Page 8 of Demon Daddy’s Hidden Son (Demon Daddies #7)

The trail eventually levels out, winding through dense stands of trees whose trunks disappear into the mist like ancient pillars holding up the sky. My head pounds with each step, but I keep moving because stopping means facing the emptiness where my memories should be.

Smoke. The scent reaches me before I see its source—woodsmoke tinged with something savory that makes my empty stomach clench with sudden, desperate hunger. I follow the smell like a lifeline, pushing through undergrowth that catches at my torn clothing.

The village emerges from the fog gradually, as if the mist is reluctant to reveal its secrets.

Houses carved from dark stone and weathered timber nestle into the hillsides, their sod roofs sprouting with wildflowers and moss.

Warm light glows from windows fitted with what looks like colored glass, casting pools of blue and green radiance onto the muddy paths between buildings.

A river runs along the village's edge, so still and pale it mirrors the sky perfectly. The sight of it makes something twist in my chest—not quite a memory, but the ghost of one.

"Saints and spirits." The voice comes from behind me, rough with surprise. "Girl, what happened to you?"

I turn too quickly and nearly fall as dizziness washes over me.

A woman stands in the doorway of what might be a shop or cottage, her iron-gray hair braided down her back and pale green eyes sharp with concern.

She's thin but sturdy, built like someone who's weathered decades of hard work without complaint.

"I don't—" My voice cracks. "I can't remember."

She steps closer, her gaze taking in my torn clothes and bloodied scalp with the practiced efficiency of someone accustomed to crisis. "Fleeing something, are you?"

The assumption settles over me like an uncomfortable cloak. Am I fleeing? The word feels wrong, but I can't explain why.

"Come on then." She doesn't wait for an answer, just takes my arm with gentle firmness and guides me toward her door. "No use standing out here catching your death. I'm Marnai. Elder Marnai, if you want to be formal, but that can wait until you're not bleeding on my threshold."

The cottage interior smells like herbs and woodsmoke, with bundles of dried plants hanging from the rafters and shelves lined with jars containing things I can't identify.

Marnai guides me to a chair beside a stone hearth where flames dance behind a metal grate, casting dancing shadows on the walls.

"Tolle!" she calls toward what must be another room. "Get yourself out here. We've got someone who needs tending."

Heavy footsteps announce the arrival of a broad-shouldered man with ruddy skin and graying beard. He smells like cloves and pine sap, and his hands are stained green from whatever work he was doing. His eyes fix on my bloodied head with the intensity of someone evaluating damage.

"Scalp wound," he grunts, moving closer to examine the injury. "Not deep, but head wounds bleed like the devil himself. When did this happen?"

"I don't know." The admission tastes like failure. "I don't remember."

Tolle and Marnai exchange glances loaded with meaning I can't decipher. He disappears into the back room and returns with a basin of water, clean cloths, and a collection of small bottles that clink softly as he sets them on the table.

"Hold still." His hands are surprisingly gentle as he cleans the blood from my hair, his touch clinical but not unkind. "Might sting a bit."

The antiseptic burns, but the pain is clean and immediate—easier to bear than the throbbing confusion in my skull. While he works, Marnai bustles around the kitchen area, ladling something that smells like heaven into a wooden bowl.

"What's your name, child?" she asks, setting the bowl in front of me along with a spoon and a piece of bread still warm from the oven.

My mouth opens, but nothing comes. The question hits the same blank wall as all the others, leaving me staring at two strangers who are showing me more kindness than I can remember receiving from anyone.

Marnai's expression softens. "That's all right. Happens sometimes with head injuries. But let's see if we can't find some clues."

She reaches for something at my throat, and I flinch away instinctively before realizing she's only touching a chain around my neck. When did I put that on? I have no memory of it, but her fingers work at a clasp I can't see.

"There's an inscription." She holds up a pendant, angling it toward the firelight. "Kaleen. Pretty name for a pretty girl."

Kaleen. The word resonates through me, not quite memory but a sense of rightness, like a key turning in a lock I didn't know was there.

"Kaleen," I repeat, testing how it feels in my mouth. It fits.

"Well then, Kaleen." Marnai settles the necklace back around my throat with gentle hands. "Eat your soup before it gets cold. Tolle's broth could raise the dead, and you look like you need raising."

The soup is rich with vegetables I can't name and seasoned with herbs that taste like comfort itself. Each spoonful sends warmth spreading through my chest, easing some of the bone-deep chill I hadn't fully noticed until now.

"Are you the only one?" Tolle asks as he applies something that smells sharply medicinal to my scalp. "Or should we be watching for others?"

Others. The word brings a flutter of—something. Fear? Hope? I can't tell.

"I don't know." It's becoming my standard response to everything, and the frustration makes my eyes burn. "I woke up alone in the forest. I don't remember anything before that."

Marnai nods as if this explains everything. "Well, you're safe now. Veylowe doesn't get many visitors, but we take care of our own."

Veylowe. Another word that means nothing to me, though the way she says it suggests home and safety and belonging—things I'm not sure I've ever had.

Over the following days, more villagers drift through Marnai's cottage to catch glimpses of the stranger who appeared from the mountain mist. They bring offerings—fresh bread from someone who must be a baker, soft wool blankets that smell like lavender, healing tonics that numb the persistent ache in my head.

