BRAVING THE DARKNESS: One Night With The Demon King
BENEATH HER DARKNESS: The Alpha’s Little Demon Book 2
Chapter 1 – The Nightmares
PATREA.
I was n*ake*d. Blood was trailing down my thighs, but I ignored it, even if the pain was coursing through my whole body.
My feet were tired from running, and my chest was heaving from panting, but I kept springing forward. I had no idea what creature was running after me, but I knew I needed to get away.
“Aaaaah!” I screamed when my body fell into a black hole, and my stomach churned as I tried to grab something to hold on to.
But there was nothing.
I was falling endlessly, and I just wished for my body to crash somewhere, even if it meant death.
Death was better than not knowing when the falling would end.
“Patrea! Patrea!” I heard a female’s voice calling for me, making me f0rce my eyes to snap open. I found myself staring into the dark purple eyes of my granddaughter.
“You’re having another bad dream…” Althea, my eighteen-year-old granddaughter, helped me sit up from lying down before she took a glassof water from my bedside table and gave it to me.
I remained silent as I gulped the water until the glasswas empty. My chest was heaving, and my feet felt tired as if I were really running. I knew it was just a nightmare, but it seemed real, especially since I could feel the soreness in my body.
Althea stood up, took a small towel from my dresser, and wiped the sweat off my forehead. “Do you want me to sleep beside you?”
“No. Go back to your room. You have cla*s*ses tomorrow, so you need to sleep.”
She sighed as she sat sideways on the edge of my bed, staring at the window in front of her. “We need to find a solution for your nightmares, Mama. I doubt you ever sleep at all, and the moment you do, you always end up screaming in your sleep.”
“I’m sorry, I keep waking you up.”
“It’s not me. It’s you and whatever you are seeing in those dreams. Maybe we should reach out to the coven, I’m sure they can find a way.”
“The problem is me, Althea. I can’t seem to forget that part and it haunts me even in my sleep.”
“Let me tamper with your mind then. Just teach me what to do, so we can erase that part.”
“And what will happen after? My mind will go back to almost thirty years ago? I won’t remember you. I won’t remember Lucy and little Aiden. And I will surely suffer if I remember that I’m pregnant and I have no baby and no husband at all.” I let out a deep breath and rested my back on the headboard. ” Tampering with my mind will just create more problems.”
“I wish I knew what to do.”
“Me too.” My hand reached for my granddaughter’s arm and rubbed my palm gently on it. “Go sleep, and maybe I can ask for help from Lucy. Maybe she knows what to do.”
“Or Lucius,” Althea added.
“I doubt if he even cares. He’s busy running his kingdom, so I doubt if he has time to help me.”
“It’s worth the shot. Maybe he knows what to do.” Althea said softly before tilting her head and meeting my gaze. “Don’t you think Lucien had something to do with these nightmares? That the moment he set you free, he made something up to make you suffer?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, up until this moment, I had no idea how strong the demon king’s power was. There were days when Lucien would come and ask me to do something for him because his power prevented him from performing it, only for him to come back and show me a different kind of strong power or aura.”
“But if he died already, shouldn’t it be voided? Like how most of the witch’s spells are?”
“It doesn’t work like that with demons. Their contracts are binding even after death, and so are all the enchantments and lies they conjure.”
“So, I insist we talk with Lucius. The nightmares have to stop, Mama.” Althea was being stubborn. “I can ask Lucy.”
“Lucy is not that knowledgeable when it comes to demon illusions and lies. If you can’t talk to Lucius, then I will.” “No. Don’t you dare do that.” I warned her.
“Why? Are you scared of something?”
How would I explain to her that I was afraid Lucius would end up liking her and entice her to the underworld in exchange for my freedom from my nightmares?
“Demons are devious creatures,” I told her.
“I know that. But it’s either you do it or I will do it.” She smiled at me before she stood up from my bed and bent down to press a kiss on my forehead. ” Goodnight, Mama. Sleep, as we have a long day tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, sweetheart.” I nodded my head and smiled at her as I watched her walk toward the door.
Lucy’s birthday dinner will be tomorrow night. Althea and I were invited. I was sure Lucius was invited too, but I doubt if he would appear since he missed all the previous occasions that were important to Lucy, including her union with Adan and Aiden’s ceremony as Alpha heir.
So even if Althea insisted on talking with him, there was no way she could.
I rose from my bed the moment Althea left, and I opened the main light of my bedroom before I stood up in front of the full-length mirror to look at myself.
I looked like I was just in my mid-twenties. nobody would believe me if I told them I was nearly three decades older than I am now.
Yes, I stopped aging. But it didn’t mean I was indispensable or immortal.
