Page 4 of Thane's Demon

His eyes softened.

It hurt.

It fucking hurt to see that look on his face, the one that suggested he still cared, the one that reminded me of everything I had lost, everything I could never reclaim because of him. Because of what I was. Because of what he didn’t save me from.

“How about peace?” he said,“… for your demon.”

Everything inside me went silent. Even the demon froze, as if suspended in ice.

‘Liar.

No.

We tried.

We suffered.

They left us.

They lied.

He cannot help us.’

“That isn’t possible,” I whispered, my voice a ghost before I gritted out… “I have tried. You know I have.”

Dominic stepped forward, slow and careful, as though approaching something dangerous and wounded. Something that might lash out simply because it had never known anything else. I was all of those things. He made me like this. He left me to rot among the worst of the world because he didn’t know what else to do with the monster he’d sired.

“I know,” he said softly. “And now I have found a way.”

Lucius stood behind him, silent, composed, watching me with a kind of pity I despised. Pity burned hotter than anger. Pity meant they saw the cracks, the weakness, the breaking points I tried so damn hard to bury. I hated that. I hated him for looking at me like that.

I hated all of it.

Dominic took another step. I felt the weight of his emotions pushing against mine, the conflict he tried to hide, the centuries of guilt he carried like a second spine. It bled through him, through the air between us, and for a moment, I hated that I could feel it at all.

“Are you willing to set your hatred aside and let me help you?” he asked.

I trembled, a slight, involuntary movement that felt like betrayal. My demon raged, hurling itself against the inside of my chest until I could barely breathe. My heart twisted in a way I did not understand, caught between the instinct to destroy and the impossible ache for something I had long ago decided I would never have.

‘Trust him.

Kill him.

Let him save us.

Rip out his throat.

Choose.

CHOOSE.’

“What do I have to do?” I asked at last, the words tasting bitter in my throat. My father, the man I referred to more by his name, stepped closer until I could see the parts of him that I inherited. The jawline, the raven black hair, the strength that had become my prison, the curse that lived in my blood. I hated it. I hated the mirror he put in front of me, reminding me with every breath that I was not made, my soul was engineered by fate and lineage and darkness.

“It’s easy,” he said gently. “You just have to let me help you.” Then he spoke the words that burned through my ribs like acid, words sharper than any blade the mob had ever put in my hand. “You just have to trust me, my son.”

My demon howled.

My chest cracked.