Chapter 28 #2
“Gone,” she answers simply. “My brothers died young—ten and twelve. My eldest brother passed the night of Emethye. One of my sisters died giving birth to her son. My eldest sister… is gone too.”
I don’t push. I don’t even try to ask about parents. She doesn’t give me the chance, anyway.
“How old were you when you turned?” she asks.
“Thirty-eight.”
“Any siblings?”
Lucifer always kept himself separate from my past. He was afraid to know too much—afraid it would hurt more when he eventually walked away. He warned me about it, countless times.
So getting to tell someone about myself now?
Yeah… I love it more than I should.
“Three adopted,” I say. “Two brothers and a sister. We were… sort of close.”
Her head shifts, and when I glance down, she’s looking up at me. “Adopted?”
“Yeah. My parents wanted a big family. They adopted me when I was four, my brothers when they were two and one after their parents died in a car accident, and my sister when she was twelve.” I snort under my breath. “They said there was too much testosterone and we needed balance.”
“This makes sense now.”
“Hey, now.”
I wrap my arm lightly around her neck and pull her in just enough to make her squeak.
Gods, when she lets go—when she stops bracing for the world—she is so fucking adorable. The giggle she tries to smother as she pushes at me makes me feel like an idiot for not realizing earlier how much of her has been armor.
“I’m serious! You’re so into yourself.”
I laugh and roll my eyes. She’s not wrong.
I am good-looking, and funny, and a decent person—and I know it.
“My dads never thought I was full of myself… My siblings did, though. Pretty sure they said it was in my DNA.”
She stops squirming. For a moment, I worry I said something wrong—but it’s the truth.
They raised me. I was the oldest, and they made sure I knew it was my job to keep everyone safe, but also to harden them in the right ways.
I did that until the day they died of old age—on their own terms, never before their time.
“Dads?” she asks quietly.
“Mhmm. Jacob and Demitrious Butcher. Great men. They took us in and raised us right—well, in my opinion.”
“You may be full of yourself,” she murmurs, “but you’re… a pretty decent person.”
“Watch yourself, little slayer. You may start sounding like you actually like me.”
Her voice softens. “In all seriousness, you…” She hesitates, then finishes quietly, “You’re great. But don’t let it go to your head.”
It’s definitely going to a head.
But I shift the conversation before she can catch the way my body reacts—she’d bolt straight through the windshield, I just know it.
“They lived a long life,” I say. “Died together in a home of old age.”
“I’m sorry.”
I loosen the arm I have around her and slide it down until my hand rests against her forearm. I trace my thumb along her skin without thinking. “It’s fine. I’m sure they’re partying in the Vayl.”
She nods and settles against me again, the tension from earlier fading. “How’d you turn?”
“Oh, now we’re getting personal.” I smirk. “Pretty sure it’s my turn to ask you a question.”
She doesn’t press, but I answer anyway.
“When I was a Mundane, I developed stage four brain cancer.” Her whole body goes rigid, and I immediately curl my hand around her elbow, thumb brushing in small, steady passes.
“I had an acquaintance who was a Vampire. He asked me if I wanted to die, or live until I chose to die.”
“And of course,” she murmurs, “you’d dictate even your own life ending.”
“I sure as shit did. And I don’t regret a damn thing.”
“I’m glad…” I hear through the bond.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel with my free hand, wishing—for maybe the first time ever—that I’d pulled over somewhere and gotten us a hotel.
Even if I have some filthy thoughts about what I’d like to do to her…
it’s not just about that. I like this simple contact, and fuck me do I want more of it.
She’s probably put me under a spell. Has to be.
“My turn,” I say, looking down at her. Her head is tipped back, eyes on the ceiling like she’s bracing herself.
“Sure.”
“How many?” At her silence, I add, “Scars.”
“On my back?”
“Yeah. Has to be over a hundred.”
She breathes out slowly. “One hundred and thirty-six.” My stomach drops. “One for each of the children that died that day.”
The rage that hits me is instant and blinding. My bones vibrate with it. She was hexed, sentenced to several lifetimes of torment. Starved, isolated, beaten—and they still lashed her? They carved guilty into her skin like it was a tally mark.
“Do they know you didn’t do it?” My voice comes out rougher than I intend.
“No,” she says quietly. “But to be fair… I didn’t fight the sentencing. They saw what they saw.”
“But how—”
She sighs—loud, exhausted—and tries to pull away.
I don’t let her.
“Don’t run from this.”
Her head dips, and when she places her hand on my abs, I tense. Her fingertips are ice cold now, freezing against my skin. They were warm a moment ago. The change was so sudden…
I nearly pull the truck over, but she stops resisting. She looks up at me instead and… smiles. It’s forced and not nearly as real as the ones from earlier.
I know her true one now—the one that softens her entire face and crinkles her right eye. The one that makes her freckles light up.
This smile barely lifts her cheekbones. It stretches but never reaches her eyes.
“I’ve never ran a day in my life, Kayn,” she says softly. The crack in her forehead has spread—past her eyebrow now, spidering downward. “Well… maybe if you count when I tried to escape being captured in Sylverton, but I’m not.”
She hesitates, searching for a truth she’s terrified to speak.
“I’m not running from you. That’d be stupid considering you could catch me. This is learning a behavior I’ve never known,” she whispers. “Slowly.”
“And that is?” I ask.
Her eyes shift; indigo swirling between blue and violet, a storm of pain barely held together.
“Trust. Trust that, for once, I won’t make a decision that will destroy me.”