Dark Solace by Tara Fox Hall Page A

as well. I’ve got nothing left to lose.” He
paused. “I hoped that when we came back from the Gathering, you and
I could start a new life. I understood you better then, from
spending that week with you. I knew that you didn’t want to leave
your pets and your children, and I understood why you felt you
couldn’t come to me in Rio, though you wanted to. Things were
falling into place almost like magic. Theo was leaving you. We were
Oathed. You’d agreed to have my child.”
    My life had been falling apart back then. I’d
never thought about Dev’s perspective.
    “Then suddenly, Theo loved you again. Worse,
you loved him back. I knew then that you loved him far more than
you loved me, that you weren’t going to come and live with me here.
That I’d been deluding myself thinking that you ever would.”
    “Devlin—”
    “When I found out it was his child, I was
enraged. I wanted to kill him, and just take you. But I told myself
to be patient, that I could wait for you to come to me. Time would
pass, and eventually, I’d only have to share you with Danial.”
    Once Theo died, that would be true. I looked
away from him.
    “I hoped in time you would reconsider living
with me. Time is one thing I have plenty of.”
    “We both do now,” I replied carefully.
    “But I saw over the following months that
most of what you felt for me was just because of the blood I had
given you, the attraction any turn feels for their sire. I gave you
a lot of my blood when I saved you. More than I had ever given
anyone before, even Anna. It influenced you, made you desire me. I
thought that you really loved me, as I wanted you to. But it became
obvious—as more time passed and you had less of my blood in your
system—that you didn’t want me the way you had before. That you
didn’t love me, as you said you did. You loved Theo and Danial, but
not me.” There was utter despair in Devlin’s tone now, sorrow
enough to drown in. “My jealousy ate at me. Your being with Lash
didn’t help.”
    I whipped my head around to give him an angry
look. “You told me what happened was okay with you.”
    “I know I said that,” Devlin said heavily. “I
trusted him with you because I knew he was loyal to me. But you
tested that loyalty sorely. I can see how he looks at you now.”
    Remembering Lash’s last look at me, I
flushed. “Dev, stop—”
    “You know he still hasn’t been with anyone
else.”
    I had to get the conversation off Lash. “Dev,
leave him out of this. What he and I did is done and over. We need
to talk about us, not The Lust, or old lovers—”
    “But I am just an old lover, aren’t I?”
Devlin said bitterly. “Months ago, you came here after you had
fought with Theo. You never even called me to tell me you were
here. Why, Sar? I’ll tell you why. Because you didn’t want to be
with me. You just needed somewhere to go to not be with him.”
    “You’re my former Oathed One!” I shouted.
“Stop making yourself out to be the victim, when it was you who
broke our Oath! If all you are is an old lover of mine, that isn’t
my fault, it’s yours!”
    Devlin tilted his head up, then looked down
at me. “Do you know how many women have told me they loved me? That
they wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of their lives with
me? Not counting the ones I had sex with, even?”
    I took in his handsome face, his beautiful
eyes, his sculpted body under his tight clothes. He was probably
the most sexy and attractive man I’d ever known. The women who’d
been attracted to him in his long life, who’d wanted him for their
own, were probably every woman he’d ever met. “Probably a lot,” I
answered.
    “I’ve only told you and Anna that I loved
you, outside of quoting poetry and songs, of course—”
    “Of course,” I echoed sarcastically.
    “I’ve only ever wanted her and you, Sar. I’ve
never asked anyone else to Oath to me.”
    God, I wanted to believe him, wanted it to be
true, because that made me