Page 21 of Drawn to the Demon Duke (Sombra Demons)

SUSANNA

FOUR DECADES LATER

T he ashbalm flower works.

You would think that, after living by Haures’s side for all these decades, I would’ve seen him use it.

Not so. He might project himself as the ruthless, powerful, haughty ruler of our world, but I know better.

There is no one in Sombra who understands the sanctity of the mate bond like our bondmaster.

True, there have been times that Haures sent some of our subjects into the shadows, searching for the flower.

There was a young demon who thought he made a mistake, bonding a Soleil demoness to him before his journey through the dark left him realizing how much he would risk to return to her.

And, of course, there was Hope, a human woman—and Sammael’s one true mate—that was sent on the same mission to repair their bond.

That was Sammael’s fault. His innocent questions about the human world were not as innocent as they seemed, and his wayward obsession only grew until he managed to get his claws on the Grimoire du Sombra , casting the matefinder spell on his own, and becoming a phantom for a time in my old realm.

The other human-mate pairs had their own unique troubles. Before I managed to convince Haures to let me go back for the spellbook—and he never did, sending Sammael to retrieve it instead… which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the smartest plan—another mortal read the spell.

My eight-year-old niece, Amelia.

All these years later, I still feel awful at how I reacted, though I wouldn’t have changed a thing I did.

At twenty-eight, I was more than ready to accept a demon mate.

At eight ? Amy was a child, and at my urging, Haures eventually gave Nox my old cell in the dungeon.

By the time we knew that my young niece was the mortal mate that Nox was going off-plan to visit after she summoned him, Amy was twelve.

Still way too young, and if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I would’ve agreed to his release fourteen years later (when Amy was twenty-six) if Nox hadn’t staged a dungeon-break himself.

That was, oh, two decades ago now. They are as happily mated as Haures and I still are, though Amy’s path took a different direction from mine.

I stayed in Sombra. Ever since Nox broke free to save her in a similar way that Haures once saved me, the newly bonded pair chose to stay in Connecticut, in my old house in Madison.

I gave it to her. I didn’t know, then, that Mindy was still paying my mortgage on top of hers, as though she was sure I’d one day come home to it.

My inheritance had paid for most of it, so the fee wasn’t that much, and by the time Amy was an adult, it was paid-up.

Now it’s hers, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that my niece is happy living with her mate in my old home, and Mindy?

She’s having a great life, even after all of the hardships she got dealt.

It wasn’t just me disappearing all those years ago, or how Haures’s first law means that I could never let her know that I was okay. Mindy’s not a mate. Amy is, so I only hope she found a way to ease my sister’s sadness, but I wasn’t the only one that vanished.

According to Amy, her father followed in her grandfather’s footsteps. Within a year of me summoning Haures and going to stay in Sombra, Mindy and Dan were divorced. Her husband took off, quickly becoming estranged to both Mindy and Amy.

I didn’t know then what caused it. Discovering recently that Dan was the ‘something important’ to me that Yelios kept in his keeping while waiting for my firstborn?

During the final confrontation, when Haures, Amy, her mate, and I arrived in the shadows to help rescue a stolen child, it was Dan Dillon that was spit out of the shadows in exchange for Shannon and Malphas’s infant.

I had no idea. Hearing him babble about how he went to my house after my disappearance, plotting to steal my spellbook and sell it for cash before Yelios’s shadows found him, snared him, and used him to do his bidding for nearly forty years… I should’ve felt remorse.

I didn’t.

I never thought Yelios would be able to hurt me.

In the last four decades, I’ve never left Mavro.

Haures refused to allow it, and I wouldn’t want to leave even if he did.

I believed he couldn’t reach across worlds—and, yes, I was wrong about that—and that by staying here, I was keeping everyone I cared about safe.

Though, if it came between Yelios turning Dan into his puppet or him taking over either Mindy or Amy…

I know who I would choose. I only hope that Dan appreciates that, even now, Haures is willing to show mercy when I ask for it.

Instead of leaving Dan to slowly lose his mind in the shadows, he brought me back to Mavro, then returned to retrieve my brother-in-law.

For the last few weeks, he’s been the new occupant of the cell that, so long ago, once was mine.

Between students from the School of Mages casting their spells over him, and a sweet demoness willing to watch over the addled human male, they’re trying to break Yelios’s hold on him.

The only hold left is one of Dan’s making.

Yelios might have used another demon’s essence to bond Dan to him as his servant, but when Yelios finally moved on, his tie to my brother-in-law ended.

He should recover in time, but if he doesn’t…

At least Amy will know that I tried.

For Mindy’s sake, I should’ve abandoned him.

If it was up to the human mother of the kidnapped child, she would’ve used Glaine’s sword to lop off Dan’s head.

But Amy… she understands why I stole her mate from her for so long, and doesn’t hold it against me.

Still, if I can return her father to her, maybe we can all start over.

The prophecy that has been hanging over my mate’s head for more than two thousand years has finally come to pass. And after it was over? I understood why Bandu was so certain that I would inevitably lead to the end of Sombra, to the point that he was willing to kill me—and then died for it.

Alana was the half-human, half-demon child spoken of in the prophecy.

However, if I had never found the spellbook…

if I had never worked so hard to translate it…

if I had never left my notes in the margin so that Shannon, Alana’s mother, could summon Malphas, her father, leading the two of them to create the child…

Yelios claimed that he knew what would happen in the future.

