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With a grin, I turned to walk away with Levi, waving back at the audience to our shooting match.
18
Aurora
After we left the shooting range, we went to get lunch first. But after lunch, my mate disappeared, leaving Instructor Levi Dupont, who drove us to a high-quality fitness center with private practice cubes for sparring.
By the time we were done sparring, I was exhausted. I went to take a shower before leaving the fitness center with Levi. We ate dinner and then Levi started the drive back to Crawford Town with the windows rolled down and the sunroof at the top of his car open.
Seizing the opportunity presented by the silent and deserted roads between the town we had visited and Crawford Town, I positioned myself in the center of the car, extended my head out of Levi’s car’s sunroof, and let out a scream into the rushing wind. By doing this, I was hoping to send some cheer to Levi, who was currently in a gloomy mood. However, when I sat back in the car, he remained the same. He continued driving in silence and, other than a few glances his way, I didn’t ask him what was going on with him.
Just after a deserted gas station, he parked in a quiet and almost empty parking lot, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The parking lot had a single dim overhead light mounted on a pole and we were parked about two car rows away from the light.
Levi opened his trunk, and we sat there in silence, looking up at the sky with my head on his shoulder.
“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” I asked in a soft voice.
I knew that he’d been tense since dinner and throughout the drive here, he’d maintained a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
In response to my question, he sighed. “I saw someone who looked like my sister from behind at dinner.”
“The one you went back around the table to look at when we were leaving?” I asked, raising my head from his shoulder to lock gazes with him.
I grasped his hands and squeezed. “Do you want to talk about her? Maybe . . . that would make you feel better.”
He nodded and suddenly stood up, taking long strides to the overhead light pole before coming back to stand in front of me. Then he used a finger to raise my chin before covering my lips with his.
His kiss was a turbulent storm and a gentle refuge all at once. His lips pressed against mine with a fervor born of inner turmoil, an ache that sought solace in the intensity of our connection. There was a raw, desperate edge to the way he kissed me as if he were trying to use our kisses to drown his sorrows.
It was the first kiss we’d shared since the last time we had sex and were caught by Mateo.
With a sigh, Levi released my lips, leaving me panting as he sat beside me again and gripped my hand. “My sister was born right around the time things started going to hell for my mother and me. My father was just about tired of my mother and was already seeing another woman on the side. My mother was ill, but she tried her best to hold on so she could protect me, but she couldn’t. Two years after bearing my sister, she died. My father immediately brought his beautiful and younger mistress home with her son, who was just a year younger than me. She was responsible for raising me, my sister, and her son.”
“For the next few years, she cared for me and my sister without abusing us like I’d thought she would. She didn’t genuinely care about us, but she always made sure we ate on time, studied, and slept on time. Just . . . she made sure to meet all our necessary needs. But when I was eight, a test revealed that I didn’t have the compulsion ability passed down through the patriarchal line of my father’s family. My father was furious and for a year, I was kept out of his sight, locked up in a tiny room, and fed sparingly under my stepmother’s watchful eye. The next year, my stepbrother also took the same test, and he had the compulsion ability. Immediately, I was replaced as the next Dupont heir. To put me to use, my father sent me to work as a servant in the Blood Pits. I worked as a serving boy there for years until I turned twelve and had an encounter with a man who didn’t know how to take no for an answer.”
He released a harsh breath, and I placed my arms around his neck and started rubbing circles on his back. “He was my first kill, and my father realized that I could be more than just a serving boy, so he turned me into one of the involuntary fighters in the Blood Pits. Things were terrible for me at first, but I adapted. I became better and better at fighting, especially since a top fighter in the Pits took me under his protection. While I was doing all this, my sister was still being cared for by our stepmother. On my first win in the Pits, I asked to see my sister, expecting to see that timid little girl who had sneaked into my room to bring me blood when I was confined at home. But when we met, all I saw was coldness and disdain in her eyes toward me and I realized that my father and stepmother had turned her against me.”
I stared at him attentively and watched a tear roll down his face. I caught the rolling tear with my thumb and rubbed it away. Then I stood up to hug him, even though our height difference made it seem like I was trying to listen to his heartbeat.
“For years, I continued to work in the Blood Pits. I fell in love with a beautiful serving girl in the Pits, but when our relationship was discovered, my father killed her. A few years after that, your father captured the other half of my father’s operation—the second leader of the Freedom Coven or the Freedom Cult, as your father likes to call them—my uncle. Then he dismantled the Freedom Coven, revealing its purpose to the public. My father was infuriated at the Supernatural Council and Keane, who led the charge because the Freedom Coven was responsible for trapping people into illegal contracts and oaths in exchange for solving their problems. Unfortunately, those people were usually sent to the Pits to fight or, if they were good-looking, to serve the fighters in the Pits or the guests and sponsors who came to watch the bloody battles.”
Levi gripped my waist and pulled me up to straddle him before hugging me and whispering in my ears. “Some years later, my father found out that Keane had a young daughter. So he sent his useless son into the Supernatural Council to get information about you and kidnap you. Unfortunately, when I found you, it was no longer a simple mission to get over with and return to the Pits because you were my true mate and you were more important than anything in my life.”
I rubbed circles into his back, trying to console him as much as I could. “Don’t refer to yourself as a useless son. Your father was the useless one.”
He dropped a kiss on my forehead before continuing, “And you know everything that happened after that. I had to go to the Pits every month to keep the warriors there in check and to prevent any of them from winning, so they couldn’t request their freedom as per the blood oath they were forced to take. While I was there, I gathered information to destroy my father and even recruited help from confidants locked in the Pits. But when I returned the last time, things went to hell when the Supernatural Council and I raided the place.”
“When I was about to kill my father, my sister ran in front of him and took the stake for him. Thankfully, King Drew was there, and he killed my father when I hesitated. He and Doyle forced someone to hold me down while they torched the staked bodies of my sister, father, stepmother, and brother right in front of me until they were reduced to ashes. I wanted to stop them from killing my sister, but I also knew from the hatred in her eyes that she would just become a replica of my father, hunting after me and my loved ones if I let her live. So I closed my eyes, cried, and allowed them to hold me down while they burned her staked body to ashes in front of me. I feel so guilty . . .” He stopped talking as he pressed his face to my chest, crying silent tears that wet my shirt.
I embraced him and urged, “Don’t hurt yourself by crying silently, Levi. It is so painful to see you hurting yourself by suppressing your grief. Cry aloud if you want to. There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you yell or sob. In the past few weeks, you’ve been having trouble sleeping, and you’ve been staring at the TV without watching anything. I’m trying to help, but you won’t let me. Let me in Levi. You’ve been helping me all along, and now it’s my turn to help you push through this period, so don’t push me out or refuse to cry in front of me like I’m a stranger.”
As if something in my words finally got to him, he stood up, pulled me off him, and placed me on the ground before walking into the darkness beyond the overhead lights.
Then he kneeled on the floor with his back to me and cried out in a loud voice. It was a loud, reverberating shriek similar to that of a caged animal in pain and I clenched my fists while standing by the car trunk, staring at his back.
For the next few minutes, all I could do was listen to his heart-wrenching sobs, wishing to comfort him while forcing myself to stay where I was to respect his wishes if he didn’t want to lean on me in this difficult time.
Then he speed ran to me, hugging me so tightly in his arms that it was difficult to breathe.
