Warrior's Hope (Dark Protectors #16)(61)

Paxton nodded. It was Zane’s job to keep Hope safe until it was his. Sure, he’d always considered it his duty. But she hadn’t given him the right to make her safety his full job yet. But she would.

Zane crossed his arms, looking way too large for the love seat where he sat with his mate. “I’m not going anywhere. So you might as well get nice and sleepy.”

Hope rolled her eyes.

Paxton couldn’t blame him. He didn’t want to let Hope out of his sight either. It was time to take control of the situation. “Relax your body and go to sleep. Let’s get this over with,” he ordered.

Hope gave him a look but snuggled down in the bed and curled onto her side. “What did you find out about your mother?” she asked.

“Not enough,” Paxton admitted. “Paelotin told me everything he knew, and it wasn’t much.”

“Tell me,” Hope mumbled, her voice sounding sleepy.

Paxton shut his eyes, putting his head back on the wall. “She approached him when she was about six months pregnant and said that her mate had died in the war. She didn’t believe in the virus that negated mating bonds, so she figured she’d never mate again. Instead, she paid him a lot of money to pretend to be mated to her. Apparently, the deal was that if he ever found somebody he wanted to mate, she would move on and allow it.”

“Why did she want to be with the demon nation?” Hope asked.

“After the war, it was the safest place to be for a lost demoness, according to Paelotin,” Paxton said. “He doesn’t have any idea who my real father was.” No doubt Paelotin didn’t care.

“I’ve been trying to track that,” Zane said. “All I know about your mom is that she lived within the demon nation for almost a hundred years and then just disappeared. There’s no record of her for the next hundred years until she showed up at headquarters right after the war. At that time, we wanted all the soldiers we could get, and she was skilled. Then she was killed before I really had a chance to get to know or investigate her.”

Paxton didn’t open his eyes. “It’s not your fault, Zane.”

“I know. The war had just ended, and I was taking over the demon nation when all of that happened,” Zane said. “Still, I wish I had known. I wasn’t around them enough to realize they weren’t really mated.”

“Nobody was,” Paxton said. “They didn’t even fight in the same squads. Frankly, I don’t remember spending much time with Paelotin until my mother died. He certainly didn’t like me.”

“I’m really sorry we didn’t realize what was happening, Paxton,” Janie said. “We were around you a lot, but Paelotin stayed away. Now we know why.”

“It’s fine,” Paxton said. “Everything worked out the way it was supposed to. But I would like to know who she was, and I’d love to find out who my deceased father was.” It’d be nice to find family out there.

“All I know,” Zane said, “is that she was born in Paris in one of the demon strongholds there. She learned to fight young, even though female demons are so rare, and then during the first war, she disappeared. Somehow she resurfaced when the demon nation became part of the Realm and I took over. It isn’t unusual for demons to go missing or to take off, especially when there are wars involved.” Zane sighed heavily. “The demon nation was pretty fractured before I brought us into the Realm.”

Paxton opened his eyes. “That’s pretty much all I know about her too. Did you discover if she had any family?”

Zane grimaced. “No. She didn’t have any siblings from the records I found, and her parents both died in the first war. So she was pretty much alone. That could be why she paid Paelotin and thought she should join the Realm. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “She could have done so without pretending to be mated.”

“Yes,” Janie said. “But you have to remember she grew up in a demon faction where she had no autonomy. Before you ruled the Demon nation, Zane, it wasn’t the same for females. Your uncle was a real jerk, and he wouldn’t have given her choices in her life. She probably didn’t realize how much things had changed when she first approached Paelotin.”

Paxton sighed. “He killed her. I got the truth from him earlier today. She did discover that things had changed, and she was going to leave with me. That’s what he said, and so he killed her and made it look as if it had happened during a battle.”

Zane stiffened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just found out today,” Paxton said.

“You let him live?” Hope asked softly.

Pax looked at her. “I told you to go to sleep.”

“I’m trying. But you’re talking,” she said.

He sighed. “All right. That’s fair. Yes. I let him live for now. He’s not standing, and he’ll be coughing blood for the next week, despite his healing abilities. But I decided to let him live until we figure out our next move with the Kurjans. He gave me all the information he had, but on the off chance there’s something in that tiny brain of his that he didn’t think was relevant, I want him alive until we kill Ulric. He was a go-between between the Kurjans and Henric for quite a while, and we may need to ask questions that I don’t even know yet.”