He believed that the child spoken of in the prophecy would be his lost mate returned to him; she was even given the same name, though Malphas did it in honor of the queen, not that she was Alana reborn.

But he believed that Haures and I would be the parents of that child.

That’s why he made me promise to give up my firstborn all those years ago, and why my mate and I have spent the last four decades from starting a family of our own.

I was the first human mate, but I wasn’t the only one. It could’ve been Amy, but before I could warn her of her fate should she get pregnant, she made the decision on her own not to have any children for the time-being.

But Shannon did, and the prophecy was set into motion.

It’s over now. Once upon a time, I looked at the promise of my happy-ever-after with Haures and agreed to start over. With Yelios gone, and Sombra saved until the doppelseers have another vision of our end, this… this is a new beginning.

Our new beginning.

And, to me, it’s fitting that it starts on the night of the gold moon…

Things have been so hectic. As much as I was happy to see Dagon find his mate in Sierra, I have to admit, I would’ve preferred his company to the young guard that has served as my bodyguard in the cycles since Dagon moved to stay with Sierra in the human world.

Lyre is a bit jumpy for a soldier, and I know that Haures gave him to my keeping because, otherwise, Glaine was prepared to send him away from the guards’ barracks on the outskirts of Mavro.

Still, he’s devoted and determined to keep the duchess safe, even though there hasn’t been another attempt on my life since Bandu.

Mainly because Haures let it be known that, to challenge me, was to end up as ash, just like the seer.

I am Sombra’s biggest open secret, amused every time I meet another demon who doesn’t know that Haures has a human woman for a mate.

If my very mortal name spelled out on his chest in silver ink wasn’t a clue, the fact that he’s been more prone to show me over the last decade or so should’ve been. It doesn’t matter.

Yelios is gone.

The threat to our firstborn child is over.

And Haures… my mate has the one thing he’s always wanted apart from his mate.

He has shadows .

I like to think that that was a parting gift from Yelios to Haures.

When my mate used his special gift as the bondmaster, plus the ashbalm flower that Shannon plucked in the dark woods while searching for her missing child, to break the last remnants of the bond between Alana and Yelios that kept him trapped here, he released his hold on the shadows.

I guess they needed to go somewhere. Haures got the bulk of them, with Amy’s mate, Nox, accepting the rest. Now Haures can finally change shapes, heal, and carry me off into the night’s sky with the dual moons as our backdrop.

And Nox? His stay in the dungeon—and subsequent break-out—left him damaged. Yelios’s shadows made him whole again.

Though, sometimes, I think that it wasn’t really the shadows that did. Same for Haures. I always thought it was so coincidental that, like me, Amy was meant for a Sombra demon. That the book found her, even though she went looking for the book, and that the magic worked.

After she returned to the human world with Nox after Yelios was gone, I’ve thought of it even more. And I’ve decided that, for some reason, we were both meant for Sombra demons in need. Like us Benoit women were made to bond two broken males, love them, and make them whole.

Nox spent fourteen years in the dungeon. Haures spent two thousand years in a prison of his own making, taking the throne from Yelios because he knew he’d have a mate, and her arrival would herald everything that happens leading up to the prophecy (and, well, did ).

I was able to bond with Haures despite him having no shadows. Amy was strong enough to take him when only a drop of his essence remained. It was Fate, and I’ve never been more content in my decision to choose Haures and promise myself to him than I am tonight.

Every day I love him more. Whether he wears the crystal crown, sits on the throne, or can change to shadows now… he’s my mate, and when I want him, all I have to do is tug on our bond.

The familiar white orb pops into existence. A moment later, Haures—with his inky-black skin, beautiful blue eyes, and dark hair that will become pale again once he turns solid—appears in our bedroom.

His feet touch the tile, instantly returning to the form I know so well and absolutely adore.

He crosses his arms over his chest, looking down at me with a hungry expression. “Su?”

“Mm,” is my non-committal answer.

What else do I have to say?

I’m stretched out on our bed, gloriously naked.

The book I’d asked Billie—Glaine’s brash yet kind mate—to borrow from Shannon’s Earth Library the last time she visited Nuit is perched by my side.

It’s a modern romance, where the human woman mates with a monster, and though I probably summoned my mate out of an important meeting in his throne room, I don’t care.

I need him. And when I need Haures, all I have to do is call.

Besides, the gold moon is out. Everyone in Sombra knows not to disturb a bonded pair when the gold moon is out.

For forty years, we had to be careful. While we could pleasure each other in every way that exists—and, after four decades, we former virgins might’ve figured them all out—to keep from getting pregnant with a child that the gods would make me give to Yelios due to my vow, intercourse was a no-go.

If he put his cock anywhere near my pussy during the night of the gold moon, I’d get pregnant instantly.

Ask Shannon. Ask Kennedy. Ask Sierra who doesn’t know it yet, but is carrying my future niece or nephew since Dagon is basically my brother.

And tonight?

It’s finally my turn.

And I know exactly what to say.

“Haures,” I whisper throatily, unable to hide my smile.

I might look like twenty-eight-year-old Susanna Benoit.

Thanks to the gift of immortality that comes with mating a Sombra demon, I feel like it, too.

But with four decades of love and affection and memories between us, when I say, “Please,” he knows exactly what I mean.

He is my demon duke.

I am his duchess.

And, tonight, we’ll finally take the next step in adding to our happily-ever-after…

I can’t friggin’ wait.