then he couldn’t hit you. Mom was good at keeping enough liquor in the house to make sure he drank himself into oblivion every night. Over the years, she got smart, I guess.”
“Good God. Why didn’t she take you and leave him?”
He laughed. “And go where? Small town. No other family. You keep your business to yourself. That’s just the way it works.”
“So she just left you with your father? Even knowing he was mentally unstable?”
He’d never told anyone that part of the story before. “No, she didn’t leave us. Remember when I told you about how we got recruited on the island?”
“To fight demons, right?”
“Yeah. What I didn’t tell you was how we were chosen.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This is kind of hard to explain.”
“I’m reasonably intelligent, Ryder. I’m sure I can follow.”
“The six of us Lou brought to the island? All of us lost our mothers when we were children. So did most of the other hunters who came before us.”
“Lost as in. . how?”
“Our mothers were taken by demons.” He explained how the Sons of Darkness took human women and used them to breed half-human, half-demon creatures-the hideous hybrids they fought.
She placed her hand over her heart. “Did you all know this?”
“No. None of us did. Not until Lou told us on the island.”
“Oh, my God. What a revelation. So you all spent your lives thinking-what? That your mothers had left the family, or died, or been kidnapped?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
She reached for his leg, squeezed it. “Oh, Ryder, I’m so sorry. You thought your mother abandoned you, left you with your father.”
He shrugged. “It was no big deal.”
“Of course it’s a big deal. No child wants to feel deserted.” She crawled onto his lap and wrapped her arms and legs around him, facing him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. Soft, filled with tenderness. Not sexual in any way.
Damn. He wound his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, content to just hold her. He had to admit, it felt good.
Too good.
He shook his head, obliterating his father’s words. The old bastard was always there, would always be there, warning him, filling his head with that sick bullshit.
Even dead, the sonofabitch still haunted him.
The warmth fled and he gently pushed Angelique from his lap. “Anyway, back to what I was saying. .”
She quirked a brow, but nodded.
“My father was a military man. Came back from the war hardened. Not that he didn’t go in that way, but something changed in him after. Made him even worse than he was before, my mom told me. He had no love in him, no warmth. Not for my mother and sure as hell not for me.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to him during the war?”
“No. Don’t think it really mattered. He was born that way, I think. Going to war just made it worse. PTSD or something.”
“I’m sure it was hard on both of you.”
He shrugged. “My mom had plenty of love to give me. She tried to shield me from the old man as best she could. And my dad stayed out of the house a lot, either working the farm or in town at one of the bars. It wasn’t until Mom disappeared that things got bad.”
“How bad was it for you after she disappeared?”
“He toughened me, at least that’s what he thought he was doing,” Ryder said with a quirk of his lips. “He was so pissed when she disappeared. Said she left him with a kid who was worth nothing because she’d coddled me for eight years. So he taught me to work the farm, taught me about guns and warfare. When I got older, I learned his moods and when to stay out of his way.”
There were things he’d never tell her, would never tell anyone. His father was one sick bastard. Ryder was lucky he’d run off when he did. Lucky to still be alive. Lucky someone had killed his old man in a bar fight before his father hurt anyone else. There were times Ryder could have killed him, wished he’d had the guts. But he’d just been a kid. Now? He wouldn’t blink about doing it. But back then he’d lacked the courage.
Angelique grasped his hand. He tried to pull away, but she clung tight. He decided to let it be, figuring she needed it more than he did.
“I decided in order to survive it, I needed to become just like him. Hard, mean, a tough sonofabitch. So I
