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“Half breed?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow. He glanced at me and shrugged.
“What’s the fucking point of hiding it now?” He tucked a blanket around Harlow before starting to shove his other belongings away so there was room for a bed. I helped as I waited for him to keep going. “I’m half demon. It’s why I have more freedom here, I’m not really a patient. My mom was and a demon took advantage of her. I’m the byproduct of that.”
“I’m sorry.” It seemed appropriate, given the pain he couldn’t hide from his voice. Honestly, it was strange to get straight answers from him, and to top that with real emotion, well I was a bit unsettled by it.
“Thanks.” He huffed out a laugh. “I’d say sorry for throwing you headfirst into this bullshit but she was already thrown in and she chose both of you, so you may as well know. How do you let Hiro know? I don’t want him blindsided.”
His voice softened at the mention of my alter, confirming what I’d been suspecting for a while. Hiro never outright said he was attracted to Drake, but I’d noticed the way he talked about him and wondered.
“You like him, don’t you?” Drake side-eyed me at the blunt question. He’d never done more than glanced, but I noticed long ago the way Hiro wrote about him in our shared journal, the way he was known to be nice only to him.
“Yes. He’s my mate. But it’s irrelevant. I’m a half fucking demon, Roman. He’s too good for me. Sure, I let Harlow in, but she’s seen worse,” he said.
It was avoidance at its finest, and I wondered if it had more to do with uncertainty than wanting to save Hiro from himself.
Before I could argue, an entire bed literally dropped into the room right on top of Drake’s things despite us clearing the room.
“Fuck you, Ivar,” he called out as we both scrambled to save his desk and wardrobe before they were damaged beyond repair.
The bed was sturdy wood like the other and had a clean mattress on it at least. When we got the bed shifted in place, he started getting his half-broken belongings back in place. “Can you grab her bed stuff? Maybe something familiar will calm her. She’s going to be disoriented since he wasn’t giving her meds. At least that’s my guess from what I saw when I was up there looking for her.”
“On it,” I promised, slipping into the hallway again. Just as I was coming out of her room, I ran into Layne and Crew. They narrowed their eyes at me when I had all her stuff in my arms. “She’s back. In Drake’s room. It isn’t good.”
That changed their demeanor, and they rushed that way. I trailed behind them, knowing Layne was about to bulldoze right in.
“It was Vane,” Drake answered the question I’d missed. Likely what happened to her.
We all knew Vane was a monster, but this seemed bad even for him. Then again, he was likely a fucking demon himself.
Pushing my way through, I quickly made her bed and Drake ignored Layne’s constant string of questions to help me shift Harlow onto her sheets. She let out a whimper before her eyes blinked open. She took us all in and her entire expression broke with pain and she flinched back.
“I’m not trash,” she cried, the words slurring as she fell back to sleep. “I’m not, please, please don’t hurt me anymore.”
“What the fuck?” Crew growled.
“Look, you know what you avoid at night? The unspoken monsters that lurk the halls? They got to her. She’s going to be a mess,” Drake said as bluntly as he could without saying ‘hey, demons are real’ like he did to me.
“I thought the demons were nightmares,” Layne admitted as she blinked at him, processing but not dismissing it.
Drake gave her a reassuring smile. “You’ve always been more observant than you give yourself credit for. They’re actual demons, Layne.”
“What?” Crew laughed. “Get serious, man.”
“Show them,” I told Drake. He said he was a half breed that meant he had to have something he could do. Magic? Horns?
Drake blinked at me before his head morphed. Horns protruded from his head, his skin changed color, and his eyes bled to all black. He held up one hand and let shadows and fire pour out for a brief second before he was back to normal.
“Welcome to Dark Haven, where the halls are filled with demons and secrets are the foundation,” he deadpanned.
“Holy fuck,” Crew said. “I need to burn something.”
Layne was pale now and clinging to Crew for dear life.
“Come on, we can come back and check on her later,” Layne said. Her voice shook and from the wild look in her eyes, she was far more freaked out than she was showing.
He’d changed their reality, and now they had to cope in their own ways.
“I need to write to Hiro, but I don’t want to leave her for long,” I admitted with a heavy sigh.
