She sat up as best she could manage, pressing flat palms against his chest as she slowly let her eyes walk over him. His dark hair was damp and curling in a messy collection of rings. His dark skin was as slick as hers; every vein and vessel beneath it was distended to the utmost.
Corrine cleared her throat, her anger fading when she acknowledged that, whatever else he was, Kane was suffering.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she asked him more gently this time. “Why are you trapped like this? Why don’t you want me to find someone to free you? God, I can tell you’re suffering from some kind of pain. Why won’t you let me help?”
Kane looked at her, his crisp blue eyes hot with unspoken emotions she had no access to. Not unless he deigned to share them with her.
“I am being held here like this”—he jerked on the chains—“because right now I can’t be trusted. The pain I am in is transient. It will pass.” She saw his jaw clench briefly. “I just need you to understand one thing, okay?” He waited until she nodded. “There is a special sort of. . of chemistry, between you and me. The moment you and I came into contact with each other, it made something happen to both of us. It made us change into symbiotic beings. That means—”
“I know what symbiotic means,” she broke in tartly.
“I know you do,” he sighed. “I meant to say, what that means for us is that we are each dependent now on the other. You became sick, Corrine, because I wasn’t there to support you. You almost died because of it. Now you are weak and can barely function. You were in a coma until just a little while ago. And you’ll go back into it if you don’t keep close to me.”
“Wait a minute. .”
“No. You can’t think about this now. You just need to go to sleep and rest. In a little while you’ll start to feel better and then we can talk some more. Please, Corrine, just rest.”
Corrine wanted to complain. She wanted to question him about things like: How did he know all of this? Was this real or just some kind of delusion that he truly believed with that unnerving conviction of his? And if this had all started the moment they’d met, how was it that she’d been sick since before meeting him?
But none of those questions made it past the point of thought flashing through her mind. Her exhaustion had rapidly caught up with her and before she could think to fight it, she slipped into a deep, natural sleep.
Or so she thought.
“Hmm.”
“What?” Noah looked up from his reading when Abram made the speculative sound.
“Nothing really. Only, I find it fascinating to watch the mistakes that the young tend to make.”
“If you mean Kane, he is hardly what I would call young. And mistakes are not exclusive to youth.” Noah frowned at that, thinking of all he had learned recently about Demon history. A thousand years ago the Demon race had actually been comprised of two races. Demon and Druid. They had lived a symbiotic existence. Demons could not know the depth of true and meaningful love with a soul mate, without a genetically perfect Druid counterpart; Druids could never know their own power without that perfect Demon’s touch to give birth to it. And, as Kane and Corrine were discovering, once that connection was made, they could not survive apart from one another. The Druid would whither away and die within a couple of weeks for want of the energy of the Demon it fed from, and the Demon would pine for its love, suffer untold depression, and usually seek an end at its own hand or simply waste itself away into death.
Yet, even knowing this, a millennia ago the Demons had taken an active hand in the destruction of the Druid race. Just because of a slight by one King to another King, whether real or imagined in the distant dust of history, the Demon King had declared war on the Druids. And what had been his first, most vicious attack against his enemy? To lock up his own people. All Demons that had been mated at the time had been locked away from their Druid mates.
The deaths had been in the thousands. The Demon King had wiped out nearly half the Druid population in one cruel act. Druids suffered and starved with their energy sources torn from them. Their loves torn from them. And the backlash of all those Druid deaths had made the Demon King’s victory short lived, because Demons had killed themselves in untold numbers once they were set free. And those that did not take their own lives died of broken hearts and spirits in under a year.
No. Demons could not survive the death of their Imprinted mates any better than Druids could survive theirs.
In the end the Druid population suffered a complete genocidal eradication. Thus, there had not been a Druid born in a thousand years. They were gone and gone for good. In one fell swoop the Demons had exiled themselves to empty, loveless immortality. Imprinting between Demon and Demon was all but unheard of, though in rare instances it did happen. Instances like Noah’s own parents. And yes, Demons did wed, joining with each other, producing offspring.
But those relationships never lasted very long. Maybe a half century. Maybe more if they were lucky. Never as long as they would have if they had been Imprinted. Imprinting was forever. It was exquisite and beyond compare, soul deep and heart bound. And it was gone.
Or so it had seemed for a thousand years. The truth appeared to be complex and yet simple at the same time. Druids, seeing the writing on the wall, had done the unthinkable. They had escaped Demon persecution and hidden themselves deeply amongst the infantile human race. They had given up any hope of ever knowing the power that hid in their blood, opting for survival instead. They had muddied their proud blood with that of the more savage humans around them. They had had no other choice at the time.
So all these long centuries later, after who knew how many genetic dilutions, they had been found once more by the Demons who needed them so badly. Demons who suffered near insanity twice a year and were quickly losing all control of who and what they were. Granted, the curse of Samhain and Beltane Hallowed moons had been a just dessert. They had deserved this horrible fallout.
But perhaps it was their maturity, their turn toward peaceful and benevolent ways that had brought them to this time and place. At long last, a Druid had resurfaced and Imprinted on their Enforcer, of all people. And lo and behold all that dilution, all that muddying. . had only made them stronger. More powerful. Breathtaking. Corrine’s sister Isabella was now an Enforcer too. She could read the ancient Demon and Druid languages as if she had been born to it. She fought like a dervish, with deadly skill and strength although she had never been trained to it. Before she and Jacob had crossed paths, before they had touched, she had been a quiet, simple librarian.
Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. There was nothing about Bella that could be classified as simple or quiet.
Noah smiled at that, enjoying the newfound influence of Bella in his life. In all of their lives. Bella was beautiful and, for all of her short stature, she was a giant in her heart and her compassion toward others. She had taken to her new life like a duck to water, had taken all of Demon society into her heart. She had embraced her new life as a Druid.
Noah was not certain it would be so easy with Corrine. Jacob had had the advantage of time on his side, the luck of a few precious days when he was able to teach Bella about himself, his race, and their culture, and she had been given precious time to adjust to all the changes happening to her.
Corrine, however, had been starved to the brink of death. Coming back from that would not be easy. Nor would it be easy for her to understand why she was forever connected to the man bound beside her. Worse, Kane would not be at his best. The fever in his blood and in his soul would make him savage, make him reckless.