting it.
That was the only thing that kept me sitting on this couch instead of walking out.
"I understand your perspective, but I can't grasp why you didn't talk to us first. Why didn't you try to understand our feelings before telling Dagon we'd destroy our family? Dagon would never intentionally hurt any of us. That's not like you, King."
King sighed heavily, rubbing his face. "I allowed my past to influence my present and my sons. You have no idea how much I regret it. Knowing that you're mates… had I known, I would've never stood between you two."
"Your past?" I asked hesitantly.
He sighed again, deep regret in his voice. "Luc's mother. I almost destroyed my family and myself because I believed it was love when it wasn't."
King’s admission came as a shock. He never spoke about Bren and Luc’s mothers. I knew they had different mothers but nothing else. I thought King spoke about them with Bren and Luc, but now I wasn’t so sure about it.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. It was evident he still carried the pain and, if I was guessing right, also shame.
I meant it. The I'm sorry was real. But it sat on top of something harder that I didn't say out loud: your past doesn't get to be the reason you hurt us. Your past is yours to carry. Not ours to pay for.
I didn't have to say it. He could see it on my face.
“It’s okay. Let’s return to our conversation.”
I hesitated before continuing. I wasn’t a heartless monster, but there were still things I needed to say. “Didn’t you realize the impact of your words when Dagon pulled away? He spent less and less time with us. He moved away.”
“I did, but I didn’t do anything about it, and I’m ashamed to admit it.”
Anger and pain surged inside me so intensely that Dagon reached through the bond to comfort me, telling me he was coming. I urged him to wait. I needed to do this alone.
I understood how the past could influence the present, but acceptance would take time. “I need time. I’m angry, King. It’s all so overwhelming - the truth behind why Dagon stayed away, the demon things, this object,” I pointed at my wrist.
“I understand. Take all the time you need. I’ll be here." He smiled gently.
He waited.
He didn't reach for me. He didn't try to close the distance. He just waited, and I felt the strange pressure of being the one who got to decide whether the hug happened.
Part of me wanted to hold the line. Not yet. Not until we had walked through all of it. Not until he had earned more than he had earned right now.
But the part of me that had called him Dad for eight years was sitting in the same body as the part that had called him King five minutes ago. Both parts were real. The Dad-part missed him.
I leaned in slowly and let him hug me.
It was not a we're okay hug. It was a we have started hug.
He sighed against my hair. "You'll always be my son," he whispered.
I know, I thought back. That part isn't in question. The rest is.
My eyes watered, and I nodded. I would always be his son. Nothing could change that. Dagon, King, and I were all hurting, and we'd need time to heal, mend, and rebuild.
After collecting ourselves, I decided to seek answers.
There were things I had not told him and would not tell him.
The OCD wasn't on the table. Not today. Maybe not ever.
That belonged to Dagon and Bren and the small circle of people who had earned the inside of my head.
King wasn't on that list yet. The fact that he was my father did not buy him admission to it.
The thought passed without guilt. That surprised me.
Some doors get to stay closed, I guess, and that's okay.
“Why didn’t you tell us that Lucifer created the objects?”
“I thought I was protecting you. I realize how stupid that was, considering I brought you into this life.”
“Why did you choose us to bond with these objects? And please, don’t say it was because we're your sons.”
“All this time, the objects were under the protection of another angel. Two years ago, something happened. Their powers destabilized. We tried everything to stabilize them, but as angels, we couldn't bond fully with all the objects.”
King looked distant, but continued, “There are two bond levels with these objects. The first is fragile, easily solidified but just as easily broken. It exists between Heaven and Hell."
"Is that what you did with us?"
"Yes. I hoped it's a temporary solution, that I would solve their instability and break your bonds safely."
"But that didn't happen," I stated.
"No, it didn't. But I won't stop trying. I want to protect the others if possible."
"You haven't failed Dagon and me." I knew what he was thinking.
"I did fail you both."
"King-"
"It's the truth, Di, but I'll do my best not to fail you again," he promised firmly.
I nodded, knowing it was pointless to argue. King was more stubborn than even Dagon. One question remained. "What about the object bonded to Dagon?"
King hesitated.
Not for long. Half a second, maybe. Less. The pause of an angel who had spent centuries treating the objects as celestial and was being asked, for the first time, to be fine with one of them bonded to a demon and eventually handled to them.
Half a second. That was all it took.
I felt the heat surface across my cheekbones before I understood what was happening. The gold-red shimmer. The demon inside me rose through the bookworm like a tide.
"You hesitated."
"Di…"
"You hesitated." I was on my feet without remembering standing.
"You looked at me five minutes ago and told me it didn't matter what we were.
You told both your demon sons that we were yours and yours meant the same thing it always meant.
