Page 148 of Dark Souls

She moved her attention to her grandpapi. “You know better than anyone what that is like. The damage rumours can do. Everyone feared you for being the first hybrid of equal powers without even knowing you. They wanted you dead because you were different and more powerful than them. They saw you as a threat when you gave them no reason to believe you were. The same goes for mum and Uncle Raiden, being the only tribrids in existence. Heathen’s family were victims of an unprovoked attack from the slayers led by the Knowlton Coven.”

I paused halfway through eating and placed my knife and fork down to give Ilaria my undivided attention. I was awestruck. How did she figure all this out? She continued to paint a picture of my upbringing, my family and what had happened to me, talking quickly but with such clarity on my past that I found myself transported back to those dark memories as if they had happened yesterday.

“And here’s an extremely disturbing part.” Ilaria finally stopped to take an overdue breath and looked at her grandpapi, who was giving nothing away with his tense expression. “The Knowltons couldn’t work out how to possess a demon’s soul and break Heath away from his vampire side. So they sought help from the most powerful dark witches at the time. Witches that were also slayers and managed to create the very spell that led to Heathen being kept captive and controlled ever since. He has no free will. The crimes he’s committed, the kills the SIA are investigating. Someone called The Devil summoned him to commit those crimes to control The Underground’s members. And all of this was only possible because of Celeste and Cora.”

I studied the faces of Arius, Raiden and Ruby with interest, seeing as they were directly related to the very witches Ilaria was talking about. It took a moment for the penny to drop for Raiden and Ruby, who paled at this shocking turn of events. But as my black eyes met Arius’ across the table, I could see this wasn’t new information. My nostrils flared as I tried to keep the complex emotions at bay.

“You knew,” I accused, digging my talons into the wood of the table to stop them from sinking into his chest.

Ilaria’s head whipped from me to her grandpapi with alarm. “Grandpapi?”

Everyone was staring at him now. Even his own mate looked surprised.

He leaned back in his chair, calmly threaded his fingers together and placed his hands on the table as he held my gaze. He could see how close I was to murdering him, depending on his next words. And I suddenly wasn’t sure I should be here. Maybe that’s what this was. He was going to provoke me to kill him so Ilaria wouldn’t want me. Because if he was about to confess to anything that implicated him in my captivity, in my family’s demise, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold myself back, grandfather or not.

“I knew Lucius and Celeste had once been slayers,” he said carefully, still only holding my gaze and preparing himself for my reaction. “My father was friends with Alatar Knowlton. I also knew that the Knowltons had two Demonski Upirs captured and controlled because of their help.”

I flung myself up out of my chair and roared, sending everyone in the room into a tailspin of fighting stances once more. Everyone except Arius, who remained seated and staring at me.

“Heathen!” Ilaria grabbed my face in her hands and forced me to break his eye contact. “Look at me.” The moment those pink eyes broke through the red mist, I heaved out some rapid breaths and tried to get myself under control. But I knew I couldn’t be here in case he said anything worse. This was what I had feared all along. What I knew Luka would be fearing. That her family was aligned with the rest of the world. That they would never accept us. It was too much.

“I need to leave,” I growled lowly, keeping my focus on Ilaria and ignoring everyone else in the room. “I don’t trust myself, Snow. I need to leave.”

She gulped when she realised what I meant. I promised her I would never hurt anyone she cared about, but I couldn’t sit here and listen to this. She nodded slowly and reached up on her toes to place a hard kiss on my lips. I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing tightly and allowed the feel of her against me and her lips on mine to calm me enough to be able to turn away from the rage I wanted to unleash. I didn’t even let her break away and say goodbye. One minute I was there, kissing her, and the next I was gone through the window.

Choices

“YouknewtheKnowltonswere keeping Demonski Upirs captured? And you did nothing about it?” I screamed at my grandpapi, slamming my hands down on the table.

Everyone in the room seemed to be frozen in a state of disbelief at the unveiling of secrets that had spiralled in the last ten minutes to even string a sentence together. But that was fine. It wasn’t them I needed answers from. It was the man I had always looked up to, the man I adored and thought the fucking sun shone out of his ass. The man who had always taught me to stand up for what was right. My lips trembled as I fought to keep control of the anger and disappointment, knowing he could have played a part in this. That by him standing back and doing nothing while my mate’s life was ruined with repeated torture and stolen freedom was too much to take.

“Ilaria, you need to understand something first,” he said calmly, leaning forward in his chair and holding my gaze. “The man you know me to be today wasn’t always who I used to be. Before I met your grandma, I was trapped under the control and manipulation of Lucius Romano, my own father and the King of Vampires. He had so much influence in the world. He was, at the time, one of the most feared supernaturals in existence. I was raised under his iron fist. Throughout my life, I endured emotional and physical abuse from him. I thought I was worthless because that’s all he made me believe I was. He was trying to groom me to be like him; cold, calculated and violent. To be the heir he needed. But he always saw a weakness in me. That weakness was empathy. I cared too much for his liking. He tried to beat it out of me at every opportunity he could. It was only when I saw your grandma and met Cora that I started to see the light through the darkness. That I started to realise my power was far greater than his and he’d been attempting to repress it for so long because he feared me.”

