“Are you really believing this shit?” Damien demands

“Damien put her down.” Dane tells him.

“You have got to be kidding me. Look at her.” He points to the girl clinging to him

I had. She hadn’t made a sound. But there were also no tears and she wasn’t panicking. She had been listening to everything as she hugged the one man that she truly trusted.

“Damien!” I didn’t want to order him, but I would if I had too, especially now that I was getting the hang of it.

He stares at me for a few moments and mutters, “She’s my kid.”

“She’s his too.”

Reluctantly, he lowers her until her feet are touching the grass. Dorothy grips on to his hand as she stares at Abraxas. It was like everything slowed down as she let go of Damien’s hand and ran into Abraxas’s open arms.

“I’m here, baby girl. I finally found you.” He reassures her.

Damien turns and starts to walk away when Dorothy calls out to him. “Daddy don’t go.”

He turns his head over his shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere, Dottie. I’m just going to check on Raven.”

When Damien is out of sight, Abraxas asks us why we have been letting a Rogue look after his kid.

“You said she is a Hunter too.” Dane smiles. “Well she chose him to be her safe person. He’s the only one she confidently talks too about what happened to her. Whether you like it or not, she chose

him and he will always be a part of her life.”

Dane steps forward, putting his hands over Dorothy’s ears. “Point a gun at my mate again. I will pull your organs out through your ass and feed them to you.”

“Fair enough. Though you would need to be quicker than a bullet.” Abraxas smirks back

“Then I suggest you sleep with one eye open.”

Dane takes the boys up to the house. He wanted me to go with him but I found myself rooted to the spot, staring at the strange Wolf.

“Dorothy, could you go and help Dane.” I didn’t want to separate her and her father, not after just getting her back. But the way he had been staring at me was like he knew something else about me.

I see Eric appear twenty metres away. I’m guessing Dane linked him when I didn’t follow my mate away.

“Blondie has been watching for a while.” Abraxas tells me

“He doesn’t like you calling him that.”

“I’m not here to make friends.”

“Would you really have shot me?”

“The moment your beast was free.” He nods

“In front of Dorothy?”

“She’s a Hunter.”

I pause, I remember how Damien had said Dorothy hadn’t really reacted to the slaughtered humans in the bar, and even her nightmares weren’t filled with them but with the things that had been done to her.

“Thank you for keeping her safe.”

His words take me by surprise. A few minutes ago, death was staring me in the face.

“How did you know?”

“That you were on the path to shifting? I see it. I see the darkness moving in. My question to you is, how do you hold it off?”

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Nyx presses. She sounds annoyed. I had felt her anger towards others. But Abraxas seems to have sent her to a whole other level.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Never seen anyone do it like you do it. I’m curious.”

“I was given some advice.”

“From the other assholes? I would take that with a pinch of salt. There is a difference between them and you. They have already gone Rogue.”

“They shifted back. Mallory more easily than Damien and they both have been fine.”

“In my experience, it doesn’t stay that way.”

“They’re different.”

“You keep telling yourself that. There will come a time when something triggers them. Something throws them over the edge and they are unable to return from it.”

“You don’t know them.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time and right now, I’m more concerned about that Rogue that has attached himself to my daughter.”