And the second I ask about the object bonded to Dagon you flinched. You flinched, King."
He had the decency to not deny it.
"Tell me the truth. Not the version you think I want. The truth. Why did you hesitate?"
He looked at his hands.
"Because my instinct is still to protect the objects from demonic hands," he said quietly.
"Because a part of me, a part I am trying to dismantle and have not yet finished dismantling, does not know what to do with an object bonded to a Starborn.
I told you the truth in the gaming room when I said my beliefs hadn't changed overnight.
They haven't. I am sitting with the part of myself that flinched, and I am ashamed of it. "
"Ashamed isn't the same as fixed."
"No. It isn't. I won't pretend otherwise."
"He is my mate, King."
"I know."
"He has been your son for fifteen years."
"I know that too."
"And have you forgotten I am a demon now too?"
"I know, but you're not a Starborn."
Fury raged inside me. I didn't give a fuck what he thought of me, but Dagon? Hell no.
"Then do not flinch the next time someone in this room reminds you that he is a demon. Not in front of him. Not in front of me. Not in front of any of his brothers. Do you understand?"
King's eyes were wet again.
"I understand," he said. "I will work on it. I will not promise you it will be fast. I will promise you it will be honest."
That was the answer that kept me from walking out.
Honest beat fast every time. I could work with honest.
I sat back down. Slowly. The shimmer drained out of my face like heat leaving a tile.
"That's the last time you get to flinch and I let it pass with a question. Next time you flinch, I leave the room. I love you. I am still deciding what shape that love takes from here. The flinching is going to determine the shape."
"Understood."
King stiffened, ruffling his hair. "I'll keep the object with the others for now. I won't break its first bond. I hope it never comes down to it. Dagon being a demon won't change anything in our family."
I held his eye.
"It will," I said softly. "It will change things. You just told me it does. Don't walk it back to make me feel better. We do this honest or we don't do it."
He held my gaze.
"It will change things," he repeated. "I will work on what it changes and how. I will not let it change love. I can promise you that. The rest I will work on."
"Okay."
That was the closest I could get to okay today. I would take it.
"Well, it changes some things, but we still love him the same."
"We do," King agreed warmly.
There was much left to discuss, but I needed a break from searching for answers. Right now, I just wanted my demon and my family.
I stood up.
"That's enough for today," I said. "We'll have more conversations.
There are more things you don't know. There are things I'm not telling you yet, not because I'm hiding them maliciously, but because trust gets rebuilt before it gets paid out.
You'll learn what I'm carrying when you've earned the inside of it. Not before."
He nodded.
"That's fair."
"It's true. Fair isn't the word."
"Then true."
I walked to the door.
"I love you, King."
The word came out before I could choose another. The King. Not Dad. Not yet. Maybe not ever again. Maybe in six months. Maybe in two years. The title was something he was going to have to earn back, and we both knew it now.
He swallowed.
"I love you, son."
I closed the door behind me.
Dagon was waiting in the hallway. He was leaning against the wall pretending he hadn't been listening through the bond, which he had.
I could feel the entire conversation echoing back through him, he had heard every word that crossed the thread.
I could choose to close the thread and he wouldn't have heard anything, but I felt what he felt.
The worry that I was with an angel in a room alone, even if that angel was our father.
That's why I let him listen through the bond, and not only that, I let him be there for me too.
He didn't say anything. He just opened his arms.
I walked into them.
He held me. His mouth pressed to the top of my head. The bond between us hummed and settled. The shaking I hadn't done in King's office showed up in my shoulders instead. Dagon held me through it.
Down the hallway, I could hear the rest of them. Bren's laugh – a real one, finally, not the cracked one from earlier – bouncing off the kitchen tiles. Andras's voice underneath, low and steady. Luc saying something I couldn't catch. Wild snorting at whatever Luc had said.
My brothers. My demon. My family.
Not the version of the family I had grown up believing in.
A different version. A version that had been remade in the field and the cabin and the forest under the stars and the hallway outside the office .
The Hughes brothers had been forged through fire I didn't fully understand and were standing on the other side of it together.
Nothing could break us.
Nothing.
Not Lucifer's eventual demand. Not the white-haired Starborn. Not even the angel-father who was still sitting on the couch in the office behind me, beginning the long work of becoming someone we could fully let back in.
He might earn his way back. I hoped he would. I would even help him try.
But the unbreakable thing now was the six of us. The brothers and my mate. Not the family with King at the center. The family I had chosen. The family that had chosen me back.
Dagon pulled back to look at me.
"You okay?"
"No," I said honestly. "But I will be. Come on. Let's go find the others."
He took my hand. The arrow on my wrist caught the hallway light for a second and shimmered gold-red.
Neither of us flinched.