He couldn’t stand this.
“Angie. Wake up, darlin’.”
Her eyes shot open with a start and she laid her palm on his chest, lifting her head to stare up at him.
“You were having a bad dream.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, then blinked. “Isabelle was in trouble and I couldn’t get to her.” She wiped away the tears. “Silly dreams.”
He drew his hand over her hair. So damn soft. Everything about her was soft. Yet, she was so tough, thinking she had to carry the entire world on her shoulders, do it all on her own. “Are you okay now?”
“Yes.” She sat up and turned to face him. “I worry a lot about Izzy.”
He propped a pillow behind him and sat facing her. “I can tell.”
“The darkness in her concerns me. Especially now that I know the Sons of Darkness may be searching for her. And with what happened to me at the house last night. . I mean it’s obvious I have some kind of skills that aren’t exactly. . normal.”
“Yeah, it does.” She seemed to accept it. In fact, they hadn’t even had time to delve into where she’d gotten those abilities. That was a major talk he wasn’t prepared to have with her.
“What if she has those same kinds of powers, Ryder? I’m not exactly a dark soul, and look what I did to that demon. It scares me what she might be capable of. To be honest, I’m even worried about what I might be capable of.”
He blew out a breath. “I know what it’s like to have a dark side, to wonder if you’re going to snap any minute.”
“You do? How?”
He never talked about his past. So why now, and why with Angie? He’d like to think it was to coax her into revealing something about herself and about her sister, but he knew that was bullshit. Maybe he just felt bad that she felt bad about herself, and about her sister.
“When I was young, my mother disappeared. My father went ballistic. Not that he wasn’t already half crazy by then, anyway. The whole town just assumed she’d run off, tired of dealing with a madman for a husband.”
“How bad was he?”
“Really bad.”
“Alcoholic?”
“That was part of it, but it was more than the alcohol. The old man was on a power trip. I don’t think he was right mentally, either. Whether that occurred before or after the war I don’t know. I was too young. All I know was that he was an evil sonofabitch for as long as I could remember. He liked hurting people.”
“Did he. . hurt you? Hurt your mother?”
Ryder shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Oh, Ryder. I’m so sorry.”
“We dealt with it, learned ways around the beatings. If you could get him drunk enough, he’d pass out and then he couldn’t hit you. Mom was good at keeping enough liquor in the house to make sure he drank himself into oblivion every night. Over the years, she got smart, I guess.”
“Good God. Why didn’t she take you and leave him?”
He laughed. “And go where? Small town. No other family. You keep your business to yourself. That’s just the way it works.”
“So she just left you with your father? Even knowing he was mentally unstable?”
He’d never told anyone that part of the story before. “No, she didn’t leave us. Remember when I told you about how we got recruited on the island?”
“To fight demons, right?”
“Yeah. What I didn’t tell you was how we were chosen.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This is kind of hard to explain.”
“I’m reasonably intelligent, Ryder. I’m sure I can follow.”
“The six of us Lou brought to the island? All of us lost our mothers when we were children. So did most of the other hunters who came before us.”
“Lost as in. . how?”
“Our mothers were taken by demons.” He explained how the Sons of Darkness took human women and used them to breed half-human, half-demon creatures-the hideous hybrids they fought.
She placed her hand over her heart. “Did you all know this?”
“No. None of us did. Not until Lou told us on the island.”
“Oh, my God. What a revelation. So you all spent your lives thinking-what? That your mothers had left the family, or died, or been kidnapped?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
She reached for his leg, squeezed it. “Oh, Ryder, I’m so sorry. You thought your mother abandoned you, left you with your father.”
He shrugged. “It was no big deal.”
“Of course it’s a big deal. No child wants to feel deserted.” She crawled onto his lap and wrapped her arms and legs around him, facing him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. Soft, filled with tenderness. Not sexual in any way.
Damn. He wound his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, content to just hold her. He had to admit, it felt good.
Too good.
Don’t show weakness. Emotion. It’ll get you killed. Women will break you, boy. Don’t love them. They’ll knife you in the back and destroy you. All worthless bitches. They should pay. Grind them down under your boot heel. A woman’s pitiful screams are the best, son.
He shook his head, obliterating his father’s words. The old bastard was always there, would always be there, warning him, filling his head with that sick bullshit.
Even dead, the sonofabitch still haunted him.
The warmth fled and he gently pushed Angelique from his lap. “Anyway, back to what I was saying. .”
She quirked a brow, but nodded.
“My father was a military man. Came back from the war hardened. Not that he didn’t go in that way, but something changed in him after. Made him even worse than he was before, my mom told me. He had no love in him, no warmth. Not for my mother and sure as hell not for me.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to him during the war?”
“No. Don’t think it really mattered. He was born that way, I think. Going to war just made it worse. PTSD or something.”
“I’m sure it was hard on both of you.”
He shrugged. “My mom had plenty of love to give me. She tried to shield me from the old man as best she could. And my dad stayed out of the house a lot, either working the farm or in town at one of the bars. It wasn’t until Mom disappeared that things got bad.”
“How bad was it for you after she disappeared?”
“He toughened me, at least that’s what he thought he was doing,” Ryder said with a quirk of his lips. “He was so pissed when she disappeared. Said she left him with a kid who was worth nothing because she’d coddled me for eight years. So he taught me to work the farm, taught me about guns and warfare. When I got older, I learned his moods and when to stay out of his way.”