People like us... we’re better off not being left alone with our thoughts. Having someone that’s willing to fight for you when you need help is a gift that most people will never have.
Clearing his throat, my father runs a shaky hand through his onyx hair. “That’s... complicated. Our abilities are more nuanced than the other demons’.”
At my unamused face, he clears his throat, glancing around and wincing as he sees the damage from his freak out. “Your mother is going to kill me,” he mutters under his breath, beginning to straighten up while he attempts to explain. And all the while, the eight of us are glaring at the demon in our midst with varying degrees of distrust, disbelief, and disdain.
“You know how you act differently depending on who you’re around?” He flips the table upright, staring dejectedly down at the jagged crack running the length of the surface. “That’s the simplest way to describe it. We subconsciously read people better than anyone else is capable of. We see who they are at their core, know how to behave to get what we want out of them. We notice everything they’re lacking without actively trying, have the ability to become their missing piece while also adopting enough of their mannerisms that we aren’t their polar opposite, but everything they need while maintaining enough similarities to be compatible.”
My fingers tighten on Sabrina’s hip as a series of memories flash through my mind’s eye. Of her being as terrible of a thrill seeker as Cinjin when she’s around him, more likely to cave into spontaneous impulses. How she picked up Slade’s habit of pinching the bridge of his nose and tilting her head to the heavens in search of patience. Sniping right back at Hunter, being Boden’s damsel in distress, subdued and analytical around Reid. Feeding off of Kaige’s energy in search of inner peace, while also the first to fucking snap and incinerate a man with her bare hands, to encourage us all that our first bonding activity should be a mass murdering spree. And the way she gets just as obsessed as I do once she sets her mind on something.
She claims she’d never sacrifice herself for our sake, but she nearly got herself killed saving Hunter, and ran herself into the ground helping the Hawthornes in various ways. Now, she’s standing here despite every way we fucked up not to save our packs, but the seven of us from retaliation from her fathers, and is ready to go out in a blaze of glory in an attempt to kill Acheron simply out of spite. Sabrina is a walking, talking contradiction, because... they’re right.
The Nightmare shacked up in my mate’s body has her own agenda, and while Sabrina may not sacrifice herself for us, she absolutely would do so out of pure spite. The two of them together are a volatile combination of deceptive innocence, and total destruction.
“We get in people’s heads, but it’s not something we activelydo,just something we-” my father growls in frustration, tossing a broken chair leg into the pile of debris and scrubbing a hand down his face. “It’s who weare.”
Looking around the wreckage, his face falls, turning his focus onto his hands as shadowy tendrils weave between his fingers like glitching snakes. “The only thing you can really see is when we manipulate energy like this, but over the centuries, our kind faded into shadows of their former selves. Stories stopped being passed down because those that still remembered decided it was a mercy if our children didn't know what they were supposed to be, but would never become as we lost hope that the curse was temporary. I haven’t even seen anyone with those forms besides myself and Ash until you guys shifted. There’s so much demonic energy in your bodies, it twisted your wolves to accommodate it, just like ours.”
He meets my eye. “Acheron excelled at slipping into their heads while their guards were down, and he’s learned how to throw people off guard in their waking hours now as well. He plants seeds of doubt, turns people against each other so they’ll do part of the work for him diminishing their forces. He’ll slip images into people’s heads and convince them that they’re memories instead of simply dreams. He’s the first true Nightmare in every sense of the word, and has only gotten stronger over time now that he’s turned the tomb of our fallen brethren into a monument of suffering, a source of strength for himself and any alpha on this mountain as much as it’s a soul-sucking wasteland for the rest.”
“It’s why he has to keep everyone here in a clear divide pitted against each other,” Reid murmurs, as if speaking to himself without realizing instead of any of us. “Otherwise, with this many miserable people, their alphas would have the ability to become a real problem, even if not what he’d consider a threat.” Giving up on making sense of the chaos around him, Xander nods in confirmation, not that Reid notices.
Slade asks, “Why aren’t you filled to the brim with power, then? Of anyone, you’d be the best shot at stopping him.”
My father doesn’t look at Slade, but at Sabrina -or rather,Aurelia-as he answers, “After seeing how well that worked out for you, what chance did I stand? Even then, Ididtry once, when Damian was born. But I took on more than I was capable of handling, and it broke me; you know better than anyone what that’s like. Yet, where you spent centuries getting a break from that man and licking your wounds, I had to do terrible things in order to stay in his good graces to keep my family alive. You were right, okay? I’m sorry it took me so long to see that.”
None of us know what to say to that, leaving the room in a pensively silent moment heavily laden with sadness, hopelessness, and a hell of a lot of regret. Everything could have played out so differently if my father had been as determined to save me from Ash’s influence as he was Sabrina, if Kaige’s fathers hadn't rebelled against the idea of him being chosen to be her mate long before any of us ever knew her name.
