Killean stared at the ceiling as he lay on the bed with his hands propped behind his head while he listened to Simone’s soft breaths. Rolling over, he gazed across the distance separating the two beds and at the curve of her back. They’d removed their socks and shoes, but both still wore their clothes in case they had to flee from here.
The last words she’d spoken to him ran on a constant loop in his mind. “I can handle the darkness, Killean, but I’m not sure you can handle letting go of your past enough to walk out of the shadows.”
What had she meant by that? How could he just walk away from the events that forged him into the man he was?
Suddenly, she rolled over and he found himself staring into her striking eyes. And just looking at her, for the first time in his life, he considered letting go of his past to embrace a future with her.
But how could he bind her to someone such as himself?
She was far too good for him. He’d been broken before he reached maturity and found himself seeking death; he was worse now.
“I know the stake missed your heart, but at seven you hadn’t fully matured yet, so how did you not bleed out?” Simone asked.
Simone braced herself for him to tell her to mind her own business, call her a dolly, or some other incensed reaction. Instead, he merely lay there, staring at her in a way that made her feel cherished though she had no reason to believe he would ever treasure her.
Killean debated answering her, but he’d already told her more than he’d intended, so he saw no reason not to reveal more.
“My uncle found me before I bled out,” Killean finally said. “He lived on the estate next to ours in England. And by next to ours, I mean his manor was an hour ride away by horseback. When my father didn’t arrive for their weekly card game, he came to check on us. He found me, barely clinging to life, and gave me his blood to save me.”
“What became of him?”
“Hunters killed him fifty years later. He was the last of my family.”
Simone held back the tears burning her eyes. His entire family had been wiped out in such a short amount of time, and by her kind. “I understand why you’ve hated my kind for so long, and what they did to you and your family was unforgivable, but things are changing between our sides. Those hunters didn’t know there were good vampires in the world and believed you were all evil.”
“The things those hunters did to my family, and me, makes some Savages look kind. I wasn’t the only one they cut. They tortured us for hours.”
“Hunters don’t do those things.” Simone regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth; she felt a snapping in him from across the three feet separating them, and her denial was childish. He still bore the scars of what those hunters did to him, and they were only the ones she could see. She suspected his inner scars ran far deeper than the ones he wore for the world to see.
Killean sat up on the bed and set his feet on the floor. “You said you could handle the dark side, dolly, yet you’re denying what I’m telling you.”
Simone sat up too. “I can handle it. It’s just that hunters… we’re not… we’re…”
“What?” Killean asked when her voice trailed off. “You’re not evil? You’re the good guys? Perhaps, like vampires, many hunters mean well, but some of them are vicious bastards who hide behind the killing of vampires to unleash the rot inside their souls.” Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers along the scar on his face. “I still bear this, and the one on my chest, because I was so young the scars were forever etched onto me.”
“I see,” Simone said. “What else did they do?”
She didn’t want to learn anymore about what was done to him as a boy, but she suspected that if she backed away now there would be no hope of anything more developing between them. He would drop her off somewhere and walk away, and she didn’t want that. She would understand him better, and she believed he needed to get this out. What happened that night had eaten at his soul for centuries; it was time to set it free.
Killean couldn’t look at her as the memories of that distant night replayed in his mind. No matter how much time passed, he could still recall every detail as if it happened only yesterday. But he’d replayed that night thousands of times and found countless ways he could have saved his family if he’d just done something differently.
“There were twelve of them against two adult vampires and four children; it wasn’t much of a fight, but my father managed to kill two hunters and my mother one, before they brought us down. My parents fought so hard to save us, and they loved us so much, but it wasn’t enough. When they were dead, the hunters focused all their attention on me and my siblings,” he said.
The screams of his younger sisters resonated in his ears as his brother yelled and swore and struggled. While three men kept him pinned to the ground, Killean watched his siblings fall. After he succeeded in biting the hunter who cut his face, the man announced they would save him for last, so he could watch everything they did to the others and see what they would eventually do to him.
When he looked at Simone again, the helpless rage filling him that night boiled to the surface. “I’ve never understood why I survived when my family perished. They were all better than me, kinder and stronger.”
“Oh, Killean,” she breathed when she saw the raw guilt he’d been living with all these centuries. “That’s not true.”
“It is. Would you like to know what else your ancestors did to us?”
Killean heard the challenge in his voice, but Simone had grown increasingly pale while he spoke, and he kept waiting for her to tell him to stop. He kept waiting for her to run from him as any sane woman would, and when she ran, she would confirm this could never be between them.
She absolutely did not want to know, but she found herself saying, “Yes. If you’re willing to tell me.”
Launching to his feet, Killean stalked away from her and over to the plate glass window with the curtains covering it. That was not the response he expected.
“Killean?” she whispered.
He turned back toward her, but when he saw the frightened, nearly pleading look on her face, his words died away. Simone wasn’t there that night; he was punishing her for sins she’d never committed and would never commit. Some of the hunters were murderous, hideous bastards, but Simone was not one of them, and neither was Nathan and Kadence.
“Killean?”
Running a hand through his hair, he tugged at the ends of it as he tried to bury his memories. The torment, degradation, and sorrow of that night burned like acid in his chest. His fangs throbbed to sink into someone and destroy them as the innocence of the boy he’d been was destroyed that night. He needed to feast on the pain of others and let it course through him until it buried his past.
