Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
I feed and feed and feed, and the ache in my abdomen subsides.
When my child and I are both sated, I release Rogan, and within another moment, he’s naked and fully human.
He stands, his muscles large and taut.
“You can’t kill him, princess,” he growls, his voice not yet his own.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because your mother will never forgive you.” This from Richard. “And I don’t relish the sight of your bare ass, wolf.”
“Fuck off,” Rogan says without turning toward my stepfather. Then to me, “But he’s right. The demons want to dethrone him.”
I drop my jaw. “A mutiny?”
“Yes. And they think you and I are the key. But we can’t be, Hannah. We can’t be.”
“What’s going on?” I demand. “With the war? The ether? What is the ether, Rogan? Are we there now?”
Rogan shakes his head. “There’s much I still don’t understand about the ether. Things my father should have told me before he died, but he didn’t get the chance. But”—he gestures backward, toward Richard—“he knows. And so does your father.”
I grab my hair with both hands. “Too much information. The ether. I need to know. But first…” I glare at Richard. “Why do the demons want to dethrone you? What the fuck have you done to them?”
“I’ve done nothing,” he says, his eyes glowing red. “But they consider my love for your mother a weakness.”
I shake my head. “Good. I’m happy to help the demons along in their mutiny.”
“No.” Rogan steps in front of me. “Don’t. It’s what he wants you to do.”
“He wants me to kill him?”
“Don’t you see? He’ll do anything to keep your mother from coming back to you. Anything.”
“But my mother was with me. She was with me at my place in Chicago.”
Rogan reaches toward me, touches my cheek.
I burn at the contact. I don’t want to burn, but I do.
Because despite my father manipulating our pheromones and making us want each other, I’ve fallen in love.
I’ve fallen in love with the father of my child.
It’s why I let him go. I love him enough to let him find his true mate.
“I need you whole, princess,” he whispers, “and you’ll never be whole if you kill your mother’s husband.”
24
For a split second, I consider it.
I consider taking my stepfather’s life.
He’s injured. Weak. And the other demons want him dethroned.
How would it feel to be the sword that ends his reign of evil?
Perhaps my mother would never forgive me, but she forsook me long ago. Would she even care if she had to disown me?
But I jolt as my abdomen flutters. It’s too early to feel the child kick, but it’s speaking to me in some way.
And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this child is paramount. Not only to me and to Rogan, but to my mother.
She needs to know what it feels like to love a baby again. She was a good mother once. A caring and giving mother. She protected me from my father when I was young, but then…Richard…
He and his evil ways made her see and feel only him. She lost all emotion for Larissa and me…and that’s exactly what Richard wanted. We were nothing, and he made sure we knew it. He had a special disdain for me—the rebel, the bad seed. Larissa was good and I was evil.
Until I left home.
Then he turned on her as well.
Funny. All those years he convinced my mother that I was the embodiment of evil, when in truth? He was the fucking demon king. Evil personified.
King fucking Richard.
The names he called me—those vicious names that most people wouldn’t call their worst enemy.
And my mother allowed it. Did nothing to stop it. Accepted all his lies without question.
The baby nudges me again.
He—in this instant, I know he’s a boy—doesn’t like the thoughts I’m having about his grandmother. Odd, to be sure. I could be imagining it. In fact, it’s likely. Because no matter how much she hurt me, made me feel like nothing, I never stopped loving her. Never stopped wanting her approval.
Funny. I don’t feel the same way about my father. I never sought his approval, and now I’m bound to him through our shared vampire bloodline.
“Don’t do it, Hannah,” Rogan says again.
When he calls me Hannah, I know he’s serious.
I regard him in all his naked glory. He’s like a Greek statue, all muscle and sinew and pure, raw man.
“Your mother won’t forgive you,” Richard says again.
“Don’t you say another fucking word to me,” I grit out. “You’re nothing to me. You never were.”
Richard cackles, and I swear to God a shadow of a snake slithers out of his mouth. “Do you think that matters to me, bitch? I never wanted you. Only your mother. But you are her child, and you won’t kill me.”
I draw in a breath, let his words flow through me and out of me.