I am still me. Nothing special, just the fact that I would never age again. But I could still drop dead if I were stabbed in the heart, shot in the head, or run over by a bus or train.
My name is Patrea Dorgan, but I go by Patrea Foster now. I am a light witch that belonged to the
Westlov Coven of the East before I was lured by a demon to give up my body to him in exchange for acquiring more power.
I was young and desperate. I wanted to rise through the ranks and become one of the high sisters of our coven. But I was just me, nothing special, and I had no extraordinary powers aside from the ones a regular witch has.
I wanted more.
And Lucien took advantage of my obsession. I had no idea he was a king of one of the four regions of the underworld. All I knew was, he was a demon and very handsome, and he looked like he wanted to help me.
So I agreed.
The next thing I knew, my body was trapped in the underworld, and I had no way out except if he would allow me to leave.
Which he had no plans of doing.
I spent the next three decades trapped in a place that no human being with a living soul should ever experience. Lucien did something to my body that made me adapt to the Underworld, and in turn, it made me age slower until I stopped aging.
If there was anything good that this event in my life had given me, this was it. Now that I was free from the underworld with the help of Lucy and Lucius, Lucien’s offspring, I came back to the human realm just as I had left it three decades ago: young and still healthy.
I was slowly getting my life back with my granddaughter, Althea, whom I introduced as my sister to avoid any questions and suspicions if I introduced her as my granddaughter.
So far, everything has worked well.
I worked as an academic librarian at one of the universities in this city. I might not have the full knowledge of this work, but there’s nothing that a few spells and magic couldn’t solve. And this work allowed me a moment of peace where I could be on my own while I relearned the ways of humans.
Althea, on the other hand, was attending school for the first time. My granddaughter had lived most of her life in the mountains, where her mother, my daughter, had kept her from the public eye in fear of Lucien finding them.
But now that Lucien was dead, we were free to do whatever we wanted with our lives. The only one missing was Adora. My daughter, Althea’s mother, but I knew that wherever she is, she must be happy that Althea and I found each other.
LUCIUS.
I didn’t want to be here. I was planning to ditch
Lucy’s birthday dinner, as I did with all other events in her life, as I didn’t want to cross paths with Patrea.
For the last six months, I succeeded in staying away.
Partea wanted a world away from the underworld, and I was sure, seeing me would just remind her of all the bad things my father did to her.
For decades, I had known that my late father, Lucien, had trapped a powerful young witch in the underworld and kept her in Kalmerus.
I had met several witches in the underworld, but I knew I had never crossed paths with this witch until that day when Lucija demanded that my father release Patrea from the underworld in exchange for her loyalty.
It was the first time I’d seen her, and I knew right there and then that I wanted her in the same way I desired all the other females I fancied.
I am Lucius, the new King of Kalmerus.
Kalmerus is one of the four underworld regions, perhaps the largest.
Females bowed down at my feet not just because I was a royal demon, but because I was born and gifted as the prince of lust.
But regardless of the power and charm I held, Patrea never fell for it.
I was not sure if it irritated me or disappointed me, but whatever it was, I wanted a taste of her.
And a one-night demon contract was the perfect way to seal it. Patrea agreed to spend one night with me if we could take Lucija out of the underworld and k*il*l my father.
We succeeded, and I had already imagined all the ways I would stick my d*ic*k into her and a*s*sault her body, only for me to hold back the moment she said she was not ready for it.
The demon in me would have pushed for it and taken what was rightfully mine. She made the deal, she had no right to take it back or delay it. But I let her take her time.
Something in her eyes made me change my mind. She couldn’t forget about the abuse she took from Lucien. I knew it shouldn’t bother me. I saw abuse and had done my share of it, but this time I didn’t want to take ple@sure if I couldn’t give it back to her.
Patrea had never been intimate with anyone for the last three decades, except for the times in those decades, when my father abused her s*e*xually if you could even call that intimacy in the human realm. But that was it.
I knew it was the abuse she experienced that was giving her nightmares.
And she had another one tonight, like every other night.
I used to just check on her out of curiosity until I checked on her in the middle of the night. She was tossing and turning on her bed, and for a brief moment I believed an incubus was using her, but then I knew I would be able to see it if it was an incubus. I desired to visit her that night, but Althea arrived and awoke her.
After that, I made it a habit to check on her while she slept. There were times that I would do it more than three times the whole night, and sometimes I would just let my hologram open and see her sleep the whole night or stay awake and spend the night reading.
I had no idea what her nightmares were about. But if Althea wanted to talk to me tonight, then I would take the chance, and maybe I would be able to make it stop.