Page 48 of Shannon in Sombra

“Duke’s first law,” I remind us all. Not like we haven’t heard the endless refrain over the years, but I say it anyway: “Humans can’t know about Sombra unless they’re a mate. Something tells me that, if this prick stole my baby to give to another asshole, they’re not bonded. So he dies, right?”

Fuck the first law. I could give a shit, but I’m sofuriousright now that I’d happily swing this heavy-ass sword and lop off his head if only to make him pay for ever laying his kidnapping human fingers on Alana.

No one comes between a mama bear and her cub.

No one, except a daughter who has been estranged from her father since she was a little girl, even if she didn’t know why.

A daughter who might finally, finally get a little bit of closure as she holds onto the man who, like Amy, hasn’t aged a day since he got involved with Sombra demons.

Only… Amy is Nox’s mate. He gifted her with his immortality when he gave her his essence and bonded her to him.

Daniel Benoit should be at least mid-sixties, early-seventies based on Amy’s age. Tired, covered in dust, and broken, he still doesn’t look a day over forty himself.

But why?

And does it really matter whenhe kidnapped Alana?

I take a step toward him, holding the sword.

“Shannon, please.”

Amy.

Amy, the woman who received a frantic message on an old social media platform and actually answered it. Amy, the woman who has only ever been a phone call or a short drive away when I needed to talk to someone who knew what it was like to be a Sombra demon’s mate.

Amy, my friend for the last two plus years.

Damn it.

“Oh, fine.” Turning, I shove the sword back at Glaine. The scowling demon tightens his grip, as though girding himself from a blonde human 2/3rds his size snatching it from him again. “But he better have a good explanation.”

“I can explain.” Susanna rises, leaving Amy to help pull her father up into a seated position. “When I first was pulled into Sombra, my mate sent me into the shadows to find an ashbalm flower.”

Haures sets his jaw. “I gave you a choice to break your bond. You didn’t want to stay at first.”

“You put me in the dungeon.”

“To keep you safe, my love.”

“To keep me, you mean,” Susanna counters. “And you knew I wouldn’t use the ashbalm, just like Hope didn’t when you gave her the same choice.”

Haures cocks his head, conceding her point.

“Anyway,” Susanna continues, “I went into the shadows. I… I got lost. Instead of finding the ashbalm, I found Dagon. The shadows were killing him.” She pauses a moment. “Yelios was killing him.”

As if I had any illusions that the king can’t hear us or doesn’t know everything that is going on in his shadows, he makes sure to cut in and rasp out, “This part of Sombra is still my domain. I am still king here. If you do not bow, you do not survive.”

Sierra grabs her mate’s arm. “Dagon?”

“I am loyal to Duke Haures,” he explains. “I bow to no other ruler. Now, I get on my knees for none but you, Sierra, but Yelios… Susanna saved my life that day.”

“Because I’m human. Because a seer told Yelios after his Alana died that she would be returned to him, a demon child with a human mother.”

LikemyAlana.

Oh, no.

“I’m human. That intrigued him. So when I told him to let Dagon go, he agreed as long as I promised to give him my firstborn child. A child of a human mother and a demon father… the child that Lucian and Damien saw in their visions two thousand years before I was even born.”

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