“Killean?”
Killean forced himself to focus on Simone again. “Some things are better left in the past.”
He paced over to the door and glowered at the sun creeping around the edges of it. He couldn’t go out to kill until night descended, but he didn’t know if he could handle being caged in this room much longer.
Simone didn’t know what propelled her to her feet. Before she could fully comprehend what she was doing, she was standing beside him with her hand on his arm. She almost released him and backed away when his reddened eyes swung toward her. She’d never seen him look so volatile, so ruthless, so… lost.
Her heart ached in a way she hadn’t experienced before as her hand tightened on his arm. This powerful, lethal man was broken, and he needed her. There was so little in her life she was sure of any more, but she was sure of this, and she was sure she needed him too. No matter how disturbing his past, no matter the things he did, she would not walk away from him.
“I have to go out,” he said. “I have to feed.”
“You have to kill, you mean.”
Surprisingly, he was the one who flinched at her words.
“I saw what you did to that vampire, and I didn’t run away. I won’t now either.” She may not want to hear what else he had to say, but she would listen to it all because he had to say it. “I know what you need, Killean. I know what you are, and I’m still here. What else did those hunters do to you?”
Killean shook his head, not to disregard her words but to shake off the past cleaving to him like a second skin—a skin threatening to choke him with every passing second.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, but with an authority she hadn’t known she possessed.
Killean focused on the far wall as screams echoed in his head and the scent of centuries-old terror and blood permeated his nostrils. It was as if he were in that house again, pinned down and helpless.
“They raped them,” he murmured. “My brother and my sisters. They raped them for hours and tortured them before killing them.”
Simone’s breath caught as bile swelled up her throat. Denials screamed through her head, but she saw the horrible truth in his slack face that looked far younger than it usually did. Staring at him, she caught a glimpse of the boy he’d been. The one who was loved by his parents and the one forever altered in a night. She almost wept for him, but Killean would leave here if she cried.
“And what did they do to you?” she whispered.
Killean tore his gaze away from the wall to focus on her. When he gazed at her, he could keep himself in the present. “I was not spared.”
He thought it would shame him to admit this to her, to anyone, as he’d kept it from his uncle too. Though he was sure his uncle had known the truth. But Killean experienced no shame. Instead, it felt as if a weight were lifted from his shoulders. The horrible truth was out there, and it hadn’t made him weaker, and she wasn’t gazing at him as if he were repugnant.
“Oh, Killean,” she breathed. “I am so sorry.”
Killean pulled her hand away from his arm. “You weren’t there. Don’t apologize for it, and don’t feel sorry for me.”
Tears welled in her eyes as he turned away from her and paced over to the window. He pulled a corner of the curtain aside to peer out. Though she’d glimpsed the boy he’d been, he was stealing himself into a ruthless man again, but then he would have had to become hardened to survive what was done to him.
They were only children and hunters, the ones she’d always considered the good guys, had done unspeakable things to them. She didn’t doubt Savages inflicted the same abuse on other innocents, but hunters were supposed to be above that.
Her tears dried up as rage swelled forth. If it had been possible for those hunters to still be alive, she would have killed them herself for doing such a thing to those children, and to her Killean. Her fangs pricked at the idea of him enduring that abuse, and suddenly, she had an overwhelming urge to kill something too.
Then she recalled his words after he’d scrubbed at the blisters on his hands and understanding dawned. “Don’t feel sorry for them; they were all pieces of shit and some of the worst of the human race. Each of them was either a rapist or child molester. Their deaths mean someone else won’t suffer at their hands.”
“This is why you only killed rapists and child molesters,” she breathed as understanding dawned. It was also why he’d seemed so upset when he asked her if Joseph or anyone else had violated her. He knew how horrible such a thing was, and he didn’t want anyone else to have to suffer through the same thing he had.
Killean didn’t reply, but she knew she was right.
“You were only children,” she said.
“We were nothing to them, and they let us know it.”
“No wonder you hate that I’m your mate so much.”
And her heart broke as she realized he might never be able to let go of his past and see her as anything more than a hunter—a thing he despised.
Killean’s attention shifted to her, and the tears shimmering in her eyes caused his hand to fall away from the curtain.
“But I don’t hate it,” he said. “Yes, in the beginning, I was infuriated by it and believed it the cruelest twist of fate. I vowed to let you rot with Joseph, but I found myself unable to leave you there. Then I vowed to get you free, take you back to your kind, and never see you again. Now I know you’re much more than I thought you were, and I’m such a miserable, selfish prick that I don’t want to let you go.”
Admitting that to her terrified him more than admitting his past did.
Simone didn’t know how to feel about that. The wildness she sensed in Killean frightened her; she didn’t know what he would do, how well he could control himself, or if he would ultimately lose himself as Joseph and the other Savages had, but Simone knew she could ease the turmoil churning through him.
“You gave up everything for me; that’s far from selfish, Killean. And whether you believe it or not, you deserve to be here; you deserve to have lived.”
“I have to feed,” he said again.
She brushed her hair off her neck as she closed the distance between them. “You don’t have to go out to feed; I’m right here.”