Chapter Twenty-six
Ven stood in the doorway looking at his sleeping parents. They woke up and his heart skipped a beat. Would they still want him after going through such a dramatic trauma? When Deja reached out to him, he wanted to cry. Kur'ik warriors didn't cry. Then his father woke up, and it was a lovefest. He didn't know that love could feel like this.
He quietly walked into the room until he was standing next to his mother. He leaned over and kissed her. Deja didn't wake but she smiled. His heart thumped. She'd come here and made them a family.
Ven walked around to his father. He stared down at the male who created a miracle. Ven was that miracle. Warriors didn't show each other affection. He knew this; he'd grown up as a warrior. It didn't stop him from leaning over and placing a kiss on his father's forehead. His father reached out and caught his arm.
"I love you, son," Enzo whispered in their language. Ven smiled and turned away.
"Ven," Enzo said.
Ven stopped, not turning around. He wasn't ready for his father to see the joy that radiated from him.
"Vengeance belongs to the son, make him suffer." Ven tilted his head before walking out of the room.
He closed the door and slipped out into the night. All the lessons he'd learned over his long life came back to him. He looked at the garage, before walking in the opposite direction. His mother hadn't had a chance to give him driving lessons, but he knew they would come.
"Vengeance belongs to the son." His father's words reverberated in his mind.
He watched his mother transform into a mythical being that seeded the galaxy. His biological mother used to tell him those tales when she put him to sleep. It amazed him that he could remember the good times while blocking out the worst.
He had a new mother now. One who loved him no matter what came her way. How could he allow a threat against her to walk the earth? Ven knew why his father hadn't killed Matt, and he agreed with him. If he hadn't seen his mother fight with everything she had—to keep their family together and save the rest of their people—he might have been able to walk away.
After watching her give everything down to risking her life, there was no way this threat could be allowed to linger in their minds.
He crossed the barrier, knowing someone was watching him. He gave the 'all is well sign' before walking down the street. It didn't take him long to find the house of the man who had hurt his mother. Ku'riks were fast. He was younger and faster than all of them.
A smile crossed his lips as he thought of his mother. She would have said 'Ah, youth.' He never appreciated his age until she came along.
A stray-thought of Angel invaded his mind. He quickly pushed it away. Beauty and light had no place with him tonight. He'd walk past her house tomorrow to see her sitting on the porch. Maybe she would talk to him.
He walked by Matt's house, slowly fading into the background. He didn't want to scare any humans by suddenly popping out of view. He circled the block three times. When he was sure no one had seen him, he approached Matt's house from the back. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar.
Ven walked in to find the house trashed. Dishes piled up in the sink. Nothing had been cleaned, and there was a foul odor coming from all the rooms.
Matt ran from room to room screaming. He was wearing rags, and there was several days' of hair growth on his face. Ven stepped out of the shadows, allowing Matt to see him.
He screamed and ran at Ven, who sidestepped him. Matt kept running until the kitchen counter blocked his progress. He pulled a butcher's knife from the block and turned around to face Ven.
"What did you do to me?" he growled, his voice guttural, a far cry from the smooth, sophisticated tone he used when Ven first met him.
"That was my father. What did you expect to happen when you abused my mother? My father's mate?"
"Deja doesn't have children," Matt said. His head kept tilting to the side. As though he had a tic—that was Enzo's work.
"Wrong. She has me." Ven looked at the knife, wondering what the human thought he was going to do with it.
Matt doubled over, his fingers from his free hand were digging into his thigh in a fight not to fall to the floor. Strangled sounds of fear escaped him as he tried to resist the images his mind threw at him.
"Are you real?" he asked Ven.
"Very," Ven said.
"I'm going to kill you. If it's the last thing I do, you're dying."
"You can try," Ven had no plans of dying at Matt's hands. His father had lived for centuries and still wasn't old by Kur'iks or Earth standards. He would follow in his footsteps.
Matt staggered closer to Ven before falling to his knees. His hand spasmed, and he dropped the knife.
"Why her?" he spat out.
It was a good question, one which Ven thought over. Matt wasn't going anywhere. Why Deja? Was it because she was the first female to cross the barrier? They hadn't known any human could cross, male or female.
