by Sarah Piper
All the magic, all the darkness and the light, and I’d never felt so powerful as I did right now, making this demon—my demon—lose control.
The desperate sounds he made sent me over the edge, and I came with a shuddering cry that left my throat raw, my legs trembling. Ronan held me up through it all, his mouth blazing a trail of hot kisses down my throat, and when I finally stopped shaking and the heat of my orgasm finally receded and I opened my eyes, Ronan was watching me with a look that can only be described as pure devotion.
“What?” I smiled, feeling a little shy at the intensity of that look.
“There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” he whispered.
And no matter how many secrets he’d kept, no matter how many he was still keeping, I believed him.
Forty-One
Gray
We slept through the rest of the morning. Made love through the afternoon. Stopped only long enough to warm up some of Haley’s stuffed shells, then got back in bed.
By the time I stirred again, my room was dark, rain pattering lightly against the windowpanes.
I opened my eyes fully and turned toward Ronan.
He was already awake, head propped up on his hand, his eyes tracing the contours of my face.
Something had shifted. I saw it in his eyes—a subtle change from devotion and wonder to regret.
My heart sank.
“Gray, there’s something I need to—”
I pressed my fingers to his lips, cutting him off. I didn’t need to hear how this shouldn’t have happened, how it couldn’t happen again, how it changed everything.
He was right. It shouldn’t have happened. It couldn’t happen again. And it did change everything.
But it was done. And despite the ache in my chest, despite what the future held, despite the details of whatever deal had brought him into my life, I wouldn’t say I regretted it. Not for a minute.
I sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to my chest. “What time is it? Did you hear from Asher? We should probably check in with those guys.”
“Please don’t go,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
I felt his hand on my shoulder, warm and firm, gently urging me back to bed.
I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to brace for whatever he was about to tell me.
“I didn’t choose this life, Gray. I need you to know that.”
“Okay,” I said, still not sure where he was going with this.
“Centuries ago, I woke up in a place I didn’t recognize, no clue where I’d come from or how I’d gotten there. I didn’t know my name, my age, my country, none of it.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I rolled onto my hip, facing him. In all our years, he’d never talked about his past. His origins. I’d always been too scared to ask for details. Even after what I’d found out earlier, I still didn’t have the courage to ask for more.
“I was in a castle,” he said. “In the countryside somewhere. I searched every room until I finally found a man sitting in a formal dining room, two places set, as if he’d been waiting for me.
“He poured us each a glass of bourbon and told me he was my father. That I’d suffered a magical attack that’d affected my memories, but that I’d been born a demon. That I’d chosen to fulfill my destiny as a crossroads demon, just like he and his father had. I had no reason to doubt the guy, but it never felt right. All the contracts, the souls, the lives… it haunted me. But what could I say? I had no memories of my own. No place to go. All I had was this man and his legacy—one I didn’t want to taint. I believed that story for… a long time.”
“But not anymore?” I asked.
“About fifty years ago, I refused a deal. A kid was involved—I just couldn’t. I let the family off the hook—tried to help them go undercover, get new identities, the whole thing. It worked for a few years, but then Hell caught up with them.” Ronan closed his eyes, the memories deepening the lines around his mouth.
“My father flew into a rage,” he continued. “But rather than beating me or locking me in a dungeon or sending me to oblivion, he decided the most severe form of punishment was the truth.”
I reached up and traced his brow, wondering how long he’d been carrying this burden, wishing I could take away his pain.
“The man who’d been calling himself my father was not my father at all,” he said, “But a high-ranking demon prince named Sebastian. And I hadn’t always been a demon. I was human once, Gray. Thirty-one years old. Ronan Michael Vacarro—that part has always been true.”
“So how did you end up there? You sold your soul?”
The rain picked up outside, lashing the windows, and I snuggled deeper beneath the blankets, closer to Ronan. I grabbed his hand and turned over on my other side, wrapping his arm around me, pressing my back against his chest. I wanted him to know I was right here. Solid and real. Not going anywhere, no matter what he said next.
A deep sigh escaped his lips, and he pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, nuzzling me. After a long moment, he finally said, “My parents—my human parents—they weren’t good people. Long story short, my old man made a deal at the crossroads to buy ten more lousy years on their miserable lives. You know the going rate on ten more years?”
I closed my eyes, tears staining my pillow. He didn’t have to spell it out.
“It was the first thing Sebastian ever told me that rang true,” he said. “For so long after that, I blamed my parents—people I couldn’t even remember. I was so sure they’d robbed me—they were the ones who’d made the deal, who’d traded me in, right? But all that blame was misplaced. Sebastian—he could’ve let me spend the rest of eternity not knowing, or just believing I’d somehow brought it all on myself, some karmic curse I deserved. But he’d wanted me to know that I wasn’t good enough. That my own parents—my fucking parents—threw me away, cursed my soul to hell.”
I turned back to him again, taking his face in my hands, pressing kisses to his cheeks, his jaw, his mouth, trying to show him with everything in me how truly loved he was.
