Chapter 3 #2
For a long time I thought that meant following a preordained path.
Now that I had fallen off the path, it seemed I was going to have to find my own way.
“Lily,” Kaito said, bringing my attention back to his ruby gaze. He trailed his thumb over my lower lip, parting my mouth for him. “You think being a monster is a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be, not if you can use your gifts for good.”
I scoffed, flinching away from his alluring touch. “Like saving my mates? Oh, wait, they’re trapped in a coma because I’m not strong enough to stand up against a force like Calamity.”
“You stood against Lucifer and survived,” he countered, pinching my chin and turning me back to him.
“Listen to me, Koneko-chan. No one said being what you are would be easy, but you will overcome this challenge. Once you establish a balance between the powerful forces in your soul, you’ll not only survive…
you’ll thrive.” He pressed his lips to mine, smoothing flames over my skin that warmed me from the inside out.
Sighing against him, I lowered my forehead to his chest and flared my wings against the wall. A sharp ache radiated over my left shoulder, reminding me that Kaito’s encouragement could only go so far.
“Why can’t my body accept Cole?” I asked, my voice cracking with the pain. I ran my fingers over his athletic shoulders, then up into his hair as I grazed his horns. “You’re a demon, a powerful one at that. If I can bond with you, why can’t I bond with Cole?”
He sighed and took one hand, running my touch over the tattoo on his cheek. “Because when we first met I was more mortal than I was demon. You bonded with me before my Kami had truly surfaced. It was a gradual process, one where we both grew with each other.”
“Hmm,” I agreed, “I don’t suppose that’s going to work with Cole.”
“Definitely not. He’s as demon as they come, Koneko-chan. Lucifer’s brother and heir to Hell’s throne with no mortal ties makes him your connection to the lowest levels of Hell.”
He tensed under my touch while he spoke. Kissing the harsh line of his jaw, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
His gaze flashed to mine, the rim of silver growing a fraction before he looked away. “I was just a stepping-stone for you, Koneko-chan. I was supposed to bridge the gap between your soul of morality and your ability to bond with a creature like Cole.”
Biting my lip, I considered that for a moment. “But when I first met Cole, I died. Don’t you think that would have an impact?” Not to mention it had proven difficult to forgive Cole for everything he’d done after my death.
But sacrificing his wings had won me over, in the end, and he would be the one to help me get my mates back.
If my treacherous body learned how to accept his demon ass in the first place.
“Perhaps,” Kaito admitted, relaxing a fraction.
He kissed me again, sending another wave of heat through my body.
“It’s kind of you to try and comfort me when you’re the one who needs comforting.
” He stroked his fingers through the sensitive down of my feathered wing.
“That’s the good in you that shines through. ”
I huffed a short laugh. “Careful, you almost make me sound like an angel.”
“And that’s what you are,” he pressed, running his fingers to the back of my head to pull me in close.
“Just as you’re going to be strong enough to bond with a creature like Cole, you’re also worthy of bonding with the angel twins.
I believe in you, Koneko-chan.” He considered me, sweeping his gaze over my features.
“Perhaps you’re ready now. You could try bonding with them and—”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. You know that I can’t, not yet.” We’d already been through this. Lucifer had hoped that I would prematurely bond with my twins. Doing so would permanently upset the balance in my soul, leaving me detached from my darker mates.
Those in a coma could be lost forever, and then Lucifer would control me for good.
My plan had been to bond with Cole to establish a solid link to my darker mates. It should have made it relatively safe to bond with my angels.
And then… I could have found the balance I needed and saved them all.
Finding a balance between light and dark wasn’t going to be easy.
As if to prove a point, Kaito opened his palm and whispered an ancient word of power, releasing a demonic shadow that kissed my skin like ash.
The Holy Water in my system sizzled through my bloodstream, calming the immediate effects of the raw power of evil.
Kaito tilted his head as he examined me. “If you can’t believe in yourself, let me believe for you. Let Samael and Azrael believe in you.”
