Tasting Darkness

Read Taming Darkness By Jessica Hall Book 3 Chapter 29 – Kalen

When I was younger, growing up in the orphanage, I always longed for home. There was some sense telling me I didn’t belong there, that I was destined to be somewhere else. I didn’t understand that feeling until after I manifested and figured out where home was. It wasn’t a place by itself. It made me understand the difference between a house and a home.

I could stay in any house, but any place without my mates would never be home. I used to dream about having a family, and that’s exactly what I found with my mates. They were more amazing than I ever could have dreamed they would be, but there had still been something missing that stopped me from truly feeling at home within myself.

It wasn’t until Aleera came to us did I ever get that true sense of what I craved. Family, and completion. She tamed the shadows that haunted me. We were no longer chasing her ghost across half the country. Instead, we summoned her spirit and let her become our everything. She summoned the good in us.

Good? It was hard to believe that I understood what that word was.

Before her, I’d had an idea of it, but I had no true knowledge of just what it could personally do for me until she shone a light and showed us.

With her by my side, the shadows were not so dark anymore, no longer a sinister thing that sought to pull me under. I wanted to fight them. I wanted to fight them for her. She didn’t just tempt our darkest parts out of hiding. She tasted the darkness and still forgave us. Until, eventually, she tamed us one by one. The darkness didn’t stand a chance against her.

With her gone, I was falling all the way back to the start, past when I was searching for my home and family, and all the way back into the darkest recesses of my memory. My heart battled back, trying to convince me that all of this was not some cruel dream. I’d had a way out of the blackness that I didn’t have before.

I never thought a life with my mates could turn into the living hell

we made the perfect finished puzzle. They made me

tell through our bond, and it wasn’t just physically, but mentally too. There had been too much dumped on her shoulders. The things she’d learned about not just her past, but ours as well, and she hadn’t had any time to

weight of the entire world on her shoulders, and those that lived within

of this, there was nothing I could do to help her, at least

had kept twisting the

do for her to ease her suffering? What words could I possibly say to save her from the load that was crushing her? I wanted to prove to her that my mates and I were

took a deep breath, trying to clear my thoughts. A slight tug in my chest forced me to look around. My surroundings were changing around me.

of a sudden? I wanted to

to eat, or was all of this because

sure what was going on, but it was like a giant was stepping on me, squishing my body into

mist spread across the ground. I sat up, inhaling the surprisingly fresh air. “What the hell?” I whispered beneath my breath. Rubbing my eyes, I squinted, trying to see through the mysterious mist. What was going on? What was I

floating all around me. Did that mean, wherever I was, it was