Page 149 of Demon's Beauty

Just a few days until Samhain.

Just a few days until everything changes.

And I have so much to do before then.

Now I just have to hope I haven’t broken things with Finn beyond repair.

47

Finn

Before I can go after my mate, before I can start making any kind of sense of what I want to do with my life and what my future looks like, there’s one very important conversation I need to have.

One chain I need to break, long overdue.

My father returns from his trip to Traverdale in the late afternoon. I know just where to find him, and despite the knot in my gut, this isn’t something that can wait.

“Ah,” he says, barely sparing me a glance as I walk into his office. “You’re still here. I assume this means you’re ready to speak rationally?”

“I am.”

He finishes whatever it is he’s writing on the document in front of him, then sets it aside and gives me his full attention.

“Good. Then let’s discuss this mate of yours and how we might leverage her relationship with the queen to—”

“I have no intention of letting you use my mate and her connections for your advantage. You will have no say in our relationship moving forward, or in anything that concerns me, for that matter.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s my life,” I tell him. “It’s not yours to decide what I do with, and if that means I get kicked out of the Nighfall family or disinherited or whatever other punishment you see fit for me, so be it.”

My father’s face turns a truly unpleasant shade of red.

He stands, trading his aloof nonchalance for the hands-braced-on-the-desk, looming, more obviously aggressive stance he only takes when one of his children has well and truly pissed him off.

“Any son of mine knows his duty to our family.”

“Then perhaps I’m not a son of yours any longer.”

This time, he goes so far as to get right in my face. Circling around the side of his desk and crossing the room, he takes all that macho bluster and closes in on me.

Amusing, the way he thinks it will make a damn difference.

Truly, if he thinks there’s anything he could say, anything he could do, any threat he could level to change my mind about putting my mate first and foremost in my life, he doesn’t know me at all.

And perhaps that’s just the truth of the matter.

He doesn’t know me.

He’s never cared to, and he probably never will.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me,” I tell him. “If your condition for remaining a part of this family is placing my mate on the altar of your ambition, then I want no part of it.”

My father opens his mouth to say something else—perhaps to disown me with as much finality as I’ve apparently just disowned him—when the creaking of his study door opening catches both our attention.

My mother stands in the doorway.