Page 8 of Walking in Darkness

“My father isn’t a shifter. So what if Papa’s name is Michail. So what if he’s from Greece. It was a dream. Nothing more. Just a fucking nightmare. My papa was not, was not…” Kit’s stomach lurched.

Kit couldn’t even go there. His papa was the sweetest, gentlest man ever. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. He wasn’t abused. He just wasn’t.

“Just a fucking dream,” Kit snapped at his reflection once more. He was flat-out refusing to even think about Hudson and Connie being his mates.

He was not going there, because he knew what that word meant in the paranormal world. He was not someone’s mate. Or two someones, in his case. Hudson and Connie wouldn’t have hidden something like that from him. Would they?

One freak out at a time, thank you.

Speaking of one freak out at a time, surely his parents hadn’t hidden that one of his dads was a shifter. Surely not.Surelynone of them would have been so stupid as to do something like that.

Kit dropped the washcloth in the sink, turned out the bathroom light, and walked back into his bedroom.

On the floor of his bedroom lay Kit’s answer… in the form of the red suit he’d been wearing. “Son of a bitch. It was real. All of it was fucking real.” The truth hit him like a ton of bricks. “They did hide it.”

If asked, he couldn’t say if he was speaking about his parents… or Hudson and Connie.

CHAPTER THREE-HUDSON

HUDSON ENJOYED the early mornings. It was quiet, outside of the birds chirping, of course. Very few of his dragons were stirring this early, so the house was silent.

There were no emergencies or demands for his attention. For a bit, he could just breathe and enjoy the stillness around him. It was a treat he rarely got to have.

In the distance, a deer stepped from the tree line. Surprised, Hudson watched the animal. The scent of predators was usually a deterrent to natural wildlife. The deer stared at Hudson for a few seconds, then retreated.

Smart creature.

Most dragons enjoyed the taste of venison, himself included. His dragon rumbled in his head, agreeing. As tempting as it was to strip and shift, he wasn’t plowing through the forest and chasing a damn deer before the sun was barely up. Now, catching one out in an open field was another matter.

Instead, Hudson remained seated on his private deck, sipping his coffee like a civilized dragon as the sun slowly climbed into the sky.

He replayed yesterday in his head.

Last night was Kit’s first appointment with Dr. Frederick King, a psychiatrist Kit was seeing because of the attack by Nox. A psychiatrist who also was part of the St. Clair coven of vampires.

Kit had been hesitant to see Frederick, thanks to having been bitten by a mimic and then having his blood taken involuntarily.

Hudson frowned down into his mug. Kit’s reaction could be a problem later because a dragon extended a human’s life by sharing their blood with said human.

Yeah, that could be a huge problem since Kit was his and Connie’s soul bound mate, although Kit was unaware of that fact. With every fiber of his being, Hudson wanted to tell Kit, but he wasn’t sure how his mate would react to that information.

Kit had been thrown into the deep end of the pool, and Hudson was afraid to keep pushing his head underwater. Kit was human, and he’d had no idea paranormals even existed until Nox had attacked him, taken his blood, then transformed into a carbon copy of Kit.

Hudson took another sip of coffee—it was that or chuck it across the deck. Nox had assumed Kit’s identity, lured Austin to the bookstore Kit owned, and attacked Austin. That, of course, brought the Elder of the San DeLain daemons, Kage, who was also Austin’s mate, running.

Well, since Kage was a daemon, he’d stepped out of a shadow, which Kit had seen. That alone was terrifying. Then Kit got to see Kage’s true form, which resembled a demon—wings, fangs, horns, and all.

It really was a wonder Kit wasn’t a blithering idiot after all he’d experienced. Most humans would have broken under that kind of pressure, but not Kit. But he was most definitely bruised, and Hudsonhatedthat.

Everything should have ended with Nox’s death, but it hadn’t. Now Nox’s brother, Lennox, was targeting Kit, which was why Kit was living with Hudson. The hunters were still stalking paranormalsandhumans in San DeLain too. The threat was not over by a long shot.

Connie stepped out on the deck, still in his night pants and holding a cup of coffee. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, sweetheart.” Hudson admired the view in front of him—all six feet of the sexy redhead dragon with bedhead who was also his mate.

Well, technically, Hudson and Connie did not share a soul bond—and that made absolutely no sense. He wasn’t sure what Gaura, their fire dragon god, was thinking. He and Connieshouldhave that soul bond with each other.

Instead, they both shared one with Kit, which was crazy. Both he and Connie had a bond with Kit, but not with each other. It made him want to set something on fire.

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