Free To Hell and Back by Juliana Stone Page A

keep the hellhound at bay. He couldn’t fuck this up. As much as he wanted nothing more than to smash his fist into his father’s face, he had to keep his cool.
    The child’s whimpers became louder and each time one fell from his mouth, Lilith mimicked the noise, which only served to increase the tension in the room tenfold.
    Logan refused to look at the child. He couldn’t. His father had never forgiven him for taking Kira back out of Hell all those years ago, when she’d been a child not much older than this one. Santos had been looking for a way to break him, and now it had been handed to him on a silver platter. All thanks to Lilith.
    Overlord Santos would ask him to do something awful. Something so reprehensible that it would haunt Logan forever. He knew this.
    Yet, sadly, he would play whatever game was asked of him.
    Because he had to.
    “Why is he here?” Logan asked harshly, moving until his body was between both his father and Lilith and the young boy.
    Santos shrugged. “Because I wished it.”
    Logan nodded to the child. “This is a sanctioned run?”
    Again, Santos nodded, but Logan had the feeling something else was at play.
    “On whose authority?”
    His father took a step forward, anger filling his features. “You would question me?”
    Logan had a moment to choose sides. A moment to make sure he did the right thing. But down here the right thing was complicated. The right thing wouldn’t get him back to Kira. Even though everything inside him screamed to take the child and do whatever it took to get to a portal, he unclenched his hands and stepped back.
    He stepped down. Anguished, his body trembled, his heart pounding rapidly.
    Something tugged on his jeans and he glanced down. “I want,” the young boy gulped, “I want my mommy.”
    Logan’s moment came and went. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do what they were asking of him. He couldn’t play the game.
    “This child has been sentenced to District Three? On what grounds?” he ground out, ignoring Lilith as he faced his father.
    Santos folded his arms over his chest, his face cold, eyes dead. “You don’t get to ask those questions, boy .”
    Logan’s chest rumbled. The beast scratched beneath the surface and it took every ounce of his control to keep himself in human form. His father had always hated Logan. Always. He’d been born of brimstone and fire, yes, but he was also light and magick. Logan was not from the same bloodline as his brothers.
    His mother was not from the Hell realm and Logan was not a child born of love. He was a child born of lust, of illicit desires and unquenchable need. All of it one-sided, of course. Sadly, Logan Winters was a child born of rape.
    His mother had kept his existence secret for the first twenty years of his life. Not only for his own protection but for hers as well. As princess of the in-between worlds, she would have lost everything if it had become common knowledge that she’d given birth to a child of darkness. Logan would have been killed within moments of his birth and his mother would have had the fight of her life. There were those who would use such information to destroy her. There were those who would use the life of her child as a weapon against her.
    Her royal line would have been broken and she never would have been able to claim her birthright. Queen of the in-between world.
    So she’d kept him at her Winter Palace. She’d loved him. She’d nurtured him until he had matured. Until he’d shifted that first time and had become something so volatile and unpredictable that not even her power could hold him at bay. Afraid her kind would hunt him down and kill him, she’d surrendered him to his father, and Logan had hated her for it for hundreds of years. It had taken that long for him to realize that he couldn’t exist in her world. The darkness inside him was too strong. There was nothing to counter it. His mother had had no choice.
    Until now. Kira and his unborn child were his