“Enough.” More than he wanted to know.
Sammy winced and shrank back in his seat. “And you know that I’m…”
Dominic dipped his head sharply. “I’m aware.”
He just didn’t know how he felt about being mated to him yet.
“When I was a kid,” Sammy began, “I struggled with control. This was before the Awakening.”
It had been more than fifteen years since Otherlings had stepped out of the shadows and announced themselves to the world. A mistake in Dominic’s opinion, but thanks to the romanticization of paranormals in fiction, the reception had been largely positive.
Dominic studied the male across from him with a scowl.
He guessed Sammy to be in his mid-twenties, which would have made him ten, maybe twelve years old during the early days of the Awakening. It wasn’t unheard of for children to present with powers that young, but it rarely happened naturally.
More commonly, it happened as a result of trauma.
“To protect me,” Sammy continued, “my mom crafted an old locket into a relique. It’s like a—”
“I know what it is.”
Totems like the one he described were exceedingly rare and typically only existed between bonded pairs. Even then, no one would consider reliques casual love tokens, and many side-eyed them as a mark of unhealthy obsession.
Forged from blood magic, the ritual to fashion such an object required explicit and unbiased cooperation. It also tended to be temperamental, and while not intrinsically evil, it could be inarguably dangerous in the wrong hands.
Which sounded like what had happened in this instance. If Valerie had truly been trying to protect her son, he wouldn’t need Dominic’s help.
The more Sammy revealed, the more sinister it sounded.
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
Dominic gritted his teeth and choked back a growl. At that age, he would have had no understanding of what he was agreeing to, and no way to reverse it once it was done.
“So, your mother is a witch?”
“Half,” Sammy corrected. “But that doesn’t make her any less dangerous.” He sighed and wiped a shaky hand across his mouth. “And no, I didn’t inherit any of her magical abilities.”
Again, not impossible, but magic tended to be one of the more dominant traits produced from a mixed pairing.
He gestured for him to continue. “What happened after the binding ritual?”
“Nothing at first. I didn’t feel any different. My control definitely didn’t improve.” His face twisted, and his eyes darkened to a deep forest green. “When I was sixteen, she sold the relique to the owner of a host club in Galveston, Texas.”
Dominic clenched his fists, squeezing hard enough to make his knuckles crack, the sound like gunfire in the quiet of the bakery.
“As you can imagine,” Sammy added, his voice laced with bitterness, “I was quite popular with the clientele.”
An attractive young male capable of twisting himself into every customer’s fantasy? Add in the fact that it was literally his job to stroke their egos and pretend he enjoyed their company, and that would have been like catnip to assholes with money to burn.
This time, Dominic couldn’t hold back the growl that thundered in his chest.
Decades of violence had earned the Blackrock Pack their ruthless reputation, but they still lived by a strict code. They didn’t deal in weapons or drugs. They never exploited the weak.
And they damn sure didn’t hurt kids.
That last one wasn’t merely a standard they held themselves to either. It was Dominic’s most absolute law.