“Happy” definitely wouldn’t be the word I’d use when it came to the undercover faery king.

Deadly, dark, and dangerous. That’s really what he thought I was? How could I prove I wasn’t anything like that?

I’d been told there hadn’t been any other human-demon offspring in a millennium. That’s a thousand years Darkling free until I was born. It was forbidden for humans and demons to have children together due to the whole “Darklings are dangerous” thing. Also, it was very rare for a demon even to be allowed to enter the human world, to prevent their meeting any humans to mate with.

Obviously my father had totally broken the rules to be with my mom. It was kind of romantic, really. My mother, on the other hand, never knew he was a demon. She knew him only as a college student who’d abandoned her when she was eighteen, alone, and pregnant, and I’d promised my father I wouldn’t tell her any differently. For now, at least.

I forced myself to look at Rhys again, surprised to see that his face had paled, his jaw had tightened, and his attention had now shifted from me to the frog.

“The frog is dead,” he stated.

“You’re so observant.” I picked up the X-Acto knife — better to have control of a potential weapon than to let him grab it first — and realized my sweaty hand made it difficult to get a good grip.

His lips thinned. “It’s barbaric.”

“It’s fairly disgusting, sure, but we have to do it.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “We just have to.”

Anger flickered in his eyes and the gold flecks there appeared to swirl. “You agree with this disgusting human practice of murdering innocent animals for meaningless experiments?”

Okay. Overreacting much? “If I don’t, I’ll get a failing grade on this assignment. If it grosses you out, I think you can do a simulated dissection on the computer instead.”