Mated To The Devil by Eve Langlais Read Free Book Online

heard quite a few herself in the last few years, most especially since Jacques’ birth. Apparently, even in this day and age, some people still took issue with mixed-race children, and they weren’t afraid to get vocal about it.
    What worried her most about this incident, though, wasn’t so much Jacques’ defense of himself—a boy had a right to stand up to bullies, especially ignorant ones. What truly frightened her was just before he’d lashed out, his eyes glowed an eerie blue. Add to that his bristling body; the growls he didn’t seem to notice emitting; his fingernails, which almost doubled when emotional; and his elongated canines . . . all those and more equaled up to one worried mother. God help us both. He’s just like his father. The devil with the golden eyes—and sinful touch.
    She shoved thoughts of Remy away, unwilling to remember, or dwell upon that fateful night, the night she’d discovered terror, pleasure, and shame all rolled into one. But out of that one sinful night, she’d also acquired her greatest gift and reason for living. My baby , who, with the resilience of youth, ran off to watch cartoons.
    Watching him giggle, looking once again so normal, she could almost pretend she imagined his startling outbursts. His otherness. Then a growl shook his frame as he got excited and Mina sank onto a kitchen chair as reality sank in. She couldn’t ignore it anymore. She’d known it from the moment of his birth. Jacques was different. Heck, she was different. Everything had changed during that party years ago. She’d lost her virginity, part of her mind, her home, her family, and any chance at a normal life. And a piece of my heart, I think, because I never did find anyone else since who makes me feel the same way.
    Somehow, she highly doubted Remy woke up in the middle of the night sweating and aching for her, but when the loneliness became too much, sometimes she pretended that maybe, just maybe, he did. Destructive trains of thought, wishing for the devil. Her seducer. Her fantasy . . .
    Despite her own body and heart’s longing, there were times she looked at her son and wondered if she should have tried harder to find his father. Given her boy someone masculine to look up to. Someone with whom to share the burden and joys of parenthood. Someone to hold her when it all seemed too much.
    She still remembered that fateful day her world changed. The doctor perused the results of her bloodwork, her mother having dragged her in for a checkup given the extreme fatigue and general feeling of malaise dogging her every waking moment. When he announced, “Your hCG levels seem to indicate you’re pregnant, about twelve or thirteen weeks by my guess,” Mina thought she’d misheard or gone deaf so thick did the silence stretch after his momentous claim. The rest of that moment passed in a blur as her mother bundled her out of there as quickly as she could, the red spots of color in her cheeks and tight lips the only indicator of the storm brewing.
    Mina opened her mouth to try to refute or explain the impossibility. It was only one time . . . I didn’t mean to. Maybe the doctor’s wrong. The words never left her lips. She’d known something was happening with her body, knew it when she missed her first period. Feared it when she felt the hard lump in her abdomen and the tenderness in her breasts. She’d prayed with all her might that it would go away. That somehow things would go back to the way they were, that no one would ever find out what she’d done.
    But God didn’t hear her plea, and her sin came back to haunt her. And her father punished her.
    He raised his hand only once, a hard slap across the cheek that left her holding it, the sting not as painful as the ache his words brought. She’d listened without speaking as her father ranted, “I can’t believe I raised a whore in my house. How could you shame me this way? Shame our family? You are not welcome here, not you or the bastard in