“I wish he’d never told me,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
“But then you wouldn’t know the truth,” I said. “You’d be living a lie, always wondering.”
“I used to think that.” He opened his eyes, meeting my gaze in the moonlight. “The truth shall set you free—that’s how the saying goes, right? But here’s the thing about the truth. Yeah, sometimes it sets you free. Sometimes it fucking destroys you.”
“I would rather be destroyed by the truth than build my life on a lie.” The words came out harsher than I’d intended, but Ronan didn’t flinch—just claimed my mouth in another searing kiss.
When he finally broke away, he brushed the tears from my cheeks and smiled. “I meant what I said. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“I know,” I whispered, smoothing the hair back from his face. “I just wish we—”
The phone on my nightstand buzzed with a text.
“You should check that,” Ronan said, sitting up. The moment between us faded, reality settling back in. “We should probably let someone know we’re still alive.”
As much as I hated to leave the warm, safe cocoon of this bed, of this man’s arms, Ronan was right. We needed to check in with the guys, find out if Darius had any luck with his contacts in New York. Hopefully he and Emilio were working together on that part of things now.
I sat up and grabbed the phone, figuring it was just Haley checking in.
It wasn’t.
The text—a photo—had come from an unknown caller, but I recognized the man in the picture immediately.
Behind a bruised and bloodied face, eyes the color of the deepest part of the ocean stared back at me.
Oh, Asher.
He’d been chained to a chair, shirtless, metal biting into his skin. Blood ran red over the black tattoos on his chest, dripping onto the wooden floor, activating the ancient magical symbols painted there. The whole thin
g was surrounded by a circle of salt.
They’d put him in a devil’s trap, a powerful demonic prison that could only be destroyed by its maker. Eventually—hours, maybe a day—it would drain him. Suck the life out of him until there was nothing left but a husk, and his soul was banished to oblivion.
Behind him, moonlight filtered in through a stained-glass window in the shape of a star.
“Gray?” Ronan’s hand on my naked back jarred me out of my shock. “Everything okay?”
“Call Darius and Emilio,” I said, jumping out of bed and snatching up my clothes. “We need to go. Now.”
Forty-Two
Gray
Fifteen minutes later, I was stuffed into Waldrich’s van with Ronan, Emilio, and Darius, parked on a dead-end side street halfway down the block from Norah’s.
“It might be a trap,” Emilio said, peering through his binoculars into the rainy night.
“It’s definitely a trap,” Ronan said. “But we’re not leaving Ash in there to rot.”
Headlights cut through the rain, and the four of us ducked down until the car crept passed.
“So what’s our plan?” Darius asked as we sat up again.
“You two go in the front door,” I said. “Ronan and I will take the back. With Norah gone, I shouldn’t have any trouble with the wards. Once we’re inside, I need to get to the attic. So whatever’s waiting for us in that house, you guys need to deal with it. I’ll get Asher, and hopefully we can regroup on the main floor.”
All three pair of eyes turned to me in the dark space of the van, each one heavy with apprehension.
“Are you sure about this?” Ronan asked. He’d been going along with me up to this point, but I knew he was worried. “We don’t even know if you’ll be able to break the trap.”
“I can break the trap. You guys are gonna have to trust me on that.”
“I don’t like it.” Darius shook his dark head. “Asher may not be the only one waiting in that attic. There has to be another way, love.”
“What if I take the attic,” Emilio said. “I can shift before we head in. If anything’s up there, I’ll be able to sense it.”
“Guys.” I held my hands up, quickly losing patience. “Please. Asher doesn’t have time—”
Lightning split the sky, and the crash of thunder that followed rattled the van windows and set off several car alarms on the block.
If we were going for stealth, this was not our night.
“Gray, the safest place for you is here in the van,” Emilio said.
“You’re right,” I said plainly. “The van is the safest place for me.”
They gaped at me, clearly shocked that I'd agreed.
“Sitting out, staying out of harm’s way, letting other people fight my battles,” I said. “Definitely safer than jumping headfirst into a trap. But sorry, guys. That’s not what family does.”
Ronan opened his mouth to argue, but I held my hands up again, cutting him off. “Not up for debate.”
I expected more pushback, but surprisingly, they backed off.
“Okay, little brawler,” Darius said. “You say you know how to help Asher, and I’m willing to trust you on that. But you need to trust us, too. That means recognizing when you’re outclassed and not doing anything to put the rest of us at risk.”
“My main objective is Asher,” I assured him. “I’ll leave the carnage and mayhem to the pros.”
Darius smiled. “That’s all I wanted to hear, love.”
“Everyone clear on the plan?” Ronan asked, and we all nodded.
I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure how I was going to spring Asher from the devil’s trap—we hadn’t had a lot of prep time—but a hazy idea had begun to take shape in my mind the moment I’d seen that picture.
A demon’s soul was bound to hell, but the demon himself was still in physical possession of that soul. It lived in the demon’s body, for lack of a better way to describe it.
Liam had once told me that a person’s soul is his very essence. So if that theory held true for demons, then Asher’s soul—not his body—made him a demon.
