Page 84 of Burn for Her
Closing his eyes, he backed up slowly. “I want better for you.”
“And what about what I want, you jackass?”
She was right. He hadn’t cared to ask. He was making this decision for them both, without her input. But he had good motherfucking reasons, damnit!
“Marie said you came to them half-chewed on, beaten, burned, starved, with an arrow embedded in your back.”
Dorian’s knees almost buckled. Was it his weakened system crapping out on him, or had she just knocked the pride clean out of his body with those words?
“Is that true?”
“It is.” He swayed and sat down before he collapsed. The room was starting to spin. “My father and I had a… disagreement.”
“Tell me more.” Lena dropped down on her knees before him, resting her hands on his thighs. “Please, Dorian.”
Maybe if he explained things, she’d understand why he refused to mate her. If she knew his truth, she would run far away from him and then his death would be all the more swift and easier to accept.
“My father,” he stopped talking and bit the inside of his cheek to let a little blood well up, then he swallowed it along with some of his pride. “Was a murderer. A psychopath and serial killer. I didn’t know any better. I was… little. My mother died and he raised me alone. We were dirt poor, living in a shack.” Dorian huffed at the memory. “I didn’t even know there were other vampires in existence, let alone know anything about Savag-Ri, or vampire Houses. I only knew humans and a little about Lycan.”
Lena remained silent with her brown eyes locked on his. No emotion showed on her face. Not even as he continued with his saga.
“He’d drain me,” he said. “Kept me constantly weak. I wasn’t allowed to leave our property ever.” When Dorian was a kid, he thought it was for his safety. As an adult, he wondered if it was because of something else. “He gorged on me to keep himself alive and left me with nothing but a few drops of human blood, forcing me to take from his victims. If I refused, I was beaten. The few times I stood at death’s door, he’d prick his finger, but barely allowed me a few drops to lick off his crusty, dirty finger. He always insisted I feed on the humans he brought.”
As if the memory conjured the scent, Dorian could still smell the smoke of the fires as they burned the carcasses while he told her all this.
“Blood carries power—human or otherwise. My father was obsessed with blood and the energy it could carry. It wasn’t about our blood curse for him. It was something more sinister than that. Humans held a fascination for him I never understood. He tortured his victims, taught me what to do, what pieces to cut and how deep, which veins to keep intact until the end…” He was going to puke. Swallowing the bile rising in his throat, he hated the sensation of his sweat trickling down his back. But he had to keep going. She needed to know why he wasn’t good for her. “I couldn’t do anything but follow his orders. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t disobey.”
That particular weakness he bore the most shame about.
“Before the victim’s heart stopped, he’d force me to drink from them. Place his big hand on my shoulder, the other at the back of my head, and shove me into their necks.” Dorian’s fangs cut his tongue when he licked his lips. “He wanted me to taste fear, to use the tainted blood as a source of power. I never tasted that though. I only guzzled down hate. And hate is what fuels me even to this day.”
It’s what tainted him most.
Lena’s steady hands remained on his knees, her thumb rubbing across his thigh, soothing him as he continued.
“One night, my father grabbed another woman and… I’d had enough. Years spent watching him do this to innocent humans made me desperate to get away. The woman died before I could help her. I tried to fight him but was still too weak and brittle. My father was a massive man. Or at least he was to me. I later found out my growth had been severely stunted because of how he’d neglected and abused my body.”
Dorian stretched in height and bulked up with muscle within two years of living among the Lycan. It’s incredible what three-square meals and a safe, warm bed to sleep in each night could do for a kid.
“What happened next?” she whispered.
“I attacked him. More like set him off. He bit me, tore chunks of my flesh away. Shot me in the back with an arrow when I tried to run. Crushed my windpipe when I tried to scream. He broke me.”
“Did he?” Lena’s brow cocked, challenging his remark.
How she could look at him right now with pride in her eyes was beyond him.
“He did,” Dorian admitted. “I ran but knew I couldn’t escape him. He was an obsessive creature. He excelled at hunting, tracking, capturing.” Dorian ran a hand through his hair. “I ended up doubling back to our shack. We kept plenty of flammable liquid to burn the bodies of his victims, so I doused the shack in it. Then set it on fire with myself inside, knowing his obsessive nature would demand he go in after me.”
“You were going to sacrifice yourself to kill him.”
“That was the plan. But I chickened out. My arm caught on fire, and it spiked my survival instincts. I didn’t want to burn. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to get away from him and make it so he couldn’t kill anymore.”
A tear fell down Lena’s cheek then. The only sign of emotion she allowed him to see. He focused on that tiny detail. Narrowed in on that pathetic tear because it meant she felt sorry for him. Pity was for weaklings.
He cupped her cheek and swiped it away with his thumb.
“I was able to use a splintered stool leg to club him in the head. It didn’t knock him out but gave me a chance to wiggle out from under his tremendous weight. Flames ate our shack in no time, so much of it was rotten to begin with, and our hay beds went up like kindling. The roof started to give way. I grabbed a cleaver and a hammer and whacked him as much as I could until the roof collapsed. I dropped my weapons and dodged the only beam that held our house together. It slammed onto him and I tore out of the house with my clothes on fire. Rolled around in the grass. It was raining...” His vision wavered, and he had to take another deep breath. “It always rained on his killing nights.”