My wings fluttered, my left wing sending a leathery, rumpled sound through the air while my right brushed silky feathers against one another.
The unmatched noise sounded off-tone and unbalanced even to my ears.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, hanging my head. “I just…” My lower lip trembled and I crushed my fingers into fists, not caring when black blood splattered to the ground since I couldn’t retract my claws when I was this damned frustrated.
Kaito wrapped his arms around me and risked the danger of my taloned wing, of my claws, of my fangs.
He didn’t fear me, or rather, he would willingly allow himself to be sliced into a thousand pieces if it made me feel better.
Finally relaxing, I sank into him and allowed the hot tears to come.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I whispered.
I’d said those words before, and as pitiful as they sounded, it was still true.
Somewhere deep inside, I was that lost university student just trying to figure out what the fuck she was and what had happened to her.
It was only after my rebirth that Dante had helped me remember the truth. I had been a murderer.
A monster.
Kaito said the word as if it was a good thing, but was it really?
I had come into this world as a Demonspawn, the only form that the Blood Stone that had conceived me knew how to make.
Yet my soul held the power of the Incubus King, of the Queen of Hell, and of a powerful angel.
After a year living as a Demonspawn, I had slowly gone mad. My soul didn’t match that form.
I needed balance.
I needed light.
Silvia, my angel mother, had trapped us in a room together knowing that I would take her life to repair the damage to my soul. That had been her sacrifice.
I had killed my own heavenly mother. It was why I didn’t deserve my angelic mates.
It was why I didn’t deserve love.
And then Dante had tried to retrieve me on Kaito’s orders to bring me to Fortune Academy.
I’d slit his throat.
My destined mate had almost died because of me.
Those memories had all come back when I’d nearly lost Dante to Cole’s rage. And now they came rushing back again in fresh clarity, reminding me why I deserved my failures.
It made everything feel so much worse that I had bound my Virtues to my fate, dooming them to suffer the price of my sins.
The conflict in my soul burned through my body, leaving a raw ache in my left shoulder that seared with pain.
I crumpled, not wanting to do this anymore.
“Pick someone else,” I begged the universe. “Just… leave me alone.”
“Lily!” Kaito yelled. Apparently he’d been calling my name for quite some time, but I couldn’t hear him over my own screams.
I cried and clung to him, hating how weak I’d become.
Yet, it wasn’t just my emotions that were doing this to me. The power of attempting to bond with Cole was overwhelming me. My body just refused to accept it, and perhaps it was because I’d never come to terms with the origins of my birth and the journey of sacrifice it had taken to bring me here.
Cursing, Kaito hauled one of my arms over his shoulder and dragged me out of the room. “Come on, I’m getting you to the twins.”
“That’s… miles from here,” I said, my voice coming out raspy.
The angels weren’t permitted on campus, not after their latest shenanigans of swapping out vodka for Holy Water in the Demonspawn dorms.
The poor students were spitting molten rocks for weeks.
Azra thought it was hilarious.
Jess… not so much.
So the Dean had talked with the professors and everyone agreed they should set up a new angelic dormitory near the old Purgatory ruins.
Fortune Academy Underworld required a barrier to keep unwanted spirits and demons away, but the Purgatory ruins had a natural immunity to the local riff-raff thanks to its stones turning a large portion of the terrain into holy ground.
If our plans worked out, we should be gaining some new fallen angel students soon. Or perhaps that was just the line that the Dean had used to convince the twins to leave my side.
They didn’t like being apart from me, but I made sure to split my time between my demons and my angels. This was Cole’s week and I wasn’t due to return to the Angel Dorms for a few more days.
Kaito held up a dark orb. “Luckily I still have some of Hendrik’s portal artifacts on hand for just such an emergency.”
Before I could stop him, he slammed the orb onto the ground and shoved us both through the wavering dark portal that formed.
My stomach dropped as I stumbled into the darkness.
And then we stepped out into the Light.