I held his eye.
"It will," I said softly. "It will change things. You just told me it does. Don't walk it back to make me feel better. We do this honest or we don't do it."
He held my gaze.
"It will change things," he repeated. "I will work on what it changes and how. I will not let it change love. I can promise you that. The rest I will work on."
"Okay."
That was the closest I could get to okay today. I would take it.
"Well, it changes some things, but we still love him the same."
"We do," King agreed warmly.
There was much left to discuss, but I needed a break from searching for answers. Right now, I just wanted my demon and my family.
I stood up.
"That's enough for today," I said. "We'll have more conversations. There are more things you don't know. There are things I'm not telling you yet, not because I'm hiding them maliciously, but because trust gets rebuilt before it gets paid out. You'll learn what I'm carrying when you've earned the inside of it. Not before."
He nodded.
"That's fair."
"It's true. Fair isn't the word."
"Then true."
I walked to the door.
"I love you, King."
The word came out before I could choose another. The King. Not Dad. Not yet. Maybe not ever again. Maybe in six months. Maybe in two years. The title was something he was going to have to earn back, and we both knew it now.
He swallowed.
"I love you, son."
I closed the door behind me.
Dagon was waiting in the hallway. He was leaning against the wall pretending he hadn't been listening through the bond, which he had. I could feel the entire conversation echoing back through him, he had heard every word that crossed the thread. I could choose to close the thread and he wouldn't have heard anything, but I felt what he felt. The worry that I was with an angel in a room alone, even if that angel was our father. That's why I let him listen through the bond, and not only that, I let him be there for me too.
He didn't say anything. He just opened his arms.
I walked into them.
He held me. His mouth pressed to the top of my head. The bond between us hummed and settled. The shaking I hadn't done in King's office showed up in my shoulders instead. Dagon held me through it.
Down the hallway, I could hear the rest of them. Bren's laugh – a real one, finally, not the cracked one from earlier – bouncing off the kitchen tiles. Andras's voice underneath, low and steady. Luc saying something I couldn't catch. Wild snorting at whatever Luc had said.
My brothers. My demon. My family.
Not the version of the family I had grown up believing in. A different version. A version that had been remade in the field and the cabin and the forest under the stars and the hallway outside the office . The Hughes brothers had been forged through fire I didn't fully understand and were standing on the other side of it together.
Nothing could break us.
Nothing.
