Chapter 16 Selma #2
“I sensed no mate claim on you.”
Selma coughed. He’d chosen the exact moment she’d taken an enormous bite of bagel layered with cream cheese and salmon to finally break the silence.
She shot him a sideways look and realized he was staring down at her from his higher vantage point, taking in every movement of her face and body as if she was an opponent whose next move he was trying to decipher.
“I don't have a mate,” she confirmed after finally swallowing.
“You have been marked.” He narrowed his eyes, probably trying to detect any hint of deceit. “Ringed. Which means you ran from your Procurer. How?”
Selma bit her lip and looked down at her hands next to the well-stocked plate. They shook a little, as they always did when she remembered Marathin and what she’d had to do.
“There was… an incident. I got away while he was busy trying to cover it up.”
A surprisingly gentle touch to her chin made her look up, his dark eyes easily capturing her gaze.
“What did he do to you, Selma?”
She swallowed thickly, something in her heart fluttering at his gentleness. It seemed… real. Even though she knew what they were like, knew how easily they lied and deceived, something in his soft touch and dark eyes made her want to trust him.
“There has never been a recorded incident of a Breeder escaping her Procurer in the entirety of our history. They are taught to be gentle—and, above all else, cautious. If you fled… he did something he shouldn’t have.”
There was a fire in his dark gaze, a smoldering anger on her behalf.
Perhaps it was the night they’d spent together—how he’d reined in his own desires to ensure he didn’t harm her.
Perhaps her mind was still swathed in his calming scent and influence.
Or maybe it was that she hadn’t had anyone to confide in before.
Kain might have been a demon, but he was also the only one who’d ever protected her from others of his kind.
“He…” She swallowed again, unsure how to find the words.
“From the beginning, little one,” Kain said, releasing her chin in favor of wrapping his hand around her knee. It sent a trickle of sensation up her thigh, but he didn’t move it higher and the warmth was comforting. “I need to know everything, from your first meeting with him until you escaped.”
“I was brought into a… a mental health facility.” Her eyes darted to his in search of any judgement, but he only nodded. She supposed it wasn’t entirely unheard of that their Breeders ended up in mental hospitals. Not a lot of doctors took continued talk about demons as a sign of good health.
“He was the head psychiatrist there,” Selma continued, forcing down a shudder at the memory of her time at Ravenswood House.
“He… tricked me. Said the ring was a treatment, that my… visions… were a hormone imbalance. I… I should have known that the ‘treatment,’ that how he put it on me, wasn’t a legitimate medical procedure, but I… wasn’t in a good state.
“And after—I thought it’d worked. That I was cured. I didn’t notice the mark before I looked in a mirror later that night.” She brushed a hand over the silver circle marring her forehead, biting her lip at the memory of the horror that came after.
“You can see the mark?” Kain said, a frown drawing down his brows.
A spike of anxiety made her eyes flick to his. Stupid!
Marathin had discovered what she was after she’d seen the mark he’d placed on her forehead.
A normal Breeder wouldn’t have been able to detect it; the magic in the sigil was supposedly invisible to them, unless they possessed the qualities of a so-called Pure Breeder—the women who could resist most of their magic.
The women a demon Lord could mate.
Kain might have fought his instincts to take and dominate last night, but she wasn’t keen on her chances if he found out she could withstand his rutting.
“I thought I did,” she lied. “So I freaked out. I thought I wasn’t cured. It was just a smudge, but I didn’t realize until it was too late. I ran to him and I found his notes about… about what I was. About the auction he was planning on sending me to.
“He saw me. Knew that I knew. He demonstrated what the ring does to keep me in line. And then he raped me. He made me beg for it. But after… after, he was… different. Possessive. He said if I wanted to escape the auction, I could. I could stay with him.”
Kain’s gaze blazed with anger, his free hand curling into a tight fist on the counter, but when he spoke his voice was soft.
“For a Procurer to betray his responsibilities, he would have wanted to claim you as his mate. Why is his mark not on you?”
Selma looked down at his hand anchored on her knee. “He was going to… but we were interrupted. There was a nurse. She tried to save me, but he… killed her. I escaped while he was busy covering up the traces of her murder.”
