Page 77 of Bond of Passion

His moms beamed, and he chuckled as he headed to the nearest Harrowgate. His brother wouldn’t know what hit him.

* * * *

Deja’s gut churned as she tucked her appearance-altering necklace into her pocket and approached the Shrine of Skell, a demon whose acts of depravity made him a hero to the Neethul people.

Her message to her parents had been only that she was alive. She hadn’t mentioned her new look or why she wanted to meet away from other Neethul eyes.

What if they didn’t show up?

What if they did? She stopped at the top of the steps and stared at the stone temple, its twenty-foot columns wrapped in throbbing, slimy, black vines. The arched entryway was not inviting, not with the way sharp teeth hung down, dripping blood-red liquid. Maybe this was a mistake. Did she really want to do this? What if Azagoth was wrong?

“Gristlen?”

Deja spun toward her mother’s voice and froze at the sight of her dam, Grue, frozen herself, at the bottom of the steps, her mouth still wrapped around Gristlen’s name.

“I thought you were…Gristlen?” Her pale hand flew to her mouth. “Is…is that? No. It can’t be.”

“It’s me, Mother.” Deja took the steps down as her father appeared over her mom’s shoulder, his cold gray eyes flaring wide. “Father.” Oh, and just perfect—they’d brought her brother too. “Malifik.”

They all stood there for a moment, stunned, their black armor absorbing the eerie red-orange light that illuminated this region of Sheoul.

“Is it…? Can it be?” Her father rushed forward, meeting her at the bottom step. “Gristlen.” She’d never seen him smile. Not like that. He grinned as he pulled her toward him. A moment later, her mother drew them both into an embrace.

Malifikstood back, expression shuttered, gloved fingers clenching and unclenching. He’d always looked like he was a heartbeat away from strangling someone with his restless hands.

Her parents stepped back, still smiling. “We thought you were dead,” her mom said. “We had hope after the destruction of Sheoul-gra, but when we didn’t hear from you immediately afterward, we thought we’d lost you forever.” She reached out and touched her mate on the forearm. “Pyre never stopped looking though.”

Stunned, Deja stared at her father. “You’ve been searching for me for two years?”

He gestured at Malifik. “Your brother has been helping.”

She stopped herself from rolling her eyes. Her older brother had probably been hoping she was dead. They’d never gotten along, and he’d been half the reason her childhood had been such hell.

Her father reached out and touched her hair with a grimace. “There’s an incantation that will return you to your proper coloring, and you can come home.”

That was never going to happen. “I’m not here for that. I’m here to find out the truth. I was born this way, wasn’t I?”

Malifikdidn’t appear to be surprised by the question. He had likely been there at her birth. Her parents gave each other a how-do-we-handle-this look. It was her mother who finally spoke.

“You know what happens to infants born like you were. We chose to save you.” She glanced over at her mate. “The way he was saved.”

Shock knocked Deja off balance. She noticed it had done the same to Malifik. Deja had to remind herself to snap her jaw shut so she wasn’t gaping.

“You? Father?” She shook her head as if that would help clear it. It didn’t. “That can’t be. Azagoth said those born with this coloring were born with souls that didn’t match the Neethul race. And you’re…”

“Vicious? Evil? Violent?” Her father put his hand down on his sword hilt, gripping it hard the way he always had when he got defensive. “I learned to be this way. Your mother taught me so I could survive.”

“The bag,” Deja murmured. “Whenever I got upset about something, you always told me to put the bad things in a bag and never open it.”

“Most Neethul don’t need vessels to hold their bad memories,”he’d told her once, during one of the few times he’d hugged her after a particularly gruesome event. “But some do. Put everything in there, Gristlen. Everything. You must not show weakness outside this home. Do you understand?”

She’d understood. Every day had been a lesson in understanding that love and compassion were weaknesses.

She turned to her mother, still unable to fully process what she was hearing. “You knew? Before I was born, you knew Father was Neebless?”

Grue nodded. “I am a couple of shades darker than our society approves of, and I was teased mercilessly as a child. Literally tortured as a teen. The only reason I survived was because I was born into the nobility. I learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of cruelty, and I learned how to be cruel at the same time. Your father and I were arranged mates when we were young, and I was sent to live with his clan. I learned the truth about him after hearing his parents talk. And I taught him to survive.” Wringing her pale, slender hands, she stepped closer. “Darling, when I was hard on you, it was because I feared you would be caught and killed.”

“It’s why we kept you away from others,” Pyre explained. “Why we sent your childhood friend away. She learned the truth about you.”