“At least don’t deny me my children. I know I wasn’t the one that carried and birthed them, but without my essence, they would have perished too. I want to have the chance to love and cherish them like a mother would. Please… d-don’t keep them from me. At least allow me that while I try to earn your forgiveness and work my way back into your arms.”
Jessup, Daniel, and Carl give me pointed looks. Well, Carl looks at me and nods—his mind made up—before going to Lilith and pulling her into a hug and kissing her gently.
“You never had to ask for my forgiveness. I will always be your mate, your love, and anything else you need me to be, my dear.” He steps behind her and wraps his arms around her waist to face us. She leans into his embrace for a moment before turning her hopeful gaze onto the rest of the group.
“What do you say?” Daniel questions, his tone flat as he sits motionless in his chair.
Daniel might be sitting there like a statue, but his emotions are flying around like a hurricane. Anger, despair, amusement, happiness, but overall, he just feels confusion. Danny has never been easy for me to read, but what I do pick up is that he’s scared to make the call. Which direction is right in this instance? Allowing Lilith back into our life and dismiss what all has happened or close her out entirely? Secretly, he’s hoping that I make the call in this case.
I’m torn. I sit here a broken man. Even though a part of me believes what Lilith is saying to be true, I can’t fully trust her. Yes, it’s true I didn’t love my girlfriend the way I felt for my mate before me, but the fact is, Lilith crossed a line. She put my own child in danger, and that’s something she should have been able to fight against for him.
For me.
Her love.
Her mate.
Shouldn’t she have been able to fight that spell? Lilith, the original Demon?
I take a moment to assess the room, and what I find shocks me for a moment while I process the feelings I’m picking up.
Jessup shifts in his seat, showing his annoyance, and I focus in on his hot temper. He’s practically screaming his emotions, not even trying to shield himself. Mate or not, he’s been hurting without her for years, and it seems she will need to do some begging of her own if she wants back onto his good graces. “I feel her innocence, that I won’t deny, but there’s a small part within her that is satisfied by this outcome.” I watch as Lilith’s face falls slightly, yet the emotions I pick up on are horror and happiness.What is going on with that?
“She believes down in her soul that she didn’t do this. But the facts are, she is the only survivor of this massacre besides our children,” I point out regrettably.
I won’t take away my child from her, but like she was going to make us earn her forgiveness for everything we did, I’m going to make her work for my forgiveness. I’m not going to make it easy for her. I have to make her fight for me and my child if she wants to stay in our lives.
Daniel turns to deliver his verdict to Lilith but before he does, one of the children—Ezekiel—starts fussing and Lilith swoops down to pick him up, cradling him to her. He immediately quiets down as she starts rocking him. While Daniel watches her closely, I add one other thing they don’t know. “Our boys are happy with her,” I state.
Everyone seems to freeze. The only sound is Lilith’s gasp and Ezekiel’s small sounds.
“What did you say?” Jessup growls, staring at me as if I’m his next target.
“Our boys. They’re projecting, and not feelings about us, but about Lilith,” I simply answer, not knowing how to explain it further.
“How can that be?” Daniel asks on a whisper.
“Maybe when Lilith gave them her essence, it changed them in more ways than one,” Steinbeck concludes, peering over Lilith’s shoulder at the baby. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“What’s that, my prince?” Lilith murmurs quietly to not disturb the sleeping boy.
“Wait and see.”
CHAPTER19
I got no strings on me
Adam
Time moves differently for those that have constantly suffered. We don’t watch the clock or count days. Instead, we are reduced to celebrating the little victories no one else deems important. Like one extra soul that you got to join the cause, taking one for the team, or having your skin grow back after being flayed off for sick amusement.
Fuck Bez and his love for cutting and melting my skin off as slow as fucking possible.No wonder he and Lilith are best friends. They each take sick pleasure in the demented ways of torture and have the blackest hearts in Hell. To this day, I swear, she has no soul.
I’ve spent the last—I don’t know how many hours—in that sick fuck’s presence. Who knew that the same cage I threw Lilith in would be a reprieve from the Vengeance Demon’s care? The dark room smells of piss and blood,my bodily fluids,yet I couldn’t care less. My skin has finally stopped the insufferable itching. It’s been slowly regrowing over the past few hours, and the stages, I dare say, are not comfortable to deal with. First is the fire stage as the cells ignite and start to repair. Second is the lightning as the nerves regrow. Every layer of skin I can feel thanks to Lilith and a curse she threw my way eons ago when she learned I couldn’t die. Even the soothing part—which I’ll never feel again because my ex-wife is soulless—should feel like cool water running over my skin, leaving it feeling refreshed. Before, growing back my skin or rejuvenating any part of my body was quick and painless, but now it’s a slow and painful experience that I have to relive constantly.
The process is a long one, but I’ll happily lay here as long as one of L.A.M.B. doesn’t come for me again. Grinding metal pulls me from my musings and I glance up in a panic thinking that L.A.M.B. is coming for another round of torture. A glow penetrates the darkness and I can see a dark robe pulled over a creature's head as the light moves deeper within the room and the door closes, leaving us alone. The figure stops in front of the cage and places the torch in a holder on the wall.
“My my my, how the mighty have fallen,” a familiar voice chuckles. As the hood falls back, I take in the presence before me. Blond hair just a little bit longer than my own is tousled from the hood being thrown back. Tan skin seems to glow where it’s highlighted from the light of the torch on the wall. There’s a light scruff along the man’s chiseled jaw and above it is a smirk on his full lips. No doubt he’s enjoying the predicament of me lying in my own filth. “Still think it was a good idea to gloat about your victory over Lilith?” His familiar gray eyes sparkle with mirth as I glare up at my identical twin.
