one day with a thirst I didn’t understand. He understood. He’d been waiting. But his blood it…hurt me. It made me sick. And when I gained my powers a year ago, somehow I knew his blood…it affected it, made it into something else. He kept me hungry, always hungry. So I would crave him, his blood. No one else was allowed to feed me. He made himself my…everything.”
“So what? You did it out of some warped sense of loyalty?” Lazarus asked.
“Loyalty?” she whispered, pain and anguish in her voice.
“You’ve been with him since you were seven years old,” Chaos said by way of an explanation.
Her fingers curled tight again, so tight her nails broke the skin, blood bubbling to the surface. “That…fucker killed my mother in front of me when I was just a child. Separated me from my brother. Locked me away until I was old enough to be of use.” Her eyes burned into Lazarus. “I was forced to live among demons who despised me, who hurt me, tormented me any chance they got. He fed me his toxic blood, and because of it I was sick all the time. He threatened the only family I had left, told me if I didn’t do everything…everything he asked, I would lose the only person left on this earth I remembered feeling anything for.”
Lazarus lifted his hands in surrender. “Luna, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“I did what he said to keep Ronan alive. I stayed in that hell, for him. He used my brother to get me to do his dirty work.” Her jaw clenched. “But it was all for nothing, because he told me…he told me the last time he locked me away that he’d killed Ronan. Killed him, years ago, that a demi with powers like Grace’s took Ronan’s. All that time I thought I felt him, when it was only his powers that remained. It was someone else using Ronan’s powers to block for that sadistic fucking monster. I thought it was Ronan, I did it all for Ronan, but he was dead.” Her voice had risen. “I did all the awful things he said to save my brother, but he was already dead.”
Her body shook uncontrollably, and blood from her clenched fists dripped from her hands.
Gunner’s heart clenched, and he looked at his brothers. “She proved her loyalty when she told us where to find the other demi being held prisoner when she helped Grace escape. Christ, you were fucking there when I found her. You saw what he did to her,” Gunner said.
“I did those terrible things. I did them,” Luna said, sounding hysterical now, lost in her own head. “And Ronan was already dead!”
Gunner couldn’t take it another moment. He moved in close. “Luna…”
“I was going to kill Sir, I promise, Gunner. I’d planned it all. I was going to find Ronan, then I was going to kill that fucking piece of shit. I was going to do what Grace showed me and take off his head. Send me back and I’ll do it now. I promise I’ll do it now.”
She was shattering in front of him. “I’m going to touch you now, love, okay? I’m going to pick you up and take you to your room.”
“Then you came to the house and I…I couldn’t let the demon kill you. He came up behind you and I had to stop him, but Sir saw me. He saw me, and he locked me away. But I swear I was going to do it, just as soon as I got out…”
“You stopped that demon?” He’d heard the shriek of pain behind him while he fought. That had been Luna? Oh fuck, she’d been there. She’d used her power to protect him, and she’d been punished for it. He was the reason she was in that basement. His stomach rolled over. “You told me to leave, didn’t you, love? It was your voice I heard that night?”
She nodded and stared up at him blankly, shaking so hard it had to hurt, but she said nothing more. She was about to break—
She locked it all down.
Suddenly shutting herself down in a way that worried the hell out of him.
Gunner took her silence as an affirmative that he could touch her because he needed to. He couldn’t stand by while she suffered and not touch her.
He scooped her off the chair and stood. She flinched but didn’t push him away or ask him to put her down.