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It wasn’t supposed to matter.Hellhounds were brothers, all of us.We weren’t separated into families, at least those of us not mated.That’s not how we were.Lucifer created us—that made us his children, that made us brothers, pack, family, if that was the word you chose to use.

But somehow Kurgan understood on a deeper level that I was his.

That he wasn’t Lucifer’s creation—that he was mine.

His family.

His blood.

That I was his sire.

Did he know that I was the reason he was broken as well?That it was my fault he was locked away, separated from the female chosen for him?That I’d done this?That he suffered this way because of me?

I was the poison in his veins.

Relic wasn’t the only hound to come from Lucifer’s experiment all those years ago, but Relic was the only success.

Both Kurgan and Relic were the first hounds born naturally, instead of being created full grown by Lucifer like the rest of us.They were the first pups born without mated parents, since back then none of our brothers had been mated.Lucifer chose me and Lothar to sire the pups and used our seed to impregnate demon females who volunteered for the task.

Relic was born healthy.

Kurgan had been born damaged.

I knew without doubt that I was the poison that made Kurgan this way, because Lucifer had inseminated another demon female with my seed at the same time, and my second pup had been born so sick, he’d only survived a few hours.I’d held him in my arms before he’d slipped away, wrapped in one of my shirts, surrounded by my scent for comfort.Something had cracked inside me when he’d taken his last shaky breath.The handmaids had taken him from me—and emotions I’d never felt before had spilled out, had almost shattered me.

I’d been so incapacitated by what I was feeling, I’d almost lost my mind.The only person I’d spoken to about it was Lucifer.It was a fucked-up time, both me and Lothar hadn’t been acting like ourselves after siring our pups.A lot of time had passed since then and memories faded, but I knew for a fact that mating wasn’t the only way to force a hound to develop emotions—pups could do it as well—mate or not.I knew firsthand.

Lucifer had fixed me, though.He’d erased those emotions when I’d fucking begged him to take them away, and thank fuck he had.He’d sealed my emotions back up tight so I could function again, but the memory of what I’d felt, had remained.

The memory of loving that pup, of seeing him suffer, watching him die—it was all still there.I hadn’t forgotten the way I’d felt about him or Kurgan, and sitting here with him now, I realized those feelings weren’t just memories anymore.It wasn’t as big as back then, but it was there, like a whisper growing louder.

Kurgan was mine.My son, and that connection burned in the center of my chest now.

Sutton had done that, hadn’t she?

She was the reason I was unraveling.Somehow, she was breaking through.

But how?Fucking how?Because there was only one way that could happen, and Lucifer promised that would never happen for me.Locking away my emotions wasn’t the only thing I’d asked him to do during that dark time—I’d also asked him to make sure I never found a mate, whatever it took.

I knew what it was to feel everything, all the pain and grief and hopelessness that came with losing someone you loved.I’d been there, I’d done that, and it had nearly destroyed me.I couldn’t have that.Not again.

I rubbed my temples, my fucking head pounding.When I looked up, I caught Kurgan doing the same thing, mimicking me again because he’d been so fucking isolated that he barely knew what the fuck he was.I didn’t think he’d even seen himself in a mirror.

His gaze slid between my hand and his, and he wiggled his fingers, then grinned.

“Female?”he asked again, the grin slipping.

Fuck.I wanted to take him out of here so badly, let him free, but if I did, he’d go straight to Lenny and kill her, because that’s what he did.He killed anyone, anything, he didn’t trust, and being close to Lenny again, along with the mix of those instincts and the desire to mate, and that little female would be dead in minutes.

“She’s safe,” I said again.“No one can hurt her.”

“Meat?”

“She’s got all the food she could ever need.”

He looked back down at his hand, then back up at me.“I can…get her meat,” he said, his voice rusty as hell as he tugged on the chain hooked to the cuff around his throat.

That was more than I’d heard him say in a fucking long time.I shook my head.“You have to stay in here.”