Page 32 of Claimed By Her Monsters

“Nerissa…” he began, but he couldn’t conjure the words to try to convince me otherwise.

“Why does my child not wish to return to the place of her birth?” Lucifer decided to ask, and I realized he now stood behind me.

A mere glance up confirmed he was peering down at us, and despite the intensity of the negative conversation, his eyes were filled with calm. They looked no different from mine.

“You mean the place that stole me,” I emphasized and realized I was back to my “whole” Nessa self, which was perfect for the conversation at hand. “The place that birthed and raised me to be a Bride to a set of dark gods that weren’t even mine? The place that began their rituals when I was two? That poked needles through my hands and feet like the Lord’s son and left me hanging there for forty-eight hours to revoke the demons inside me? That place?”

He didn’t show how my words were affect him, and maybe that was why I turned to face him while my eyes darkened as the boiling energy of anger coursed through me.

“The place that left a four-year-old out on the mountains in the freezing blizzards to determine if I was truly worthy of survival? The place that burned my hands on stove tops not to hide my fingerprints but simply as one of many forms of punishment because I didn’t want to stay up all night singing hymns to the gods I’m supposed to devote my body to at sixteen? Oh. That place that forced me to plunge into a lagoon full of blood…the blood of innocent babies, children, and women who decided the worshippers’ actions were wrong and wished to be out of it? Oh, that lovely place that made me wish I could slice my fucking wrist and bleed to death so I wouldn’t have to deal with another day singing ‘How Great is the Devil’, who ironically is my fucking dad?!”

The way my eyes bled to black should have pushed me to stop, but the thrumming force of fury wished to rage on, and what better person to take it all but Daddy Dearest, who was chilling in hell, twiddling his thumbs because he knew nothing of my apparent existence.

“That place stole me from HAPPINESS! Stole me from having a normal fucking life with my gods who were DESTINED FOR ME! That place riddled me with nightmares so FRIGHTENING that my ‘destined’ monsters had to give me pleasure to pull me out of them! I was NEVER enough for them! Never worthy of taking a single breath in their presence. All for what? Because they couldn’t have the latest cars? Latest phones? Couldn’t waltz into a cave full of gold and buy whatever their hearts desired? Men and women who wouldn’t even work! Slobs who were angry that their punishment is growing old and dying without leaving a fucking legacy. All their hatred and anger was placed on me, while their own curse left me PACKLESS! I carried that guilt every day, questioned my worth every hour! I wondered how I could possibly be a worthy bride to ancient gods that couldn’t even show me the physical affection I craved and ridiculed me until I questioned my sanity when I found out their intentions all along! You want me to return to a place that vowed to kill me? Vowed to kill all I care about, and would make it their mission to ensure I’m sinking in a swamp of death for all eternity while I get to enjoy the shattering feeling of each god fading away because of their blind-sightedness! That’s the PLACE you wish me to waltz back to when it took EVERYTHING I had to run away from?!”

By the time I was done, I was completely out of breath, my body quaking with rage as tears streamed down my flushed cheeks.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d bottled inside me, the immense hatred I’d stored in my mind for years as a child, and it had only deepened into a dark depression during those six months where all I could do was survive.

My wolf howled in sadness in my mind, and I remembered how she aided in my survival. The cold winter nights that I thought would be my last. The moments of starvation where she’d take over and thrive in any environment to get myself bits of food and water.

We’d gone through everything together with Dark Nessa as well, all for us to only return to the place that wished to vanquish us.

I vowed to never step in there again. To never get lost in those hypnotic hymns and be tortured by their olden teachings.

I’d earned my freedom, so why would I return? To fight all over again…alone and frightened by the darkness inside of me?

Lucifer stared at me for a long time as if to wait and see if I’d changed my decision, but I stood there, glaring daggers at him despite my teary eyes and trembling frame.

I wouldn’t back down because I wasn’t going to go through that madness again.

I won’t be abused and tormented anymore.

Lucifer ended up sighing as he reached out and lightly stroked my head before whispering, “It was hard to carry the burden alone on your shoulders, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t know why I expected him to retaliate or even ridicule me for being so stubborn and childish, but his words were completely opposite of what I’d expected.

Which invited more tears to fall as I slowly nodded my head.

He nodded in understanding, and without another word, he pulled me into a gentle hug.

“They were cruel to you, my daughter. Merciless to a child who only sought to please them, to give them all they desired and more, but in the end, they betrayed your trust. They destroyed your dreams, wasted your time, and left you broken and alone to pick up the pieces of your shattered heart.”

He understood. He got exactly what they did and how it left me.

To find someone —a parent who truly understood the pain I held within for far too long —that could decipher my silent agony and comfort me for enduring so much through my life span left me sobbing in his arms in seconds.

To think the Devil, the one everyone marked as the true villain in the world’s affairs of good versus evil, was comforting his daughter in hopes he could take away a bit of that embedded pain.

"I can’t force you to go where you knew you never belonged,” he voiced when I calmed down. “But does that mean you have no intention of revenge?”

I pulled back enough to look up at him while he stared down at me with eyes of pure black —the same way my eyes had been minutes before.

"You don’t wish to leave those individuals who ruined your entire life to be rewarded with the exact methods of agony they put your through?”

He spoke slowly, purposefully, as if to make sure I grasped every single thing he was stating.

“If you don’t wish to go there, I will never force you to step foot into those lands, but then you have to give permission to take your chance at revenge from you,” he voiced. “You have to be okay with not feeling the overwhelming sensation of empowerment you’ll receive when you watch them beg for your mercy, or the relief you’ll feel when you watch them all crumble, one by one, knowing well that their suffering was only the beginning of endless torture.”

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