“The stories.”My inner voice is a tortured lament, desperately seeking an outlet for his barely restrained anger.“Ash planted the idea of Sabrina long before we ever knew she existed, getting us hooked on the idea of what she represented so when he dangled the bait, we’d fall into his trap; hook, line, and sinker. He knew what we’d do better than we did.”
Nearly inaudibly, he whispers,“I hate this. I hate that loving her means that he wins.”
The temperature suddenly plummets with the cold fury in Kaige’s voice. “Did you know, Xander, that the person Ash sent us to kill was the man that stepped up to be Sabrina’s father, to raise her?” The smoky energy on my father’s hands stutters out of existence. “The one person that was keeping her safe and happy out there in the human world, safe fromAnnika.”
While Kaige stalks forward, my father holds his ground, but not with his head held high. He simply stares, ready to meet his maker without a trace of fear on his face. The man that cared for my pack before I was old enough to replace him, who taught me to help heal people over killing them whenever possible.
I’ve never seen him shift. And after he was done teaching me how to give away energy instead of just taking it, I don’t think I’ve seen him healanyone,always encouraging me to do it for practice.How have I never seen how broken he was before?
“...Because that was the one thing he could actually protect you from.”
Kaige stops inches away. “By removing him from the picture, it set the course for all of her interactions with humans to be shitty ones so she'd be more sympathetic to Ash’s cause when push came to shove. And you stood by and let us all get played.”
As he rakes a hand through his disheveled hair, the tendrils reappear on his torso this time; a mass of violently churning, demonic ropes crisscrossing his body. “What the fuck did you expect me to do? Ash is the original Boogeyman, but rather than lurk beneath the bed, he’s the monster that hides in plain sight. The one time I stood up to him, he shattered me so completely, it takes everything I have to keep the energy build up from destroying this body.” His gaze hardens. “And as you are well aware, he doesn’t have any qualms about using someone’s family against them. It wouldn’t have only been my head if I’d tried again, it would have been Damian’s, or my mate’s. If you think that anyone can stop Acheron Wilder from getting what he wants, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
“Aurelia did.” Sabrina’s casual tone has us all whipping our heads her way. “She outsmarted him, imprisoned him. Imprisonedallof you. And it’s taken him how many centuries to figure out how she accomplished it, yet still, he needs her to undo it. If she was willing to sacrifice her freedom to pull this off, it doesn’t sound so much like she betrayed you and sided with the humans, more that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to stop what was happening. I imagine if it was only Ash she wanted to stop, she wouldn’t have gone through all of the effort of imprisoningallof you guys, so logic dictates he wasn’t the only one that was a problem back then.”
As he stoically stares her down, she shrugs a single shoulder. “Hate to give him any credit, but I’ll admit, Ash does have a point. Everyone’s rendition of events are tweaked to paint them in a better light. Even if you were a victim of circumstance, Ash let you live for a reason when all of the other original demons were killed by either life, or his own hand. There has to be a reason for him holding out where you’re concerned, even if it’s as simple as he was sentimental, but you’ll understand that I’m not exactly overcome with sympathy for the tough position you claim to have been in.”
Her voice subtly shifts, emerging as a smooth taunt cold enough that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s not Sabrina speaking anymore. “After all, Xander. Your hand wasn’t exactly forced when you chose to butcher that village, now was it? You drew those deaths out as long as possible for every poor soul you came across. If you only wanted them dead, you wouldn’t have taken the time to play with your victims.”
The manic glint returns to my father’s eyes as he hisses, “I was protecting our home.”
With a derisive scoff, she counters, “From the tiny village of fisherman and widows? Has it really been so long that you’ve convinced yourself that the lie you both clung to was the truth? An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind to everything but the pain of reality, Xander. An endless quest of ‘getting even’ will always have another strike coming, yet the ones that pay the price are far too often anyonebesidesthose involved. An enemy’s spouse or children, anyone and anything they love to wring out maximum anguish under the guise of making a point; the same pitying plea you just attempted to excuse your part in Acheron’s dirty work.”
He clutches his temples and bows his head, the energy surrounding him lashing out like a series of whips to keep us all at bay. Without missing a beat, Kaige takes a long, slow inhale, the smoky haze rushing toward him as if the Pied Piper himself called. As his deadly presence grows, my father’s diminishes. Bo appears at Sabrina’s free side, settling a hand on her shoulder and encouraging her back a step, and reluctantly, I let her go for both of their sakes. After a small moment of hesitation, she concedes, humoring the beta though we all know it’s futile.
A single step won’t make any difference in the grand scheme of things when we’ve lost enough ground that we can’t even see what lies on the horizon.
“Get out.” He doesn’t immediately move, and this time, when I snap, it’s all me. My inner demon is there as silent encouragement, but the fist that drives into my father’s cheek when he doesn’t budge is thrown completely by my choice.
