Free The Demon's Song: Paranormal New Adult Romance by Helena Shaw Page A

Draven, the real Draven. He gave her no guidance as he stood before her and it was up to her to see what he really was.
    She stared, she glared, and she let her vision turn blurry, but Draven stayed the same before her. His dark hair was still lustrous as it hung to his ears. His eyes stayed their brilliant blue and he still wore the perfectly tailored black suit. He did not grow claws, he didn’t turn hallow and gaunt. He was still Draven.
    “I don’t see anything,” Cadence shook her head. “You’re just... you.”
    “Stop looking with your eyes,” Draven told her. “Look with your soul.”
    She didn’t know what he meant, but somehow the words seemed to make sense as she tried again. She ignored what she saw and relied on something deep inside her. She let the world fall away and Draven, the real Draven, came into view.
    He was the same, or at least at first. As she opened her mind’s eye, he began to change. There was no hunched back, no horrible fangs and claws. The differences were subtle at most. Before her, Draven’s dark hair grew longer and his eyes turned a bright ruby red.
    He seemed larger somehow and there was a new aura about him. It wasn’t like the shadows she had seen all her life, it was more powerful and seemed to fill the room.
    He’s beautiful , Cadence thought as she truly saw Draven for the first time.
    As she looked upon him, on the real him, her head started to ache. A pounding pain ripped across the inside of her skull and her vision went dark while she tried to maintain her gaze.
    It was too much though and Cadence found herself struggling to see anything at all. Her fingers lost their grip on the half empty coffee cup, but with lightning fast reflexes, Draven was there by her side and caught it.
    “Stop,” his voice said, though it was an eerie, beautiful purr. “Stop now!”
    The urgency of his voice brought her back to the reality of the room, or the reality that most people could see. Her head still hurt, but it was already subsiding as she blinked away the last of what she had seen.
    “What are you?” she managed to ask as the pain under her scalp began to fade.
    “I am, like the others, like the shadows you’ve always seen, a demon,” Draven told her as he sat beside her on the chaise.
    “No,” she refused to believe him. “No, I saw those demons. You aren’t like them. You’re different. You’re an angel.”
    “Ha!” he laughed. “Just because I look as I do, because I do not wish to harm you, does not change my nature. I am a demon, as I have been for the last twelve hundred years.”
    It was all too much. Cadence didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. All she knew was she couldn’t believe it.
    “Listen to me,” he said, his voice turning cold again as he put a finger to Cadence’s chin and turned her gaze back to him. “Twelve hundred years ago, I offered up my soul to the demons of hell. It was a contract, a very powerful one. In return for a life, I gave my own in service of hell.”
    “In return for a life?” Cadence asked. “I don’t understand.”
    In that moment, Draven’s eyes turned strangely sad. “My daughter’s,” he told her. “I was near thirty when fever struck our village. She was one of the first to fall ill and we knew she was going to die. We could hear the rattle of death in her lungs, but I wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t her time, so I did something about it.
    People used to believe in the power of demons. They would come to us as much as they would turn to heaven in their prayers. In the middle of the night, when the moon was full, I went to a crossroads. I called upon the demon that held power there and begged him to spare my child’s life. When the deal was done, I belonged to that demon. My soul was his.”
    “But you don’t look like the others,” Cadence said, trying to find a way to deny his words. “You’re nothing like them.”
    “They are young,” he explained. “Andras is ambitious and struck