Black Widow Demon (37 page)

Her stepfather’s death had not harmed her. Being half demon did not diminish her. It brought out all that was best of her mortality. Blade was so ordinary by comparison. What had he done in his life to deserve someone such as her?

Even Roam appeared dazed. “I’ll be no trouble, I promise,” he said to her.

“Of course you won’t. Will he, Blade?”

She turned to him with the sun and the moon and the promise of every hope he’d ever had shining from her eyes, and any thoughts other than of her left his head.

“No,” he managed to say.

“If you want to come inside, I’ll find you something to eat,” Raven said to the boy. “After that, we’ll introduce you to the others.”

She gave a little wave of her hand to Blade, then led Roam indoors.

Blade went back to splitting wood, and his ability to think returned to him.

Other spawn would be coming. It was inevitable, just as she had predicted. He did not like feeling inferior to them or want to seem that way in her eyes. He had spent too many years as a cripple, fighting every day to prove, if only to himself, that he was no less of a man because of it. He would not spend the rest of his life trying to prove himself worthy to others. Not even for Raven.

Which meant he did not have much to offer her other than his love.

If it was not enough—if it would never be enough—then he would return to the goddess boundary in the spring and he would cross it. When he did, he would not return.

…

“Where are we going?” Raven asked.

“A place we can be alone and uninterrupted.”

Blade had been acting strangely all day, and after the things Creed had said that morning, it worried her. So shortly before dusk, and at Blade’s urging, she followed him out of the village to climb a small, overgrown path he had discovered in the woods. He held her hand, something he only ever did when they were alone. Although he would never admit it, or perhaps did not realize it, he used touch to communicate emotions to her that he found too complex to articulate.

He was not a man who displayed strong emotion, yet right now, he was deeply troubled.

They reached a tiny clearing. Through the snow-tipped tree boughs and broken rock, she could see the rooftops of the village houses below them. Narrow streams of smoke from three of the chimneys puffed straight upward before dissipating into the quiet air. From here, the approaches to the village could be monitored from three different angles.

Raven’s heart beat so fast it left her light-headed. Whatever he wished to say to her, he believed it wasn’t up for discussion.

Hurt blindsided her. He did not wish to be with her anymore. She had proven herself more demon than he could accept. She had truly begun to believe that it did not matter to him. She had thought he loved her even though he could not say the words, that all he needed was time to come to terms with it. He had so little experience with positive feelings he did not seem able to recognize or trust them.

But she had already given up Creed and accepted that he had greater responsibilities, and people who needed him more. She was not going to be as understanding of Blade if he tried to leave her too.

She extricated her hand from his, refusing to make this easy for him. He would have to speak, not rely on her interpretation of his emotions to convey his meaning. She was having enough difficulty dealing with emotions of her own.

He reached for her hand again, his broad shoulders blocking the view of the village, but she stepped away and hid it behind her back. The hem of her skirt caught on some brambles, and she bent to dislodge it. Then she stood to face him.

He was more handsome than any demon could ever be, at least to her. His long, black hair softened the severity of his sharp, angular face. A few early threads of gray touched his temples, the only physical sign of his tendency to worry. Other than a quiet warming of his eyes sometimes, when he looked at her in a way that always made her heart race a little faster, he never smiled. She wondered if that would ever change for him, or if he was so damaged he could never allow himself to feel any real joy in life, as Creed had insinuated. He was too afraid if he found it, he would lose it again.

That was his greatest fear.

“You have something you want to say to me?” she prompted him.

His eyes were on her face but did not warm the way she liked. She felt the earth become unsteady beneath her feet, as if she were about to be thrown from the mountain at any second. Terror seized her with icy hands.

“Roam says more people will be coming here,” he said.

His manner was not encouraging but on this one point, Raven refused to yield. “We’ll have to make room for them, then,” she said. “We can’t turn them away.”

“No. But how long will it be before there is no more room left here for me?”

The words made no sense to her. She frowned at him. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. You’ve organized most of the work. You’ve helped repair the houses so we all have warm places to live. Why wouldn’t there always be room for you?”

His eyebrows rose. “I’m mortal.”

The implication stunned her. He was Blade. She did not think of him as mortal or anything other than himself. To her, he was larger than life—more than all of the mortals and immortals combined.

Without him, she had no world, no purpose. Nothing.

“If this village can’t be a haven for all, then it’s a true haven for none,” she said. “What about half demon children? Their mortal mothers should be made to feel welcome here, too. If they are, then women who were seduced by demons will have no necessity to rely on men like Justice for protection.”

“The others may not feel as you do.”

“Walker and Laurel will,” Raven said without hesitation. “If the others don’t, you and I will move on and find another place where we can welcome the people who need it. Or they can move on instead.”

Quiet intensity spilled from him. “You would do that? Move on with me?”

“How could I not?” she asked, bewildered again. It hurt her to breathe. “I thought the tentative arrangement you and Creed reached with the Godseekers and assassins meant you could be happy here, or at least content. Are you telling me you don’t wish to stay with me? That you don’t want me with you any longer?”

“I’m trying to say I have nothing to offer you.”

“I have nothing to offer you, either. Other than my love,” she added, very quietly.

