What now?
Caleb turned, expecting to find an enemy there.
It wasn’t an enemy. He staggered back in disbelief at something that couldn’t be real.
Was he dreaming?
This wasn’t possible.
“Caleb?”
Tears filled his eyes as he came face-to-face with the last person he’d ever thought to see again.
Lil.
His breath caught as the tiny blonde woman approached him hesitantly. Her eyes wide and filled with love, she looked up at him and reached to touch his whiskered cheek.
God, how he wanted to feel her warm hand on his skin. That soothing touch that he’d craved for thousands of centuries.
But this wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her.
His Lil was gone.
He caught her wrist in his hand to keep her from touching him. “Who are you?”
“It’s me, my beautiful demon. I swear.”
Her pulse was steady and strong against his palm. “You died. I saw you.”
That only seemed to confuse her. “I- I- I… There were demons. An army of them coming for us. I was trying to protect the children. One moment I was ushering them into hiding and the next…” She bit her lip just like she’d always done whenever she was uncertain. “I was in our cave. A man who looked like you, but had different eyes was standing over me. He said that I’d slept enough. That you needed me. I don’t understand.”
Suspicion raised the hair on the back of his neck. No… she couldn’t mean who he thought. “Different eyes, how?”
“One was brown, just like yours. The other was a vivid green.”
Jaden.
“My father woke you?”
“Father? He looked more like your brother.”
That was his father. “Did he say anything else?”
“He asked me to tell you that he was sorry he couldn’t tell you about me. That he didn’t dare.”
Those words tore through him. His father had kept her all this time? How could he?
Fury reared and he wanted his father’s head.
Until Lil touched his cheek.
In that moment, he was taken from the street where they stood to the cave where they’d met.
Where his father waited…
Snarling, Caleb started for him, but Lil caught him against her.
His father’s brow bore the weight of sorrow Caleb had felt for all these centuries. “You have every right to hate me. I don’t blame you and I know your forgiveness is more than I’ll ever deserve. But I couldn’t tell you.”
