Page 80 of Burn for Her
“I make her sound accurate for who she is.” Bane took another bite of pie. “She’s incredible. Strong, resilient.”
Dorian didn’t need any of Lena’s qualities pointed out to him. He knew all that already from the little bit of time he’d spent with her.
“Mate her, Dorian.”
He jerked his head to the side and clenched his jaw.
“You’re willing to die instead of love her forever? That must really make her feel fucking special.” Bane shoved away from the table, grabbed his pie, and went out the backdoor.
Dorian stared at the now vacant chair and didn’t say a word.
“He’s right,” Alistair said. “Boys, why don’t you leave us for a minute?”
Emerick and Bowen stood, their chairs noisy as they slid across the wooden floor. They left the kitchen and Dorian buried his head in his hands. “I’m no good for her.”
“You’re no good for yourself with that attitude.” Alistair turned in his chair to face him. “If you were a monster, do you think I’d have ever taken you into my home, son?”
“You didn’t know it then.” But he found out soon afterwards when Dorian killed a man in front of all of them.
“That day you killed the man in the woods, do you even remember why you did it?”
Dorian tensed. He never forgot. “He was attacking Emily. He was going to rape her.”
Fuuuuck. Just saying those words made Dorian want to set the world on fire. His body tensed to the point that he started trembling with pent up fury.
“You cried for two weeks afterwards. Remember?”
“I don’t recall that.”
“You don’t recall many things.” Alistair frowned. “I think some of it is because of the trauma you went through, but I also...” His mouth turned down in a frown.
“Also, what?” His voice was strangely deep. The colors in the kitchen had started fading about ten minutes ago, and now his stomach was cramping.
“Your mother and I have always wondered if your memories were erased by that bastard vampire.”
“You mean the monster who sired me.” He never called him father in front of Alistair. It would be an insult too huge to forgive.
“Yes,” Alistair growled.
“If that’s the case,” Dorian said, easing back in his chair. “I wouldn’t remember my time with him. And I remember every second of it… with perfect clarity.”
“But you still don’t recall anything before him, correct? Not even much about your mother?”
Dorian’s jaw clenched. He shook his head.
No, he couldn’t remember his mother at all. He only knew she had curly hair and that was because his sire always remarked about it when he shaved Dorian’s head. And none of the victims ever had curly hair—something his sire was particular about. Dorian excused it as his sire missing Dorian’s mother so much, he couldn’t bear to kill anyone who even remotely looked like her.
That strange delusion was something Dorian cradled in his mind on dark, stormy nights when his father would go hunting. Somehow, to think his sire still longed for his mother even after her death, made him… tolerable. His madness excusable. At least the monster never turned a human into a vampire. That would have been… shit, Dorian couldn’t even imagine such a gruesome outcome.
People talk about how you couldn’t pick your family, and perhaps that was true. But Dorian was given a second family the day he knocked on Alistair’s door and he chose to love and protect them, and they returned the devotion ten-fold.
Alistair scratched the stubble on his cheek. “Our kind and yours have always suffered this blood curse. It’ll never go away. I felt unworthy of Marie when I first saw her.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Proved my worth,” he said with a shrug. “Still do, to this day. Even though she says it’s entirely unnecessary.”
“The difference between us is you’re a good man. I’m not.”