Understandable. His father had driven his mother to kill herself.
“I hated my father but I blamed myself for her death. I spent years looking for information on fae and searching for a way to clear my mother’s name. When I discovered that my mother’s bloodline had an incubus in it, her father, and that all of the children he had sired with her mother had been female and therefore not incubi, but a carrier of those genes, I grew enraged at my father.” Payne slipped his hand free of hers and wiped his eyes, clearing away his tears. Elissa looked at Payne’s markings nearest his wrist. She didn’t recognise the symbols there, at the top of his lineage. His mother’s name written in the fae tongue? “My mother hadn’t known that she had incubus blood in her. I challenged my father and my father banished me, but not before I fought him. My father swore he never wanted to see me again.”
“What happened?”
“I left and lived in the world alone. I grew up without my family, watching them from a distance. When I had matured and was stronger, I went back to see my family. I needed to know if I could return.” The darkness in his tone said that they had denied him and her heart ached again, a deep throbbing that made her want to wrap her arms around him and hold him, and whisper that his family should have taken him back. He had only wanted to be with those he loved, even though they had hurt him. “I argued with my father. He blamed me for my mother’s death, accused me of ripping his heart out and destroying him. I countered him, accusing him of being the one who had torn out my heart and destroyed me, humiliated and shattered me. He struck me repeatedly, blaming me all the while, telling me I had killed my mother. I will never forget that night.”
Payne rubbed his right arm and Elissa stared down at it, at the scars that littered his skin. What had his father done to him? It was bad enough that Payne had to live with the scars on his heart and his soul, haunted by his memories, but his father had done something to place scars on his body too, so he could never forget.
“I lost my head. I fought back and shoved him. He fell near the fire, picked up one of the irons and flew at me. I tried to defend myself. He broke my arm with the iron and didn’t stop. He kept hitting me, shattering the bone, breaking through my skin. After the seventh strike, the pain overwhelmed me. I had no control over myself. I attacked and got the poker from my father. The next thing I recall is my father staring at me, blood pouring from his lips, scarcely breathing. I looked down and I saw what I had done.” Payne closed his eyes and frowned, his whole body tensing. Elissa stroked his arm, running her fingers up and down, needing to do something for him. “I had skewered my father with the poker. I had driven it under his breastbone and straight through his heart... I had gone to the house to ask my father to take me back and love me again, and I had ended up killing him. I was no better than my father had accused me of being.”#p#分页标题#e#
He turned his head and opened his eyes, looking straight into hers.
“I am a monster.”
She shook her head, unwilling to believe that because it wasn’t true. His father had made him feel as though he was wrong in some way, an abomination and a monster. He had driven his son to murder, wounding him so badly that his vampire instincts had seized control and forced him to defend himself, driven by a dark need to survive. It wasn’t his fault at all. All of the blame rested at his father’s feet.
“You asked why I called myself Payne. I called myself Payne so I would always remember what I had been through, a constant reminder of how easy it was to make someone suffer, and that love could kill as easily as a blade.”
Elissa felt so sorry for him. He stared at her, grey eyes edged with red but dull and full of unshed tears. Tension flowed from him in waves and lines bracketed his dusky lips. She knew that he was waiting for her to judge him and that there was some part of him that wanted her to hate him, needed it, because he felt he deserved it. He wanted her to tell him that she believed he was an abomination now, a disgusting creature that didn’t deserve her affection.
A monster.
Elissa laid her palm on his cheek. “You’re not a monster. You only wanted your father to love you. You only wanted your family again. You did nothing wrong. They were the ones in the wrong. They all turned on you because you were different and that wasn’t your fault. They should have accepted you for what you were, not rejected you because of it. They should have loved you, Payne.”
He looked away from her, causing her hand to slip from his face. “No one can love a monster.”