Fortune Academy: Year Three - J.R. Thorn Page 0,64

my momentum to fling him around me and onto the ground. He hit hard and went into a tumbling roll. I went to jump over him but the Hunter kept his eye on me, even in the disorienting spin, and grabbed at me so that I went tumbling down with him.

We became a tangle of arms and legs as the street jabbed rocks into my side, knocking the wind out of me until we stopped and Dante pinned me down. His chest heaved and his wild orange eyes glowed with murder and lust.

“You still don’t remember, do you?” he asked, his anger burning hot and violent as the darkness threatened to close in around us. He yanked down his neckline and revealed the long scar that ran across his throat. “Think, Lily. Think hard.”

I froze, staring at the mark as I felt inevitably drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I traced one finger across it, retracting my dark claw that matched the scar’s shape far too perfectly.

No. That doesn’t make sense. I couldn’t have…

I pulled my hand away. “I don’t like this, Dante. Get off me.”

He grabbed my wrist and pulled my fingers to his throat again, forcing me to feel the raised line. “Not until you remember.”

“Remember what?” I asked. “There’s nothing that—”

My words cut off short as a deep, dark memory struggled to the surface. The darkness all around me sucked me into a place I’d kept walled off from my mind, for my sanity’s sake.

I’d once been more Demonspawn than anything else. All I knew was anger and betrayal. My father, the Incubus King, had only wanted to use me to build an army of more just like me. At first, I’d been the perfect instrument for his plans. I’d embraced my Demonspawn side. Lack of empathy. Anger. Rage.

But most of all… I’d had a need for understanding and acceptance.

I started to question his actions, especially when he hurt people who didn’t seem to deserve it. Empathy wasn’t something a Demonspawn was supposed to have, but I wasn’t just a demon.

That’s when he’d locked me up in the darkness, that vile place where I’d gone when Kaito had given me the Awakening vial. It was where I’d lost my mind.

Where I’d lost everything.

I’d hurt people after that. It was a blur, even now, but I knew I’d done terrible things I could never forgive myself for.

“The blood on me,” I said, remembering that first night in the rain when I’d found myself at Cindy’s bar. I glanced up at my Hunter as my stomach twisted. “It wasn’t my own.”

His expression went grim as he waited for me to finish my thought.

“It… was yours.”

I’d been the one to do this to my Hunter. I’d sliced his throat wide open and left him for dead.

That was the first time he’d tried to hunt me down and failed.

But his blood had done something to me. It had touched a power inside of me that connected with my angel heritage and given me a second chance.

A clean slate.

“That’s why I wiped out my memories,” I said, mesmerized and horrified at the same time. “I didn’t want to remember doing that to you.” Not when my soul recognized him as my Virtue.

“I almost died,” he growled, his rage still palpable, but seeing the realization and pain in my eyes seemed to satiate his violent need to hurt me. “You didn’t have any knowledge of what you were, or how to control your powers. You managed to wipe out your memory, but in doing so, you sent out a shockwave that hit every supernatural in range.” He frowned. “Luckily, I was in transit between Earth and the Academy when that hit and exempt for the worst of it.”

All the fight left me at once and I slumped against the ground as the dark mist lingered over my lips. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

My Hunter seemed to relax, just as I did, as if us sharing this deep, dark memory and bringing it out into the open banished its control over us.

I realized that if this was Cole’s influence, he might need a trigger to hold onto to push rage. He couldn’t create it, I realized. He needed a source to fester.

And I’d just found Dante’s.

The Hunter’s eyes returned to their radiant orange glow as he got off of me and offered his hand. “I didn’t tell you because I don’t want to hurt you, Lily.” He frowned when I