A few more pieces clicked into place in my mind as I followed the logic. Devil’s traps only work on demons, and demons were only demons because of their souls. So the thing that was keeping Asher locked in that trap was his soul.
Remove that, and there’d be nothing holding him there.
After my experience with Travis, I was pretty sure I could get his soul out. The trouble would be getting it back in.
But… one crisis at a time. Too much longer in that trap, and Asher wouldn’t have a body left to return to.
“Alright. Let’s go,” I said, and we filed out of the van into the sopping wet night.
After a quick scan of the street to confirm we were alone, Emilio stripped naked, tossing his clothes back into the van and shutting the door. His golden skin gleamed in the moonlight, slick with water as rain ran in rivulets down his muscled chest, his abs, finally disappearing into the dark black hair below.
He was… impressive.
“¿Que pasa?” he said when he caught me looking. “No need to ruin perfectly good jeans. They cost a hundred bucks.”
I shook my head, biting back a smile. Emilio had to have known I was checking him out. Which meant he’d said that to cover for me.
Without further ceremony, he crouched down on the ground, his muscles bunching, then elongating. Bones snapped and reformed, and thick, black hair grew over his golden skin, transforming him from man to wolf.
Power clung to his form, sleek and muscular even beneath the thick coat of hair. His beauty made my breath catch.
He nudged my hand with his head, and I rubbed behind his ears, enjoying the feel of his coarse fur on my skin.
“Ready to roll?” Ronan asked, and I nodded, lowering my hand.
Don’t say goodbye, I reminded myself. You’ll see them again soon.
We went our separate ways, Emilio and Darius taking the street entrance while Ronan and I cut through a neighbor’s yard and hit the house from behind. Just past a cemented area set up with a grill and patio furniture, we found the back porch steps, and headed on up. I’d brought my stakes and hunting knife, and now I pulled out the knife, holding it close to my hip.
I was right—the wards were nonexistent—but so were the locks. We walked right through the back door and into the kitchen without issue.
Yeah. Definitely a trap.
Inside, we waited a beat for my eyes to adjust, then swept the room. This was an old Victorian, notorious for creaky floorboards and banging pipes, yet the silence was so all-consuming we could’ve heard a spider cross the room. I couldn’t even hear the rain outside, despite the fact that it was streaming down the windows.
That was eerie enough on its own, but something else was bothering me, too. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was just… off.
We continued through two other rooms, finding nothing, finally meeting up with Emilio and Darius in the dining room in the middle of the house.
Darius shook his head, indicating they’d had the same results on their search. Gesturing to his nose, he mouthed, “No scent.”
That was it, I realized. The thing I hadn’t been able to put my finger on. Last time I’d been here, the house had smelled lived in—Norah’s perfume, coffee, cooking, cleaning supplies.
Now, it was just… a dead zone.
“Cloaking spell,” I mouthed back, finally figuring it out. The magic tingled my nose, skittering over my scalp. It was definitely witchcraft, designed to camouflage the scents of any creatures a shifter or vamp might’ve detected.
Perfect. So not only were we going in blind, we were going in without smell, too.
I tightened my grip on my knife and jerked my head toward the stairwell. Whatever creatures waited in ambush, Asher was running out of time.
The men circled me, scanning the room as I took the stairs, one agonizingly slow step at a time.
From the top landing
, a long hallway branched off in two directions, with several rooms on each side and a large window on each end.
I tugged on Ronan’s arm, gesturing toward the right. The two of us crept along the hallway while the other two took the left branch.
I’d just spotted the glint of a metal chain dangling from a hatch in the ceiling—the door that led to the attic—when the window at the other end of the hallway exploded.
“Get down!” Ronan shoved me to the ground as two bloodsuckers crashed into the hallway in a rain of glass and terror, lunging for Darius and Emilio. I’d barely caught sight of them when two more crashed through, and Ronan took off toward the commotion, ordering me to stay back.
I got to my feet, ready to ignore him. To throw myself into the fight.
But then I remembered my promise to Darius.
I was not built for carnage and mayhem.
I was built for magic.
I’d asked them to buy me time, and that’s exactly what they were doing. The best way for me to honor that—to help them—was to keep my promise.
It almost tore my heart in two, but somehow I managed to turn my back on the fight. On my family.
I sheathed my knife. Then I reached for the chain and pulled, catching the ladder that slid out from the hatch. Behind me, a wooden door splintered, and the yelp of a wounded wolf filled me with a primal fear.
But even as the battle raged, I refused to turn back. I climbed the ladder, hauled myself into the attic, and pulled the hatch closed behind me.
I’d just gotten to my feet when a broken voice spoke, cutting through the muffled sounds below.
“Admit it, Cupcake,” he slurred. “You missed me.”
Forty-Three
Gray
Hope sparked in my chest. If Asher was flirting, maybe he wasn’t as far gone as I’d feared.
“Save your strength,” I said, crossing the dim, dusty attic to reach him. Other than the chair they’d chained Asher to, and all the markings on the floor beneath him, the room was completely bare. Even the walls were blank—nothing but studs and wooden slats.