A woman named Derri arrives on the third day with ink-stained fingers and kind eyes, carrying a leather-bound book under one arm. She asks gentle questions about what I remember, writing down my fragmentary answers with careful script.

"Sometimes memories come back gradually," she says, not looking up from her writing. "Like a dam that's been damaged—just a trickle at first, then more."

But the trickle never comes. Days pass in a haze of carefully crafted routine.

I help Marnai with small tasks around the cottage, learning the rhythms of village life without ever feeling like I truly belong to them.

The other villagers are kind but cautious, watching me with the wariness of people who've learned to be suspicious of strangers.

It's Derri who notices the changes in my body before I do.

"You're looking peaked," she mentions one morning as I help her sort through supplies for the village school. "More tired than someone your age should be after a head injury that's mostly healed."

I pause in my counting of slate pencils, suddenly aware of the bone-deep exhaustion that's been plaguing me for days.

And the nausea that strikes at random moments, usually when someone's cooking something that should smell appetizing.

And the way my clothes have started feeling tight across my chest and waist, though Marnai's generous meals should account for that.

"It's probably just?—"

"When was your last bleeding?" Derri's question is gentle but direct, the kind of practical inquiry from one woman to another that cuts through polite pretense.

My last... The question hits that familiar wall of nothingness, but this time there's something else. A flutter of awareness, like recognition at the edge of consciousness.

"I don't remember."

But even as I say it, my hand drifts to my stomach of its own accord. The gesture feels familiar, protective. Like something I've done before.

Derri sets down her pen and really looks at me for the first time in days. Her gaze is knowing, experienced—the look of a woman who's delivered enough babies to recognize the signs without needing confirmation.

"Oh, child." Her voice carries a weight of understanding that makes my chest tighten with something between hope and terror. "You don't know, do you?"

"Don't know what?" But I do know, somewhere beneath the damaged surface of my mind. The knowledge sits in my body like a secret I've been keeping from myself.

"You're with child. Have been for months, by the look of things."

The words hit me like a physical blow, sending me stumbling backward until my legs encounter a chair and I collapse into it. Pregnant. The concept seems impossible and inevitable all at once, explaining so many things I hadn't understood about my body's recent changes.

But if I'm pregnant, that means?—

"Where's the father?" The question tears out of me with desperate urgency. "There has to be someone. I wouldn't have—I couldn't have?—"

Memories slam into me without warning. Not clear images, but emotional echoes. The sensation of being held. Of feeling safe. Of loving someone so completely that their absence leaves a hollow ache in my chest.

Someone who mattered. Someone I've lost.

My hands shake as I press them to my stomach, feeling for the first time the subtle roundness that my torn clothes had been hiding. Beneath my palms, something flutters—so faint I might be imagining it.

"How long?" My voice sounds strange, disconnected from my body. "How far along?"

Derri's expression is carefully neutral, the look of someone delivering news that could go either way. "Hard to say without proper examination, but... four months. Maybe five."

Four months. Does that means I knew? Before whatever happened on the mountain, before the blood and the emptiness and the fear, did I know about this baby? Plan for it, prepare for it? Maybe even wanted it?

I'm not sure.

But now the knowledge brings only terror—sharp and crystalline and utterly consuming.

I don't remember the father. Don't remember deciding to have a child or feeling joy at the prospect. Don't remember anything that would help me understand what this means or what I'm supposed to do now.

A sob builds in my chest, part grief and part panic. Someone loved me enough to give me this child. Someone who might be searching for me right now, wondering what happened to his woman and his baby. But I can't remember his face, can't even remember his name.

"Shh." Marnai appears at my side as if summoned by my distress, her weathered hands gentle on my shoulders. "Easy, child. Everything's going to be all right."

"How can it be all right?" The words come out broken, desperate. "I don't remember anything. I don't know who I am or where I came from or who—" My voice cracks on the impossibility of it all. "What kind of mother forgets the father of her child?"

"The kind who's been through trauma." Marnai's tone brooks no argument. "Head injuries are tricky things. But you're safe here, and that baby's safe here. That's what matters right now."

Safe. The word should be comforting, but instead it feels like a cage. Safe means staying in this village that feels like borrowed clothes—pleasant enough, but never quite fitting right. Safe means accepting that the life I had before, the person I was before, might be gone forever.

But as another flutter moves beneath my hands—stronger this time, unmistakably real—I realize that whatever I've lost, I'm not entirely alone. This child is a piece of my previous life, a connection to whoever I used to be.

Even if I can't remember him, somewhere out there is a man who helped create this life. A man who might be looking for us both.

The thought brings a mixture of hope and terror so intense it makes me dizzy. What if he doesn't find us? What if he does, but I don't recognize him? What if I've forgotten him completely, but he still loves the woman I used to be?

"One day at a time," Derri says softly, as if she can read the chaos in my expression. "Memory or no memory, your body knows what to do. Trust that."

I want to trust something, but faith feels like a luxury I can't afford when everything I am exists in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

Still, as the fire crackles in Marnai's hearth and the baby moves again under my trembling hands, I try to find some small piece of solid ground to stand on.

My name is Kaleen. I'm pregnant. I'm alive.

For now, that has to be enough.