I still couldn’t stop looking at my demon. The anger hadn’t disappeared. But now there was something heavier sitting underneath it too.
Hurt.
Worse, now I understood why every moment between us had always been so intense. Why leaving him was unbearable. Why he looked at me like I mattered before I even realized what was happening myself.
And that only made the entire situation more complicated.
Finally, I asked quietly, “So if I rejected the bond… you’d really leave?”
My demon answered deliberately . “If that is what you wanted.” The answer should have made me feel better. Instead it just made me angry again. “That is such a stupid answer.”
The younger brother whispered toward Anderson, “Oh she’s furious furious.”
Anderson was barely holding himself. “I noticed.”
I dragged one hand across my face before looking back at my demon again.
“I crossed dimensions for you.”
“I noticed.”
“I literally fell into Hell for you.”
“Very dramatically too,” the younger brother added helpfully.
Nina pointed at me. “She screamed the entire way down.”
“That is not the point.”
My eyes locked back onto my demon’s again while the demonic crowd around us went strangely quiet.
“You don’t get to act like this means nothing to me and then offer to disappear.”
Around us, nearby demons became very interested in literally anything except our conversation while still listening aggressively.
My demon watched me for one long second before answering quietly,
“…Humans usually fear the bond.”
“Well maybe those humans are boring.”
That actually caught him off guard. Something in his expression softened then with a flicker of genuine surprise instead of pain, but my own anger refused to fade. I was still hurt, still furious, still standing in Hell realizing the terrifying demon prince I trusted had known the truth about us from the very beginning.
My gaze dropped briefly to the glowing mark on my wrist before I spoke again, quieter this time.
“You stayed in my apartment acting like we were building a life together while hiding something this huge from me.”
That landed harder than I expected, hard enough that I watched his expression tighten right in front of me.
“I know.”
“You let me think all of that was accidental.”
“It was never accidental for me.”
The honesty in his voice made my chest ache badly enough that holding onto my anger started becoming a lot more difficult than I wanted it to be.
The younger brother turned away muttering, “Oh this is painful.”
