Let Them Kneel (kaelani and Julian) novel Chapter 113

“Is that what I am?” Maddy arched a brow, her tone dry as desert air. “A mate? I was beginning to think I was just his personal bitch—someone he gets to order around whenever it suits him.”

Julian let out a low whistle.

“Got yourself a sassy one too. Welcome to the club.”

Jace didn’t miss a beat.

“I wasn’t ordering you around,” he said, voice slightly defensive but too late to mask the soft edge underneath.

“I was… making suggestions.”

Her gaze swept forward as they walked. “Well, then let me make a suggestion of my own,” she said, tone cool but pointed. “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Everyone here is like my family. Yes—even the tramp I nearly ripped apart back at the club. It’s not all blood and orgies, you know.”

She continued without pause, her voice softening—not defensive, just honest.

“The world has King Lazarus all wrong. Maybe he likes it that way. But he protects people like me.”

Jace frowned.

“People like you?” he asked. “You mean… Lycans?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said quietly. “I mean… hybrids.”

Jace’s voice dropped, the sharp edge gone.

“You’re a hybrid?”

“Witch blood,” Julian cut in. “I smelled it the second she opened that door.”

Jace blinked. “I didn’t.”

Julian shot him a look.

“That’s because she’s your mate. Her scent’s supposed to lure you in.”

A beat.

“Not that witch blood is offensive,” he added quickly. “Just… different.”

Maddy gave a faint, humorless smile.

“Well, Lycans are certainly offensive to witches,” she said. “So you can imagine what my mother’s coven thought when she gave birth to me.”

Julian’s brow furrowed.

“They didn’t approve?”

A bitter flicker passed over her face.

“They tried to burn me alive when I was five years old.”

Silence fell.

Jace and Julian both stiffened—no quick retorts, no clever comments. Just stunned quiet.

But Maddy kept walking, her voice steady despite the weight of her words.

“My mother gave up everything for me. Her rank. Her coven. Her life.”

She paused, gaze distant.

“I never knew my real father. Only that he was a rogue… drifted from place to place. She offered him shelter for a few weeks. Then he was gone.”

A shrug.

“Left her with a child and a death sentence.”

Jace was quiet for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“I’m sorry.”

His voice was low, stripped of bravado.

“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”

Maddy didn’t look at him right away.

Her fingers trailed lightly along the wall as they walked, like she was grounding herself in the texture of it.

“It was hard,” she said at last.

“I had to survive on my own for a long time. I learned how to blend in, disappear when I needed to. But somewhere along the way, I met someone—someone who spoke highly of King Lazarus. Said he gave outcasts like us a second chance… a home.”

She glanced at them both now, her voice steady but softened with memory.

“I wasn’t surprised to learn that most of them were hybrids like me. We’re the most rejected of all supernatural species. Neither one thing nor the other. But King Lazarus didn’t see it that way. He didn’t see broken bloodlines—he saw people who just needed to be loved. To be understood.”

A pause. Then, with a faint, reverent smile:

“And why wouldn’t he?

His grandchildren are hybrids—some of the first ever, from what I’ve heard.”

She paused again, then added with quiet conviction:

“He says we’re not abominations… we’re evolution. Interbreeding wasn’t always possible—until it was. And with more supernatural creatures emerging over the last few centuries, it’s happening more often than most realize.”

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