Forever.
Even so, she moved a little closer to Urian. “There are a lot more here than there were before.”
“Aye. More come here every day to seek refuge from the human world.”
“Like your soon-to-be bride.”
He nodded.
“Yet you do not love her.”
Urian froze at those words.
His mother slid a gimlet stare toward him. “Deny it if I’m wrong.”
The problem was, she’d seen a truth he didn’t like admitting out loud. A truth he did his best to conceal from everyone.
Even himself.
But she was his mother and she knew his heart better than anyone other than Xyn, who had also commented on a fact he couldn’t hide from her either.
His mother’s face fell instantly as tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, baby … why are you doing this if you don’t love her?”
“She feeds me, Mata. No one else will. I have to have blood to live.”
Swallowing hard, she squeezed his arm. “I’m so sorry, Urian. You deserve to have a fiery passion. The kind that makes you mindless and—”
“Nay, Mata,” he said, cutting her off before someone overheard her words and carried them to Xanthia. “I don’t want that. Ever. Our lives are too short. I want control of myself. We have to have that in order to survive.”
She scoffed. “My pragmatist. You’re too young to be so old. So jaded. What has killed the boy inside you?”
His gaze went to where his father sat alone on his cold, black throne made of the bones of Misos’s enemies, and old memories stirred inside him. “That boy died the night I saw my father go Daimon after his own father tried to end his life, and I realized that there is no mercy in this world for any of us. We are all damned from the cradle to the grave. Life isn’t for the meek. It’s for those too stubborn to give in.”
She sucked her breath in sharply. “What have they done to you?”
Simple. He’d been slapped on the ass the moment he’d arrived into this world, covered in someone else’s blood, and life had been steadily kicking his ass ever since. Without stopping or hesitating. Honestly, he was punch-drunk from it all.
It seemed as if every time he thought he could stand up and breathe, someone or something else came along with a stunning blow that knocked him to his knees. He could never catch a break.
But he didn’t want her to worry. “Nothing, Mata. I merely gave in to the demon inside me sooner than the others. Instead of fighting him, I embraced him as a necessary part of me. Now we snuggle up under the covers as great bedfellows. After all, we are Daimons, aren’t we?”
Her eyes saddened over his words. “You’re part human, Uri, and you’re not a Daimon yet.”
But he couldn’t afford to be human. Not now. Not ever. That would only get him killed. Just as it had done Davyn’s family.
The meek only inherited earth six feet beneath their feet.
And he was about to have his own family to look after.
Time for childhood was over. This world didn’t allow for compassion or mercy. It required vigilance and a merciless sword arm.
After tonight, he would be a husband and a father himself. He had much more than just himself to think about now. His gaze went to Nephele and Geras.
To Xanthia.
Much more.
“Urian? You’re scaring me.” No one could miss the terror in his mother’s kind voice.