“What’s his name?” Kain brushed his hand from her knee to her chin once more, and though the contact was light as a feather, it kept her frozen as surely as if he'd grabbed her.
“Please don't take me back to him.” She swallowed again, trying to read the expression in the bottomless eyes staring down at her.
She hadn't meant to plead with him; she’d planned on finding out what his intentions were before trying to sway him one way or the other.
But her fear of being brought back to Dr. Hershey after the way she had tricked him made cold sweat trickle down the back of her neck.
If he got his hands on her, she had no doubt she would live to regret running away.
Kain’s gaze narrowed before he finally moved his hand from her chin. “His name, Selma. And the state of this mental hospital.”
“Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise you won’t send me back.”
“I promise.” She wasn’t sure demons could ever be trusted, but the conviction she saw in Kain’s eyes then made a sliver of the tension in her chest ease.
“His name is Marathin Hershey. Ravenswood House is in Massachusetts.”
He drew in a sharp breath, finally releasing her knee to refocus on the breakfast buffet. “I know of him. He is old. Crafty. You did well running from him.”
“So… what now?” Selma asked, looking dubiously at him.
“What now?” he repeated, still keeping his gaze on the food.
“Are you… bringing me to an auction?” she asked, hating that she couldn’t stop herself. Her life had been uncertainty for so long, she needed to know his plans, even if keeping quiet would have been the smart thing to do.
He was silent for a moment before he answered, “It is my duty.”
Anger flared in her gut, along with a sense of betrayal she had no right in feeling. He was one of them. That he’d cared for her meant nothing—his loyalty would always be lie his kind.
But since she’d been in his care, she’d felt… safe. For the first time in as long as she could remember. And yet he was going to force her into a lifetime of service?
“This may come as a shock to you, but I don’t want that,” she bit out. “I’m not a fucking broodmare!”
Her outburst was met with silence.
Fuck. She’d managed to keep her temper in check with Dr. Hershey, gauging what reaction he wanted from her. But not this time. Perhaps it was the stress of it all, the fear of being back in their clutches after a month of running.
She braved a look at him. He was staring at her, his gaze as distant as before, though a small frown around his full lips made the hairs on her nape stand on end.
Something about him really set her on edge—perhaps the hovering threat of his power looming just underneath the human facade, or the way he seemed to be hyperaware of every little movement she made, his dark eyes following her fidgeting like a hawk.
“You have seen the alternative.” His voice was soft despite his unsettling gaze. “The world is not safe for you, little one. If you accept a mate, you will be protected from those who wish to do you harm. Cherished.”
“You mean trapped,” she muttered, finally finding the strength to break eye-contact. “I will essentially be some monster's sex slave to do with as he pleases, and if I object… Well, we both know what happens when someone touches my ring. Don't pretend like this is all for my own good.”
“So you would rather spend your life on the run, risking death and rape every single day, than build a family with a man who would worship the ground you walk on? Have sons who would love you?”
“At least it would be my choice.” Selma prodded irritably at the food with her fork.
She didn't understand his motivations as she had Marathin’s, so the only option she saw was to just be straightforward with him and hope he could sense her honesty.
Maybe then he would be less vigilant when the right moment to escape revealed itself.
“Your kind says that you treat Breeders oh-so well,” she continued, “but what you truly want is a slave. What if I’d had a human husband?
Human children? Would that have mattered when you ripped me away from my life to serve whoever has enough money to buy me?
I know it certainly wouldn't have mattered to Marathin.”
Once again she was met with silence. A long silence. She’d begun to fear her honesty had snapped his temper when he finally spoke.
“There might be a third option.”
Her eyes hesitantly shifted back up to his. He had stopped staring at her and was now frowning at the enormous amounts of food on the kitchen counter.
“You mean… I could stay with you?” she prodded, cautious to keep her tone neutral.
If he thought his magic would kill her if he were to be intimate with her, it was a bit of an odd suggestion, but perhaps her scent had affected him enough that he wasn’t thinking rationally.
Marathin had apparently been lost enough in it to go against their rules in order to claim ownership over her.
But instead of being pleased with her suggestion, Kain’s face contorted in a grimace of disgust and anger. “Never!”