Sherrilyn Kenyon - Infamous

Kyrian didn’t want to talk about his wife. Ever. Acheron scoffed at the idea of love as the ultimate stupidity. You know what love is, Nick? It’s a woman’s way of controlling the relationship and controlling you. In the wrong hands, it’s the worst, most painful weapon imaginable. So when you give your heart away, make sure it’s a mutual exchange. ’Cause once you let them in, cutting them out again is like being gutted with a dull spoon.

He didn’t want to know what had happened to Acheron to make him so jaded, especially given the fact that Ash had died at age twenty-one. To have that kind of hatred eleven thousand years later.…

Yeah, someone had hurt Ash badly.

The Were-Hunter shapeshifters had their mates chosen for them by the Fates, so they didn’t really date like humans, and they definitely didn’t have a choice or say in who their spouses were.

The only people he knew who were married, he didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask. Or they were divorced, which didn’t bode well since they’d obviously made a mistake when they picked someone.

But Kody … she made him feel things no one else did. He could be having the absolute worst day and with one smile, she could make him forget all about it.

“Did you enjoy your time in Azmodea?”

Nick curled his lip at the familiar voice. Why would Ambrose bug him now? Couldn’t he have five seconds to decompress before his insane older self came in to rough him up?

Yawning, Nick answered without looking. “It certainly wasn’t Disney World—unless Mickey sold his soul to Satan. Not that I’ve ever been to Disney World. Heck, I haven’t even been to Six Flags and it’s just over the bridge.”

The power from Ambrose made the hair on his arms stand on end.

Ambrose’s aura practically sizzled with its lethal capabilities. “I can’t believe you got out of there in one piece. I had to betray the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend to escape it.”

A bad feeling went through Nick. While the voice was definitely Ambrose’s, the story wasn’t.

No …

It couldn’t be.

Opening his eyes, he saw a man who bore a frightening resemblance to Ambrose. Except this one had short, military-cut jet-black hair, and he stood about two inches taller. Even more telling, he was covered with prison tattoos.

Definitely not Ambrose.

This was his father.

Soc au lait!

Nick tried to call for help, but he was completely paralyzed. He couldn’t even blink. If he so much as thought about Kody or Caleb, a sharp pain pierced his brain.

Was he being stabbed with an ice pick?

His father gave him a crooked smile. “Oh the powers that awaited you … the things you were born to do … Too bad you won’t live long enough to experience any of them.”

Fighting with everything he had, Nick did his best to break free.

He couldn’t. Never had he experienced anything like this. It was terrifying. Forget being Force-choked by Vader, this was even more terrifying and debilitating.

If I get free, old man, you’re going to bleed.

Yeah, okay, so it most likely wouldn’t be much of a fight, but he was going to put up as much of one as he could. There literally was nothing he could do.

Adarian’s gaze was frigid as he moved to stand over Nick. He pressed his thumb against the inside corner of Nick’s left eye. In his head, Nick screamed from the raw agony of it. But the sound wouldn’t leave his throat.

He was the only one who heard it.

His father had him completely paralyzed.

“That’s it,” Adarian whispered before he sucked his breath in with pleasure. “Feed me with your pain. Let me bathe in it.”

“What are you doing, tchu !”

Nick’s eyes widened at a Cajun insult he’d never heard his mother use before. In fact, she went into a full babiller on his hide, using words that shocked him and some he didn’t even know she knew the meaning of.

Her shrill voice ringing off the walls, she ran toward them. She actually slammed all of her body weight against Adarian to shove him away from the bed. Given the fact that she was about a foot and a half shorter and probably weighed less than one of Adarian’s muscled thighs, her ability to move him was impressive. “You get away from him! You hear me?” she snarled through gritted teeth.

“I just wanted to see him. He is my son, after all.”

She backed Adarian into a corner like a Chihuahua cowing a Doberman. “You shouldn’t be here and you know it. How are you here? I know you didn’t make parole. No one’s dumb enough to ever let you out again.”

Adarian’s gaze softened as he faced her anger without flinching. “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.” He reached to cup her cheek.

His mother slapped Adarian’s hand away. “You are not going to touch me again. Ever!”

Nick kept trying to move or speak, but whatever Adarian had done to him, it was holding him solid.

Averting his gaze with a glaze in his eyes that told Nick he was listening to the ether, Adarian went ramrod stiff. When he looked back at his mother, his face was a mask of disbelief. “You’re the one who turned me in to the cops after I robbed that bank, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” she said proudly between her clenched teeth, straightening up to her full height, which barely reached the middle of his father’s chest. “I didn’t care what you did to me. I didn’t. But when you hit my baby … nuh-uh. It was on like Donkey Kong. Nobody touches my boy. Not you. Not anyone. He’s all I got in this world and I will slaughter you like a hog at Christmas if you even look askance at him again. You hear me?”

Adarian appeared as stunned by her attack as Nick was. “You turned me in.” Disbelief haunted his voice.

“I. Did,” she repeated.

The hurt in his eyes was tangible. And it was telling. Adarian loved her.

Dis-gus-ting …

No, worse than that. His father’s love was a perversion.… Because he’s the Malachai . They weren’t born to know that emotion. They were born to hate and to slaughter. That was what Thorn had told him.

The only reason Nick had any concept of love was because of his mother’s blood, and the fact that she’d kept him and nurtured her ‘baby’. Nick was the only Malachai ever born who’d been shown love and who understood it.

His father had no idea how to cope with it. For that matter, Adarian had probably never felt it for anyone else.

“How could you?” Adarian’s tone was more like a child being tortured by its parent.

His mom shook her head at his continued confusion. “Are you…” Closing her eyes, she waved her hands around her face as if erasing a board. “Of course you’re insane. I know that. Everybody knows that.”

Biting his lip, Adarian held a light in his icy gaze that said he was one step away from hitting her.

Nick fought his hold even harder. He had to protect his tiny mother from the bear of a man who had fathered him.

“Is there a problem, Cherise?”

Since the only part of his body he could control was his eyes, Nick turned his gaze to the door, where Kyrian stood in a major power stance that let everyone know he was more than willing to get bloody if he had to. Dressed in black from head to toe, he was almost the same size as his father. And he was every bit as buff. Kyrian’s black sunglasses covered his eyes while he stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

Adarian did the alpha strut as he closed the distance between them. “This doesn’t concern you.”

Kyrian didn’t break his tough-guy stance at all. “The hand you had on that lady says it does.”