Page 178 of Dark Souls

Fuck.Poor kid. These assholes were more twisted than I thought. To deny their daughter her own soulmate just because of status.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

The smile that lit up his face was full of heartbreak and joy as the word slipped from his lips. “Lia.”

I let him sit with his feelings for a moment. I could tell it was the first time he had said her name aloud for years, and it clearly had an effect on him. He rubbed his hand down his face and then looked at me.

“Do you have a soulmate?”

I exhaled as Ilaria’s face flashed before my eyes. Her beauty doing just what Hayes had described; it took my breath away. “Yeah. Her name’s Ilaria.”

The realisation that this was the first time I had told someone she was mine hit me like a lightning bolt, shocking me to my core. That wasn’t fair. I wanted to tell the world she was mine. Scream it from the fucking rooftops. And here I was, telling the one and only person I’d probably ever get a chance to tell.

Hayes’ eyes had widened dramatically. “As in Ilaria Romano-Black? The vampire princess?”

Muscles I rarely used twitched in my face as a resemblance of a smile appeared. “Yeah. That’s my woman.”

“And that before…” He glanced over to where I had been hunched over, fighting against the unbearable pain through our bond.

I shook my head, the memory instilling rage once again. “Someone was touching her. Someone that shouldn’t have been.”

“You’re bonded?” Hayes asked in surprise.

“Partly,” I replied, pulling myself back to my feet and turning slowly in a circle to assess our surroundings once more.

“What do you mean? Partly?”

“Don’t freak out on me. I’m a Demonski Upir.” I was done hiding who I was from the world. If I was going to die, I was going to do it unashamed.

“I have no idea what that is,” he muttered, looking me up and down suspiciously.

“I’m part vampire, part demon.” I walked over to one side of the cave, tugging on a large, protruding rock and pulling it down to find only more layers of rock behind it.

“Demon?” Hayes questioned, also standing to his feet. “As in… horns and wings from the Underworld demon?”

“That’s right. We have forked tongues, too.”

Hayes snorted. “That must be useful.” I smirked, tugging another rock free from the wall. “But doing that is no use. We are deep in the centre of the cave. I’ve tried digging down, digging through. The only way out is up. Why don’t you just shift into your demon and fly out?”

“Wouldn’t that be an idea,” I muttered under my breath and then turned to face Hayes when the rocks just continued to crumble to nothing at my feet but never gave me a slither of hope that there was any way out. “The prick that put you down here? Mitchell? He controls my demon. I don’t.”

“Ah, shit,” Hayes rubbed his hands together, blowing into them to warm them against the bitter chill. “Is your demon more likely to eat me?”

“Oh, a hundred percent,” I said matter-of-factly, which made all the colour drain from his face. “But only if you piss him off.”

“Noted,” Hayes whispered.

A loud cawing sound echoed down into the cave and we both glanced up at the opening to see the black silhouette of a raven circling above. The side of my lips lifted as it swooped down through the entrance and flew down to perch on a boulder. I held my hand up to Hayes and pressed my other finger to my lips to signal him to stay still and quiet. Slowly, I approached the raven as it cocked its head to the side, its beady eyes taking me in from head to toe.

“Are you following me, Raven?” I asked as it flapped its wings in response and dropped whatever it was carrying in its beak. It jumped back as I reached for the black velvet fabric with the diamond stone dangling from it. “No fucking way.” I grabbed Ilaria’s choker, the same one that she’d told me had a hidden camera in it, which had outed me to her Aunt Sienna. My eyes lifted to the raven as he bowed its head low before cawing.

“Friend of yours?” Hayes asked, staring at the raven with just as much curiosity.

“You could say that.” I turned to Hayes, holding up the choker between us. “Time to expose the truth.”

Finding Forever

Hana