I ask, turning to look at his golden eyes. “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make anyone jealous.”
“Will you rebuff or ignore any of us?” Ire asks flat out, drawing my gaze.
“Of course not,” I answer honestly.
He shrugs. “Then, we’ll be fine.”
I arch a dubious brow. “Just like that?”
Ire places his elbow on the armrest and balances his jaw on his finger and thumb. “I’m not saying we won’t have bumps along the way, but that’s every relationship, is it not?”
“I guess so,” I concede. “But if I’m doing something wrong or falling short somehow, I want to know. I want you to talk to me about it. Because I don’t want to screw this up,” I say, my mood shifting into worry. “I just really want to be a good mate to you guys.”
Rough fingers grasp my chin, and Vudu turns my face to look at him. “It’s not all on you, Little Mate. We’ll all be finding our footing.”
Beside me, I feel Toreon shift, and I look over to see him running a hand down his face. “I’m sorry, Sable,” he says, dropping his hand to look at me. “We’re probably not making this any easier on you,” he admits.
“You don’t have to apologize. This is new for all of us.”
Toreon glances over at Vudu. “V told me that he talked to you a little bit. We’ll get used to not being in hiding. Hopefully,” he says, giving me a smile, though I can tell it’s strained.
“Where exactly did the two of you hole up before the Ophidian found you?” Ire asks.
I feel Toreon and Vudu tense beside me, and they both share a quick look, silently communicating with each other. I don’t know if Ire feels the change in them, but I sure do. They don’t trust Ire.
“We were in the First Ring,” Toreon answers carefully. “My family bloodline was all Nihil, same as V. But we stayed in Ūnus to keep a lower profile.”
“We thought Gatekeepers have been extinct for centuries. The last one was Grim,” Ire says. “Why did your family decide to go into hiding?”
Vudu cuts his red eyes over to him. “Because their family is always being hunted,” he says harshly, “demons and angels alike, always trying to find a Gatekeeper to make portals for them or to twist their power.”
I look to Toreon, and he nods in affirmation. “Centuries ago, nearly all my family was wiped out completely, all because a faction of demons took it upon themselves to attack the Hellgate and go to the Mortal Realm in search of free reign. Gatekeepers were seen as nothing but jailers, made out to be the villains keeping the demons in. They’d forgotten the importance of balance. That was the last straw, so to speak.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
He lifts a shoulder. “My kin hid in the Mortal Realm for a long time. We already had created portals around different places that could take us to Hell’s Embrace, so we stayed with the humans and snuck through the portals to strengthen the Hellgate as needed. We tried to do our duties quietly, to sneak in and out. There weren’t Gate Guardians back then, so protecting the Hellgate and portals fell to us Gatekeepers. But we got picked off one by one, killed every time we risked our safety to go there, when we were simply trying to do our duty. We made the ultimate sacrifice to continue to protect the Hellgate, and our sworn protectors were slaughtered right beside us,” he says, glancing at Vudu.
I turn to look at my giant. “So nearly all of your family was wiped out too.”
“Yes,” he says simply, but I don’t miss the flash of pain in his red eyes.
“Finally,” Toreon continues, “all that was left was my many times great Matron and her cousin. Both were pregnant at the time, and they fled back into Hell to save their children, abandoning the portals and the Hellgate, knowing that if they stayed, they would only be slaughtered too.”
“That’s awful,” I say, feeling so horribly sad. “What about Lucifer? Why didn’t he step in?”
“He did. He chose worthy demonic bloodlines to become Gate Guardians at each portal in the Mortal Realm. But by then, it was too late. My kind was nearly gone. The two females stayed in hiding ever since, and we let the realms believe that we were extinct.”
“The Gate Guardians have been struggling for centuries to sustain the Hellgate,” Ire says, drawing all