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“It can’t be your fault,” I said. I looked down at the cup I had my fingers wrapped around. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I kept having the same dream. I just didn’t know it would become real.”
“Have you had dreams like that before?” Braxton asked. “Dreams that became real.”
I tugged at my earlobe. “This is the first time.”
“Then you couldn’t have known. It has to be a part of your magic.”
How could it be a part of my magic if I’d never had it before? I wasn’t that special. I was just a shifter, unsure of myself and completely inexperienced in the shifter world. I had all these tools I didn’t know how to use. I was too much of a freak with my shifter magic to fit into the human world, and too human to fit into the shifter world.
“They were here because of me,” Braxton said grimly, not making eye contact.
“Why?”
Braxton hesitated for a long time. “When I was a child, my dad screwed up. He did some shady deals with demons, trying to gain more power, more riches… nothing was ever enough for him. Whenever he got something, he needed more. He couldn’t be happy with what he had.”
I was silent, listening to Braxton. His voice was deep and low, and I could almost taste the pain that came with every word.
“At some point, he made the wrong deal with the wrong demon.” Braxton laughed bitterly. “Not that there are right demons, I guess. They’re always bad news—they belong in the Underworld, and asking them to come up to earth is asking for trouble. I guess that trouble found my dad. And the rest of us.”
“What happened?” I asked softly.
“They killed him,” Braxton said simply.
My stomach twisted, and my heart went out to Braxton. He’d said that so simply, as if it hadn’t hurt at all.
“That must have been tough,” I said.
“Finding out that my dad had finally gotten himself into a corner? Yeah, I guess it was tough. Everyone had always said it was coming. I wasn’t old enough to have known that for myself, but I’d heard what the others had to say. They’d always said, ‘one of these days, it’s going to catch up with him,’ and they were right. He wanted power, and in exchange for the power, he did the demon’s bidding.”
“I’m so sorry you lost him,” I said softly.
“Oh, that wasn’t the part that was so bad,” Braxton said, his face changing to a scowl. “I mean, it was pretty bad. What was worse was the fact that punishment by death isn’t punishment at all, is it? The person who fucked up doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. No, killing him wasn’t enough. They had to go after the rest of my family, too.” Braxton closed his eyes, reliving it all. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut. “I can still hear my mom’s screams before I fall asleep at night.”
“Oh, Braxton,” I whispered.
He opened his eyes, and they were the liquid gold of his lion, filled with pain-fueled rage.
“They didn’t stop. They killed them all. My brothers and sisters. My aunt. My cousins. I had a whole family, and just like that… I had nothing.” He looked at his half-eaten sandwich and put it back on the tray with disgust, his appetite gone.
“They would have taken me out, too, if it hadn’t been for Hauser.”
“The former alpha?” I asked.
I’d heard Uma use the name a few times before.
Braxton nodded. “I don’t know what he was doing there, why he knew it was happening and why he stepped in. I never asked him, and he never volunteered to tell me, but he came in there with his alpha power, and he stopped it all. A handful of his pack ripped up the demon and vampire army they’d brought along. Hauser had told the demon to back the fuck off, but it hadn’t been enough. It had been a knock to its ego.”
I didn’t know anything about demons. Saying they had egos made it seem so human when the creatures I’d seen tonight hadn’t had a shred of humanity in them at all.
“The demon promised that he would be back for me. He would finish what he started, he wouldn’t rest until every last one of my dad’s bloodline, his family, was taken out.” He looked at me, and his face had become so incredibly sad, it broke my heart. “That’s what that attack was tonight. They were agents, sent here by the demon himself to wreak havoc.”
“Were they going to kill you?”
“Oh, no,” Braxton said, and laughed bitterly. “That would be too easy, right? Niam won’t be merciful.”
“Niam?” I asked.
“That’s his name, the demon who’s after me. He’s torturing me. He wants to get close to me. He wants to hurt everything and everyone I care about before he finishes the deed.”