I blinked at him, my anger still not dispersing. Yes, I knew what a traumatic upbringing my grandpapi had. I knew the evil that he was raised by. But I couldn’t see how this excused his silence. If anything, this should make him see how alike he and Luka were.

“What has any of that got to do with Demonski Upirs?”

He sighed, hanging his head in an act of shame, perhaps, before he made eye contact with me again.

“I was only a young boy when I first met Alatar Knowlton. He often came to the castle to drink with Lucius. One night, when I was about fifteen, I walked in on him and my father having cigars and a whiskey by the fire in his office. They didn’t hear me come in. I was about to leave but then I overheard what they were discussing. It was around the time that Lucius was rampaging across the whole of America, attacking the smaller wolf packs in the name of Celeste. Altar’s coven was helping to aid him in these attacks. They hadn’t attacked Blood Moon yet, being the biggest pack in the world, but were strategizing on how and when. My father asked if Alatar still had the two Demonski Upirs captive. I had no idea what Demonski Upirs were. Alatar had given him a look and said bluntly, ‘No. We are not using them for this. It’s too public. They’d be seen and the council would find out about their existence. As much as I am in support of your agenda, I will not risk my prized possessions.’

Intrigued to know what a Demonski Upir was, why my father wanted to use them to attack Blood Moon, and why Alatar had refused, I headed straight to the castle library. I researched all night. I found out everything I could about Demonski Upirs and that they had become extinct after years of being hunted. The books said they were monsters. They were deadly killing machines with no morals and unable to live civilised lives. Weeks went by and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted to see one with my own eyes. So, eventually, I confronted my father. I asked him about them and how Alatar had them when they were supposed to be extinct. He was furious, realising I had eavesdropped on his private conversation. He beat me severely for that. But when he’d finally calmed down, realising I now knew one of the greatest secrets in the world, he told me the part he and Celeste had played in being Slayers and the spell Celeste had created to possess the demon’s soul. He made it sound like they were heroes. That they’d done a good deed in ridding the world of an evil species and that by keeping the remaining two under control, they could live without releasing destruction upon the world. I believed him.”

I closed my eyes and dropped into a chair at the table before I let my head fall into my folded arms. I knew I couldn’t blame him for that. He was a teenager and completely brainwashed by Lucius. What could he have even done if he hadn’t believed it?

“Honestly, by the time the wars between the wolves and vampires really kicked off, I had forgotten all about it. After Lucius’ death, I became King of Vampires and I had my own troubles to navigate through. Many clans were refusing to accept me as king, even some from the Romano clan were planning a mutiny against my reign because of their loyalty to my father. But gradually, I won most of them over. Alatar Knowlton reached out to me and invited me to take my father’s place atThe Undergroundas a silent investor and VIP member. I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to distance myself from everything related to my father. I was busy trying to change the world’s opinions on hybrids, work with the wolves to create peace after years of hatred and war and find my feet as a king and first-time father. The Knowltons were the last thing on my mind. I knew they were bad people and I didn’t trust them, but they were keeping their distance. Eventually, I planned to take them on and put an end toThe Underground,which at the time was a truly vile excuse for the worst of supernaturals to torture and kill innocents for sport. But then I heard that the coven died mysteriously. Rumours spread that it was a sacrificial spell gone wrong. That Alatar had killed his entire family and then himself. But I knew Alatar wasn’t the type. He was evil, but he wasn’t crazy. I remembered the Demonski Upirs he had captured and I just knew it must have been them. They must have escaped and managed to kill the entire coven. But the world still didn’t seem to know anything about them. There was no hysteria. There was no panic. Someone who called himself The Devil took overTheUnderground. I presumed he was just another investor and VIP member. He was clever because he changed the wayThe Undergroundran. He made it more exclusive, harder to infiltrate and less twisted. It became more of a secret society than an evil club. There was no immediate threat and we all agreed that unless it was necessary, we would leave it alone. We had plenty of other things to deal with over the years.”

“What about the Demonski Upirs?” Mum asked, coming to sit down next to me. I felt her hand stroke down the back of my hair to provide me with some comfort.

“As far as I was aware, I was the only living person who knew they even existed. I thought they had escaped and killed the Knowltons. I thought they were free. I faced a choice: announce two Demonski Upirs, risking worldwide panic, or stay quiet and pray they wouldn’t rampage, murdering everyone. Both came with risk. But I decided to keep the information to myself. You are right, Ilaria. I knew what it was like to have the whole world think you are a monster. I wanted to give them the opportunity to prove that they weren’t.”

I lifted my head with tears in my eyes as I looked around the room at the faces of my family. “Except they weren’t free. They never had that opportunity because The Devil had them and used them in exactly the same way the Knowltons had. He still is.”

“And that man we met? The Dealer? He is Heathen’s vampire side, am I right?” Grandpapi asked carefully. I inhaled deeply, feeling instantly protective of that knowledge but there was really no point hiding it anymore.

“Yes. His name is Lukas Nezera. Heathen is his demon.”

“How did The Devil find out about them if no one knew?” Dad asked, reaching for my hand. “And who is this person?”

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