Page 52 of Prince of Demons (Demon’s Mark #2)

Kesh

“ Y ou need to get yourself under control. Now.”

Kesh paused his pacing in the anterior room Kirigan had dragged him to after the incident with Lord Ithikan’s hand and bared his teeth at his father’s infuriatingly expressionless face. “You think I’m not? You think this… this farce would continue for so much as another second if I wasn’t?”

Kirigan’s expression stayed blank, but the weight in his gaze remained suffocating.

“You look at her like she is your undoing. You show your vulnerability with every breath, every movement. You revolve around her, and it is obvious to any man not too bespelled by the promise of her to look. We cannot afford this infatuation, Kesh. Forget what would happen if our supporters realized you’ve had her—that the only reason you didn’t claim her yourself was your Second’s interruption.

We’re at war, and if your focus doesn’t return to that singular fact soon, we’re going to lose.

You’re distracted by this girl, by the promise of her pheromones, believing it’s love. It’s not, I promise you.”

“And what would you know about love?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. They hung in the air between them, thick and acrid; an old wound rotting at the center.

“What would I know about love?” Kirigan’s voice was deceptively soft, but though his expression remained blank, something sick and unsteady flickered in the depths of his black eyes. “You ask me that, after what happened with your mother?”

“My mother? Love has nothing to do with what happened to her.” The wound ripped open.

Three decades worth of pus spilled out. “You happened. You broke her, just like I would break everything pure and light in Georgia if I let myself do what every instinct in me screams for. You think I think this is love? I know it isn’t!

I am not fucking capable of loving someone as good, as gentle, as her.

Just like you were never capable of loving my mother.

“Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We eradicate anything that feels good, anything that means something, until it’s as empty and dark and disgusting as the act that made us.

You raped my mother to create me, just like your father raped whatever hapless female birthed you.

That’s all we are. Generations upon generations of violations made flesh.

“I thought it was just you. Kain—Kain loves Selma. He was willing to let her go, to let her be free. But it’s not just you. It’s in me, too, this… fucking sickness!”

Snarling with the tension coiling in his chest, he punched a fist into the nearest wall, desperate for any sort of relief. None came, even as the plaster cracked and crumbled around his knuckles.

“I could have killed her! When I smelled her, I didn’t know—what if she hadn’t been Pure?

I would have killed her with my need. So no, Dad.

This isn’t love any more than you raping Mom until she took her life to escape you was love.

It is nothing but a monster aching to ruin the only good thing it’s ever encountered! ”

For a long time, Kirigan said nothing. Only Kesh’s ragged breathing filled the room. He knew he’d pushed too far, said things that should never have been voiced.

He didn’t care.

He couldn’t care about anything but the unbearable ache behind his ribs that had settled in ever since he realized what he’d done. How close he’d come to ending the creature of light who’d held him while he cried for his mother’s death. A death he’d nearly replicated with her.

“When your mother died, she took a part of me with her,” Kirigan said, the quietness in his voice anything but gentle. “Not because I loved her. I did not. What your brother found with his mate is not possible. Love for us is not possible, because it requires us to deny the very thing we are.

“No. The day I claimed her, she carved a slice of my innermost being and replaced it with her soul. My penance for taking her freedom. The price we all pay when we claim a mate. When she died, she left a hollow in me that will never be filled.

“I can’t stop Kain from giving a piece of himself away—it’s too late.

The damage is done. He’s forever tied to this…

fiery soul. And in her, he’s found the one thing that was never supposed to be possible for our kind.

Love.” His face twisted with the word. “He thinks it a blessing, but the truth is that it doesn’t matter what he feels for his Breeder.

She will always be a liability to him, a weakness he can do nothing to shed.

Which means I have to do anything and everything to ensure she doesn’t die. Because if she does… I will lose him.

“But as much as I can’t let you throw away our alliances for this Georgia and risk his Selma’s life in the fallout, I also can’t risk yours.

“If you give this Breeder a piece of yourself, as I gave mine to your mother, then you risk losing it when she decides she would rather end her life than live it with you. And trust me—nothing is worth that. Nothing. There is a reason most demons who lose their mates don’t survive it, Kesh.

You’ve seen what I’ve become. I will not allow the same fate to befall you.

Nor Kain. So yes, my son. You will get ahold of yourself.

You will let one of our allied lords mate her.

And if the need persists, then I will find you a female demon to slake your desires in.

I will handle this, Kesh. All you have to do is let go of a future that could never have been anything but misery. ”

This was the closest his father had ever come to verbalizing that Kesh's survival mattered to him. That he cared.

It was possibly as near to love as he could ever come.

And it tasted like ash.

“I don’t know how to let her go when the fate I’m surrendering her to is no better than what she would face with me.”

And there it was. The shameful truth he couldn’t suppress, no matter how hard he tried, admitted on a whisper so raw there was no place to hide.

Whoever mated his gentle little human would force her submission.

He was a monster; he would ruin her. His hands or those of some other monster, her fate was the same.

Yet his instincts screamed no.

His instincts promised him he would never hurt her.

But his instincts lied. He’d already hurt her.

“Kesh…” For a moment, there was a flicker of something almost like regret in his father’s eyes, so brief he might have imagined it, before the usual dark nothingness slid back in place. “She can’t be?—”

A knock on the door interrupted whatever he was about to say.

“Come in,” Kesh snapped, not wanting to hear his father’s denial of what his entire being screamed for.

Sefron opened the door. “Your Highness, Governor Maell wishes to know if you will keep the Pure Breeder long? The lords are eager to continue the courting ceremony.” He grimaced. “And by ‘eager’, I mean they’re about five minutes from ripping the horns off each other with impatience.”

Kesh frowned, his attention snapping fully to the guard.

“What do you mean, ‘will I keep her long’? She’s not with m—” Ice-cold dread crashed through his nervous system as realization hit his body before his brain.

He was moving before the full weight of terror hit. “Who took her? When did they take her?”

Sefron blinked, shock filtering over his features. “Your Highness, no one took her. Mallorn came to bring her to you about half an hour ago. He said you needed to see her.”

Mallorn.

The name rang through him like a hollow strike.

His Second. His most trusted friend, up until yesterday.

The man who’d accused him of using Georgia to manipulate him. Who’d seen him take the woman his friend had wanted for himself.

He’d felt fear before, especially since the gentle little Breeder came into his life, but nothing… nothing like this.

“Sound the alarm. Lock down my territory. No one gets in, no one gets out.”

“Your Highness, surely Mallorn wouldn’t?—?!”

“Do it!” Kesh spun back around to his father. “Call Kain. Tell him she’s gone. Tell him whatever the fuck he needs to know to deal with the fallout.”

“She’s disappeared under your care, Kesh. It’s prudent for you to stay and?—”

“I don’t give a shit what’s prudent! He took her. I’m getting her back. And so help me—if you try to stop me, you’ll be the first thing I burn.

Only silence followed him as he strode out of the room to find the woman he could no longer pretend he was capable of letting go.