He rejected that idea. He'd been just as attracted to her as Enzo was the minute he saw her, just in a different way. He knew she was going to be special to him, but he didn't know how it was going to happen. He couldn't conceive when he first saw her—that she or anyone else—could ever love him as a son. As a son, it was more accurate. He was her son, more hers than he was his biological mother's.
"Why couldn't you let her go?" Ven asked.
Matt stopped moving. For a few moments, his eyes cleared, as if the element Enzo infected him with wanted to know the answer too.
"She's different," he finally said. "Deja on my arm would make every head turn. Is she plus-sized? Yes, she is and that added to her beauty. My friends were jealous even the ones who had Barbie Dolls at home. It was always about more than her body. Her personality and her ability to love shone through. Before my mother died, she said 'Matt, don't let that one slip away.' My mother was close to eighty. Interracial marriage was not something she grew up with, but she was perfectly fine with the idea of her grandchildren coming from Deja. So was I. She was my only chance at the good life, the respectable life. You ruined it." He growled.
Ven may have been impressed by the growl if Matt wasn't a killer in so many ways. That was coming from a killer. He walked over to Matt and sank to his knees, looking into his eyes.
"You had everything in the palm of your hand, and you weren't man enough, human enough, to keep it. I'll never let her go and neither will my father. Not because we're forcing Deja to stay; we're loving her every minute of the day. I should feel sorry for you, but I don't."
Ven stood and kicked the knife to Matt.
"You know what they say: never bring a knife to a gun fight." He looked at the gloves he'd forced himself to wear before reaching behind him to pull out a gun.
"You can't do this," Matt screamed. He stumbled as he pushed himself to his feet.
"I could tear you apart," Ven said, his fingers flexing in his gloves. "I could let the people in charge speculate about a wild animal roaming the neighborhood. Would anyone mourn if you were torn apart? I doubt it. That's not how you kill, though, was it? You liked to shoot people. Was it because it was less personal, or did you feel more powerful when you pulled the trigger?
"How did you feel when you beat my mother and the child my father told me about? How did it feel to terrorize adults while you used their children for your personal gain?"
"You'll never get away with this," Matt said, clutching the knife to him.
"You're just one more casualty in the war against drugs. No one will care—not your so-called friends, and not the parents with dead children, or the ones with strung out children because they met you. No one will cry."
Matt screamed and ran at Ven, knife raised in the air. Ven pulled the trigger—one shot, right between his eyes.
Ven watched with cold blue eyes as Matt fell to the floor. Matt would never kidnap, assault, and rape another woman, or beat a child trying to make money to put food on the table or buy an outfit to go back to school in.
He dropped the gun on the floor where he stood. He had taken it from the house and now he returned it. It was never wise to be thought of as a thief.
Ven walked to the back door, fading out of sight.
When Ven walked past the Wolves Den, Declyn was sitting on the steps. He stopped and sat beside his alpha. They remained silent for a long while.
"I killed a man, a human," Ven said, staring at the sky above.
"I know," Declyn said.
Ven nodded, not surprised that his alpha knew what he was up to.
"I'll take any punishment you deem is fit. I couldn't let the threat to her stay alive. Even with the fear running rampant through his bloodstream, he couldn't stop thinking about my mother."
"We were designed to kill. Our childhood was stolen so that we could be the perfect soldiers. I always wondered why. Avel whispered something in my ear last night—a secret that each of them swore to take to their graves. We were fighting over bigotry and ignorance—one race's inability to respect another's."
Declyn leaned back, resting his arms on the steps as he watched the sky high above them.
"I love the color of the sky here," Declyn said. Ven nodded in agreement.
"When we crash-landed here, I didn't know what to expect. Over the years, I realized that humans are just as wild and savage as we are. Tonight, you not only eliminated a threat to your mother but to our people also. Go home and get some sleep. I'm proud of you, Ven, not only for your valor, but for your heart." Declyn walked off, leaving Ven sitting on the steps.
Ven stood. He walked home, wondering if he gave his mom a sad look, if she would allow him to try the peach daiquiri she liked to drink.