Read Online Retribution (Book 3 of The Dominion Series) by S. E. Lund - Free Book Online Page A

breaks. “Eve, I didn’t know if I could go on when I thought you were dead...”
    “But you did go on.”
    “No I didn’t,” he says and his voice is almost a whisper. “I went back to the monastery. I quit fighting. I couldn’t imagine what I’d be fighting for anymore.”
    “Stop it,” I say. “That's ridiculous. You’re a knight. You’re a soldier. You told me it’s what you do, fight. Kill enemies. Besides, we were barely even together.”
    He’s silent for a moment.
    “You don’t believe in love at first sight?”
    Yes, I do . Or at least I thought I did. But my love at first sight wasn't for Julien.  It was for Michel. That much I do know from my journal.
    "You had a strange way of showing it."
    "I didn't want to love you,” he says. “I couldn’t help it."
    I dig my nails into my palms and don’t respond.
    “Eve, I thought my enemies won,” he says. “And I stopped caring anymore. But now…” We just stand there in an awkward silence. Finally, he speaks and his voice is barely above a whisper. “Are you,” he says. “Are you with him again?”
    “Not anymore,” I say. “I found my journal and read everything. Until then, I had no memories of anything after my mother died. I didn’t even know vampires existed. Michel and I met again. Then I learned the truth – that it was Michel who killed my mother. I left him.”
    "You left him? He let you go?” He shakes his head, disbelief on his face. "Soren compelled him to kill your mother, Eve," he says. "He wouldn't have done it himself."
    "It doesn't matter. He killed my mother, Julien! He lied to me,” I say, tears in my eyes. “All this time. He lied to me all along and so did you. You never told me the truth either.”
    “What good would it do to tell you?” he says, an edge in his voice. “You’d only obsess about it, plan some way to get revenge, and get yourself killed in the process. That’s exactly what you did, once you found out that Soren was responsible," he says and waves to the beach, "All this is because of your vendetta against him. We were both right not to tell you the truth.”
    “The truth is always preferable to lies.”
    “You think so?” he says, his voice suddenly hard. “You’ve barely been alive. You know nothing about existence. Believe me, sometimes a lie makes existence bearable. Like I lied to myself about you. That if we'd met first, you would have loved me instead of Michel. Believe me, that lie kept me alive during very dark times.”
    I deliberately shut those words out of my mind.
    “I’ve lived too many lies, Julien,” I say, glancing away from his too-blue eyes. “I only want the truth from now on. All of it. Only the truth.”
    He just stands there, staring at me.
    “OK, I’ll tell you the truth,” he says, his voice hard. “It’s either me or Michel for you. There’s no one else you can be with, so choose . If you choose neither of us, by default, you choose Soren. He’ll deploy you like a weapon with no regard for you as a human. He’ll pass you around his lieutenants like a cheap bottle of wine.”
    My body tenses at that.
    “He won’t love you like I do,” he says finally, his voice soft. “Or Michel.”
    “You and Michel keep saying you love me, but it means nothing to me. Nothing .” I turn away, hating that I have no memories of my life.
    “You wanted the truth, Eve. No more lies.” He takes my arm and releases a calming endorphin that saps my ability to resist him physically. He turns me back around and holds my shoulders, bending down so his face is just inches from mine.
    “I love you. I wish I didn’t. I hate loving you. I thought I’d given up on love centuries ago, but it’s so hard to live forever without it. I can’t do it anymore.”
    Then he pulls me along the beach, going back in the direction he came from.
    “What are you doing?”
    He doesn’t answer, just keeps walking, my hand in his, our fingers threaded together.
    “I followed Michel here