Tasting Darkness

Read Taming Darkness By Jessica Hall Book 3 Chapter 5 - My heart stutters in the real world as | watch Darius father through his eyes. A tiny six-year “old boy, he clenches his jaw, steels his resolve and lift his chin, stepping through the portal back to his waiting father. The moment he does, his father grabbed him.

“What have you done?” Xandrius growls at his son, shutting the portal.

“He's useless to you now, dad,” Darius says, his gaze ice-cold. His father snarls, backhands him, making him hit the ground. He lands on the floor on his stomach. He wipes his bleeding lip and rolls over, sitting up, just as his door burst open. Darius cold gaze moves to the door to see his mother.

“No!” she snaps at Xandrius as he starts undoing his belt. “Get out, Lilith!” he yells at his wife. She shakes her head, this was nothing new for Darius, his mother always fought for him, even though it just got her hurt.

Darius gets up, his mother attacking his father just as he is whipped with the belt. The blows are repeatedly rained down, his mother taking a good amount of them trying to protect him. His father was a monster, yet when his mother gets slashed across the face with the belt, he had enough.

Darius roars, his fist hitting the ground. The floorboards ripple, tearing from the floor, seven bursting and splintering to small shards. His father’s eyes bleed black, and his mother is tossed from the room and locked out.

His father, sealing them into the room.

Darius backs away from the demonic-king, gone was any semblance of his father and only the man the world feared. Splinters and wood cut and carve at his skin, as he tries to hide from his father when his back suddenly hits the wall.” His father smirks. “You have done it now, son,” he tells him. Darius shakes his head. If bravery had a face, it was this six-year-old boy, no way anyone would face the beast that stood over him. Evil incarnate, yet he did as a small boy.

“No, father. You have, | won't be little forever, you best remember that because | will remember this day,” His father is shocked by his son’s words, yet he wasn’t about to let his son challenge him, and he didn’t only this tDarius never peeped a cry, not a sound left him as his father beat him with the buckle of his belt until he fell unconscious.

The memory warps and twists, disintegrates and moves away as | am tossed forward through his memories. One thing | was beginning to learn though as the new memory emerged was the reason why he believed his mates would hate him.

Why he felt guilt for everything his mates endured, why he didn’t want it known to them what he had done, especially when the next memory flickered to life, and | found myself looking at a much younger version of Porter, Lycus’s father.

Porter was working for Xandrius, Darius stood in his father’s office, he was still young, not much older than he was before, though Darius seemed different, colder, indifferent, numb from outside influence, dead inside. He stares off at the wall as Porter takes his seat across from Darius’s father.

“I'm sorry, Xandrius, I... | didn’t-" Lycus father stutters before Darius’s father raises his hand to silence him, not even bothering to look up from his paperwork. He finishes reading the document before setting it aside.

“Years we have worked together, you should know the price of going against me,” “I swear | didn’t know she was your wife, I.. she tricked me.. Had | known, | wouldn't have...,” Darius turns to observe the man talking to his father, pleading his case.

Xandrius tilts his head to the side.}} “Don’t bullshit me, you knew exactly what you were doing. You knew exactly who she was, you thought you could one up me, what you didn’t know was my wife? My mate was playing a part | asked her to, | was testing you, and you failed,” Xandrius bellows, rising to his feet.

Porter falls back in his chair. He scuttles back on his hands and feet, as Xandrius moves around his desk toward him.

“Wait, we can move past this. You can have my mate, make up for what I almost did. She will do it.. She needs me-" Xandrius laughs. “I don’t want your mate, | don’t want swhore that has been passed around the council more times than | can count,” Porter scoffs and shakes his head.}) “My wife is pure, she has only been with me, Xandrius laughs, like what Porter just said was hilarious. He waves Darius forward. “Do you know how you got this job with me, Porter?” “You were looking for a bounty hunter,” Xandrius laughs harder. Tears spring in his eyes from his laughter, and he wipes them.

“No, you twit.” He motions for Darius to step forward, and Darius stepped forward, not wanting to show him what he pulled from Lycus’s mother’s head earlier when she was brought in for questioning.

“She fucked your way to the top of bounty,” Xandrius laughs. “Show him,” Darius grits his teeth, placing his fingertips on the sides of Porter's head, showing him his wife infidelity, showing him how he got the job, what Porter didn’t know was that his mate had done all those things, to save him from going to prison, saving him from death for his crimes. Making his charges disappear. Then, when he becunemployable, she sucked off Xandrius, getting him the job he has now.

However, Darius wasn’t allowed to show those parts to him, just the acts themselves, which made him sick that the woman was taken advantage of. Porter blinks, horrified, before he snarls.

“Now with that out of the way,” Xandrius waves Darius off, and he takes his spot by the door again. “You have three weeks to find out where Grayson took the antidote. Grayson has it, | know he took it when he burned the facility down.” Porter nods his head.

“I ordered him to destroy it when we realized what we created, yet the vials were gone, the place burned down, | know he took it, | know the bastard is planning something, and we need that cure if we are to save what's left.” Xandrius tells Porter.

Darius stares ahead listening, he clenches his jaw and from flickerings of memory flitting through his head. | knew my father didn’t burn down the facility Darius did, he was also the one that stole the antidote for my father, under the impression his father unleashed the plague, that wasn’t the case though, my father lied, telling Darius it was his father’s plan, and he could help correct it by burning down the facility and getting him the cure.

“Find it, and you will be allowed to live.” “But isn’t that the council's job? Search his house.” Porter says, Xandrius shakes his head. ” | can’t, | can’t draw too much attention to it, not with my involvement. | am already being watched, the bastard lied to me. | thought we were creating a cure for the disease on the White -Fae, he lied. Now one plague has swept through, and we need that cure before the second wave hits,” “Second wave hits?” “Yes, idiot, Grayson made two originally! All week he has been spouting his nonsense at the council, | can’t have my men investigate him, it will draw attention to me, and my involvement to the blood that created the plague used being my son’s.” “Grayson could just tell them,” Porter offers. ” Not without implicating himself, he won't risk his reputation,” Xandrius tells him.

Porter sucks in a shaking breath. “Three weeks, find it,” Xandrius dismisses him.

Porter leaves through a portal. Darius, guilt nags at him, yet | couldn't figure out why he felt guilty about the antidote. Why he felt to be blamed for the plague. The memory skips ahead a few weeks later before it comes across the news about Porter's wife being found dead, brutally beaten to death, and his son was missing. Both were reported to have gone missing the day he showed Porter of her infidelity.