He did not speak. She could not tell what he thought or how he felt about her disclosure. She had put it out there, and now he could not ignore it or pretend it did not exist. Creed was wrong—Blade knew his feelings very well, except he chose which ones to acknowledge. If he was going to walk away from her, she would at least make him be honest with regard to his feelings for her.

“Did you know the amulet was meant for a demon’s mate when you gave it to me?” he finally asked.

The question unbalanced her further. She could not absorb the meaning behind it or what he wanted to learn. Did he think she had tried to trap him with the amulet? To bind him to her?

“I know my father meant it for my mother because he thought she was his,” she said. “But she had to accept him in return to truly be his mate, and she never did. Not completely, in the way she would have had to.” She tried to smile. It did not feel convincing, even to her. “She wasn’t an especially brave woman.”

“She refused to be parted from you, which made her braver than many other women,” Blade said.

That was true, Raven thought, surprised by his insight. Her mother’s life had been a difficult one. She had once walked amongst demons. If she’d not had a skill that made her valuable to her community, she might not have survived as long as she had or been welcome at all.

“The moment I accepted the amulet from you, I knew I belonged to you,” Blade continued. “That connection to me is why you think you love me.”

He thought she was the one who had been trapped. Either way, it did not matter. “It’s a connection I don’t wish to break. I don’t think I love you. I know I do.” She closed her gloved fingers around an object in her pocket. It was a gift she had been working on for the past few days but she was no longer certain it was appropriate to give it to him. “That amulet you wore was meant for my mother and no one else. It had nothing to do with my feelings for you, other than that it was something precious to me that I wanted you to have. It has nothing to do with how you feel about me either. You believe you belong to me only because you love me, too.” She drew a deep breath. “Until you can understand and accept that you’re using that amulet as an excuse to avoid your feelings for me, then no, you really don’t have anything to offer me. All I want from you is your love.”

The faint hope she felt rising in him, and the way he refused to allow it to fully surface, made her want to weep for him.

“What about children?” he asked. “Do you want those, too?”

“If they’re yours,” she said.

The hope in him swelled a little more, the barrier against it ready to break, yet still, he resisted. “You don’t want children of mine.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “Demon blood has already been mixed with mortal. That can’t be undone. Do you think any children we might have between us will be somehow better or worse than the ones that already exist?”

“I haven’t led the kind of life most fathers do. I wouldn’t make a very good one.”

Relief left her faint. She gave a small laugh, even though tears blurred her vision. “My father was a
demon
,” she said. “You hardly compare to that.”

He did not seem convinced, but she knew that he wanted to be. She stripped off her gloves and stuck her hand in her coat pocket, withdrawing the gift she had crafted for him. It glinted in the light, a heavy silver chain attached to a thick chunk of smoky quartz that she had carved into a dagger-shaped pendant. Walker had searched the mines for a lot of hours to find her exactly what she wanted.

She reached up to place the chain over Blade’s head.

“This is a dream stone,” she said, “from the mortal world. It has no special properties. You can’t walk in the demon boundary or create one of your own when you wear it. It won’t protect you from demons. It’s a symbol of my love for you and that I dream of you, nothing more than that.” She tangled her fingers in the silver chain and drew his mouth to hers. “You’ve faced demons for me. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to prove his love more than that—although I’m not asking you for proof I don’t need. I’m asking you to allow yourself to love me back.”

He cradled her head in the palms of his hands, resting his forehead to hers. “I do love you. I can’t promise I’ll be good at it because I’ve never loved anyone before, and the thought of failing you frightens me far more than demons ever could.”

“Fail me?” She fought back tears. “You
saved
me. When I set Justice on fire—when I watched him burn in the boundary—in the back of my head was your voice, telling me you aren’t afraid of the demon in me. That I’m
not
a demon. You can only fail me now by not allowing yourself to love me.” She slid her arms around his waist. “Can you be happy here?” she asked, suddenly anxious. “With me?”

“I can’t imagine being happy anywhere without you.” He crooked a finger beneath the dream stone amulet and raised it between them. He blinked several times as he struggled for words. “You say this has no special properties, but you’re wrong. It speaks to me, reminds me we belong together, and that the future brings hope. I don’t allow myself to love you—I do so because I can’t stop myself. Nor do I want to.”

He kissed her then, as the stars began to emerge in the deepening sky. Her demon, never far from the surface whenever Blade touched her, almost purred with deep and intense satisfaction that this man was hers. Now and forever.

Blade rested his forehead against hers, holding her close in his arms. “I can’t keep you from the demon boundary, as much as I wish I could. All I ask is that you don’t go there without me.”

“Never again,” Raven said. “When you’re with me, I don’t fear the dark. We’ll fight our demons. Together.”

I’d like to thank Danielle Poiesz and Kerri-Leigh Grady for being such thorough editors and asking hard, detailed questions. The entire team at Entangled Publishing is so amazing to work with.

Paula Altenburg lives in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, with her husband and two sons. Once a manager in the aerospace industry, she now enjoys the luxury of working from home and writing full time. Paula also co-authors paranormal romance under the pseudonym Taylor Keating. Visit her at www.paulaaltenburg.com.