“You’ve been defending innocents for centuries; you came to the woods to find us, and you followed me over the cliffs and into a waterfall. That isn’t the behavior of a monster; it’s the behavior of a good, yet imperfect man,” she said.
He sat and stared at her in disbelief. Why wouldn’t she see the truth of who he was? Maybe it was because she didn’t know it all yet.
“It happened seventy years after my father turned Savage,” he said.
“Your father became a Savage?”
“Yes. So, as you can see, it runs in my blood.”
“Declan,” she breathed as sorrow twisted her heart.
“I tried to take him out, and he nearly killed me in the process. If Ronan hadn’t intervened and destroyed him, I would have died.”
“Ronankilled your father?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”
Declan shrugged, but he could never forget the heartbreak and torture he experienced at his father’s hands. He would always recall his father’s laughter as he worked to either turn Declan too or kill him.
“It was difficult for Ronan too; they were good friends before it happened,” Declan said.
However, Ronan did what was necessary to destroy the enemy and save his life. Many times over the years, Ronan had saved his life, but that night in London and the night with his father were the turning points in his life.
“Nothing was ever the same after,” he said.
“You doubted yourself more because your father gave in to his Savage nature,” Willow guessed.
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t become a Savage.”
“I came close, too close.”
“But youdidn’tbecome a Savage,” she reiterated. “You arenotyour father. Did he have a mate?”
“No.”
“And neither did you until now, but you still managed to keep fighting your Savage nature.”
“I gave in.”
“And you were fortunate to have a good friend close by to save you. Weallhave to rely on others sometimes. There isn’t a single person or vampire in this world who hasn’t needed someone else’s help. We all falter, Declan, what matters is you let your misstep make you stronger instead of allowing it to tear you apart.”
Declan tossed the uneaten lollipop into the trash as he contemplated her words.
“What happened after they took you out of that place?” she asked.
“I was still too far gone to have any control over myself, so Ronan locked me in the dungeon of the castle we lived in at the time. I tore at those bars in such a frenzy that I shredded the skin from my hands and mouth.”
“Your mouth?”
“I tried to chew through them.”
Holy shit.She couldn’t picture this usually calm, mellow man in such a frenzy, but he painted a pretty elaborate picture.
“During one of the times he came down to see if I had calmed down at all, I asked Ronan to kill me. He’d put my father down, and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t give me the same mercy.”
