Now he turned away from her, murmuring to himself in a language she didn’t know.
Kesh stepped forward as his father went to one of the bookshelves farthest from them. He glanced from the mad demon to her, wariness still evident on his features. A faint trail of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.” As all right as she could be after having been subjected to an insane demon, at least. Her pulse was still drumming rapidly in her throat.
“I’m… sorry I let him do that. I was unprepared, and I failed you.”
Kesh looked distinctly uncomfortable, and it suddenly dawned on her that despite how mistrustful he might be of her, she likely still reeked of fear. Undoubtedly, that scent was wreaking havoc on his instincts. But like his brother, he was fighting to control himself.
“Why doesn’t it affect him?” Selma lowered her voice a tad and glanced at Kirigan. “My scent?”
Kesh growled as he gave his father’s back a dirty look. “Who the fuck knows?”
“It does, in a way.” Kirigan turned back to them without looking up from the leather-bound book he was leafing through. “But your pheromones work by upsetting our ability to calm our nervous systems, and I have lost the ability to feel much of anything. Therefore, the added aggravation of a frightened Breeder isn’t too difficult to ignore.”
Selma kept quiet, though she had a hard time believing he was telling the full truth. The way he clung to his liquor-filled glass suggested he was more likely trying to desperately numb feelings too painful for him to cope with—and she’d seen a glimpse of what lay beneath his dead gaze.
Agony. Madness. Despair. It was more likely he could ignore her scent’s effect because he was drowning in a nightmare much worse than what her scent could compete with.
Despite her fear of him, and despite what Kain had told her he’d done to his mate and her human family, she pitied him.
“I first came across a reference to what you just showed us many years ago,” he continued as if he hadn’t just threatened her with killing her unborn child to make the light inside of her burst out against her will. “This text mentions ‘the powerful light within the Seers.’ I am old enough to remember when your kind was something other than our mates and mothers. Did you know we weren’t always able to mate with the women who see us for what we truly are?”
Selma nodded, errantly wondering exactly how old the being in front of her was. As far as she understood, her kind had been known as Breeders for centuries.
He smiled, though it looked more like a grimace. “Then you also know we have the gods to thank for that—and the traitor queen, of course, may she burn in the fiery pits of the Earth. What I don’t understand is how you can access it when there have been no other incidents as far as we know.”
Love. Bealtih had claimed the key to unlocking the lost power was love. Though Selma highly doubted no woman had ever loved her demon captor, at least after some time. Stockholm Syndrome was a thing, after all.
Maybe it was because of Kain. If no other demon had ever loved his mate so unconditionally that they were willing to give them up, perhaps he was the reason for her newfound strength.
Not that she wanted to test Kirigan’s mental stability by talking about love and gods.
Thankfully he didn’t seem to be expecting an answer, and his gaze remained thoughtful and distant rather than burning into hers as it had when he was determined to force her to speak.
“Yes, well, whatever it is, musing about it won’t help us get Kain. Let’s just focus on bringing him back—he chose to claim a mate, so he can also deal with her unstable power,” Kesh interrupted. He’d folded both arms over his chest, looking like he was more than ready to pawn her and her unexpected issue off on his brother at the first opportunity. Apparently this demon Lord had had enough of babysitting a wayward Breeder.
“But on the contrary, my son.” Kirigan’s mouth quirked lightly at one corner, lending his expression a wicked slant. “This is exactly what we need to focus on to get Kain back. A Breeder capable of killing our kind? The females will never see it coming, and it will lend us the element of surprise we need in order to overpower them.”
“Absolutely not!” Kesh’s scowl dropped in favor of pure outrage, and in the next moment, he shoved her behind his back. “I am not taking her into the middle of the queen’s territory! Kain left her for me to protect, not you, and there is no way I’m risking her life on such a folly!”
“In case you haven’t noticed, she’s not exactly a helpless little darling. Do you have a better plan?”
“She is untrained. We have no guarantee she’ll be able to call on her power at will, not to mention what will happen to whatever men we bring with us. The second something scares her, they’ll likely abandon their positions to protect her, risking the entire fucking operation. It’s not going to happen, and I don’t care how bloody you beat me—I’d rather risk your wrath than have to live with the knowledge that I caused a Breeder’s death!”
The last sentence hung in the air between them like a solid entity in the room. Selma winced, desperately praying that the harsh words didn’t cause Kirigan to go over the deep end.
But when he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled.
“If you learned anything from your mother’s death, it should have been that no one can force these creatures to bend to our urge to possess them. Not in the long run. Now do yourself a favor and ask the little one what she wants to do.”
“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” he hissed, though his voice had lost some of its power. “She’s my responsibility.”
Selma sighed from her protected vantage point and placed a palm against his back. From what little she’d managed to learn about them, a demon as agitated as Kesh needed a gentle hand.
“I’m going, Kesh.”
