If the story is true, her descendants have been walking among us ever since. The bloodline diluted, hidden, and nearly forgotten. But angels and demons love to gossip, and eventually, human ears twisted it into something monstrous. A devil-born child, sent to Earth as an omen of doom, destined to burn the world to ash.
The underborne tell it differently.
Some say the bloodline never existed. Others claim it faded—snuffed out by fear, by time, and by hunters who saw them as a threat. A few still cling to the delusion that she’s out there, waiting to save them. That there’s someone left.
But if that were true, wouldn’t we know by now?
Where the fuck were the so-called descendants when the underborne were being hunted like vermin?
When the Disciples built their empire on underborne bones?
Where was their supposed champion when I was the one spilling Disciple blood, doing Lucifer’s own work to keep his children from being erased?
And yet, the rumors persist. Maybe they were real. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe they ran. Maybe they’re still out there, hiding.
Maybe they’re just a story the underborne tell themselves to feel a little less alone.
Lucifer’s bloodline? Sure. And the Bermuda Triangle is just bad weather.
Fuck the stories and fuck the past. I don’t have time for either. But sitting here, staring at the facts laid out in front of me, I’m starting to think I don’t have the luxury of ignoring them.
They’re not whispers anymore. They’re screams.
What if the descendants aren’t just myths twisted by fear and time? What if they were never just stories? What if I’ve spent my whole existence so certain of what’s real and what’s bullshit that I never stopped to question it?
Real or bullshit. Doesn’t fucking matter. If I have to believe in something?
I’ll believe in her.
Because the moment I was close to Aurora, something was off.
Her energy hit me like a brick to the skull, so aggressively human that it felt … unnatural. Human energy isn’t supposed to announce itself like a goddamn neon sign flashingNORMAL HUMAN; LOOK ELSEWHERE.
It felt like a spell. One cast years ago. To hide her. To bury her.
Not from humans. From things like me.
It’s a story that shouldn’t be true, and yet I feel it. Deep in my marrow, in every immortal instinct I’ve spent millennia sharpening.
Aurora Hagan is something improbable but not impossible.
Something divine.
And I’m utterly, helplessly ensnared.
The fires of Hell burned in her eyes when I taunted her about her date. And when she came apart in my hands, I saw her halo, one not of light, but of fire. A flickering orange glow, both a warning and a promise of something greater.
The way she dared to speak to me—to yell at me, to command me—should’ve made me want to drag her into the dark and break her down to silence one beautiful scream at a time.
Instead, it made me want to fall to my knees. To press my forehead to the ground and beg. Not for mercy, but for her forgiveness.
To worship her.
To burn for her.
To give her every breath of my immortal existence without hesitation.
Because if the little goddess is what I think she is …
