Danger stopped and waited until he was almost out of the room.
She had a sneaking suspicion of who he might be and it was time to play her hunch. "Ias?"
He stopped to look back at her. "What?" He responded to the name automatically.
Her jaw went slack. She'd been right, and he realized it two seconds later.
His face turned to stone.
"Mon Dieu," she breathed as every weirdness about him suddenly made sense. That's why he couldn't taste food. Why he didn't feel real emotions.
How it was that he knew what it was like to be a Shade…
"It's true," she breathed. "You were the third DarkHunter created after Acheron. The first one who died."
"No I wasn't, and Ias is a Shade."
She still didn't believe him. Not about this. "And if I were to take you to Kyros right now, what would he say? What name would he call you?"
Alexion ground his teeth in aggravation at her ability to see through him.
There really was no point in hiding the truth from her. It wasn't like she wouldn't find out the minute Kyros laid eyes on him.
Damn.
"He would call me Ias. But I wasn't the first DarkHunter to die," he added, wanting her to know that he was telling her the truth. "There were two before me who were killed by the Daimons before Acheron learned of us."
He sensed that something inside her changed in that instant. For one thing, her face softened. She crossed the room to stand just before him. Her gaze searched his as she reached a hand up to touch his cheek.
That simple touch wrecked him. How could he have such emotions? For centuries he had felt nothing for anyone except Ash and Simi.
To feel such raw emotion now…
It was incredible.
Her dark eyes showed him her heart. "Shades aren't supposed to have human form."
"They don't."
She caressed his cheek. "But you feel real enough to me."
Her touch aroused him to a painful level. In the past his encounters with women had always been brief. They'd lasted long enough for him to sate his lust and then the woman had vanished, never to be seen again. There had never been a tender touch like this one. A touch meant to comfort. It eased him and it burned through him like lava. "I'm different from the others."
"How?"
He pulled her hand away from his face, unable to bear the unfamiliar tenderness any longer. All it did was make him ache for things he could never have. He was beyond human relationships.
Beyond human feeling.
"Acheron held himself responsible for my death," he explained quietly. "Had he not made a fatal mistake in judgment, I wouldn't have become a Shade. For that reason, he gave me form and took me in to live with him and Simi."
"That is why you defend him?"
He nodded. "I assure you, living as a Shade is not something to take lightly. My short time as a true Shade taught me well that there is nothing on this earth or beyond worse. I'm grateful every day for Acheron's mercy."
She could respect his loyalty to the man who had saved him, and yet it added a most macabre twist that he would damn other people to the fate that he'd escaped. "How many others have you and Acheron damned to Shadedom?"
"I assure you, it's not something either of us does lightly. Those who died because they were preying on helpless humans are left to wander. The ones who die in the line of duty are given a paradise of sorts to spend eternity in. They don't suffer. Acheron won't allow it."
Danger frowned at his disclosure. That was something that no one had ever told them before. They were all left believing that if they died in the line of duty, they suffered the same as all the other Shades.
There wasn't supposed to be any way back from Shadedom.
"Why doesn't Ash tell us this?"
"Because a Shade, unlike a DarkHunter, can't go back to being human. Any hope of a future incarnation is gone. They have no hope for ever having a normal life again."
That didn't make sense to her. He was real. He had flesh and form. "But you—"
"I'm not in a human body, Danger." He looked down at himself with an anguished grimace. "This form that you see, that you touch, has an expiration date on it. In a few days, I have to return to my realm or perish completely. Acheron is afraid that if the DarkHunters ever learned that they could be spared the torment, they would become more reckless and not fear death. But believe me when I say there are things out there far worse than dying."
"Such as?"
The misery in his eyes singed her, and when he spoke, she knew it was from personal experience. "Living out eternity alone with no hope of release. You have no idea how lucky you DarkHunters are that in the back of your mind is always the knowledge that one day you might go free again. You still have your hope."
Danger's throat drew tight at his words. He had been one of them once. He was the whole reason they had an out clause at all. If not for him, Artemis would never have made provisions for the rest of them. How awful to know that you had given such an incredible gift to others that was now forbidden to you. "I'm sorry for the way I treated you."