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—Wrong!—

Aye, Gwillain. It bleeding, fucking is.

“I’ve brought you a gift, Caius. I thought we might celebrate,” he said smoothly. “It has been a year, after all. Maybe a little longer. Or less?” A long sigh. “Who cares. I still don’t understand why you Bordorothians bother to mark the time. You claim so little of it in the end.”

“Unless it’s your severed dick on a silver platter, I’m not interested,” Caius growled, willing his lids to part the dried layers of blood enough that he could face his enemy.

The festering boil uttered a chiding, tsk’ing sound. “Always so ungrateful, when we gave you everything you asked for.”

Caius turned his head and held tight to his mind, reminding it that he wasn’t actually seeing himself standing there before him. “You and that clammy bitch turning my mate into one of your beasts is not what I asked for.”

“To be fair, I didn’t turn her into anything. I merely presented an opportunity to the interested parties, which just so happened to benefit me.” He adjusted the collar of his robe and smirked. “And I believe your exact words were, ‘Please. Anything! Just keep her alive.’”

—Caius! Caius?—

Fuck. The sound of his own voice mocking him from another body threatened to break the tenuous hold Caius had on his sanity.

Nay, my friend. It’s not. I’m right here with you, holding you close. That, there, is a lie.

Gwillain, his true and faithful wolf, had gone mad long ago.

“Anyway, I think you’ll be pleased to know that I’m actually here to uphold the terms of your…binding oath,” the son of a bitch said in his own, pompous voice, thank the Sisters.

That binding oath had been his final act of freedom.

When the crows had stolen Meliora from his arms and carried her across the Ghostbor, he’d held on to his hope, steeling himself to uphold his side of the bargain. Right up until the creature called Okthana had twisted his mate into a horror the likes of which he’d never seen.

All bets had been off, then.

He hardly recalled their screaming match, the details hazy in the midst of his consuming outrage. Only that this creature had donned his skin and threatened the only thing he had left in the world, and Caius snapped.

As that dark witch spat curses and sank traitorous, clawed fingers into his fur, Caius had called Gwillain to the fore with all the power he possessed as an Imperial Son and savagely bitten this foul piece of shite. Venom had poured from his fangs, and they’d existed as one for a sickening, suspended moment.

“Protect Thaddeus aht Bordoroth e Nacht at all costs. Treat him as a beloved son. Tell him nothing of his mother’s fate. Keep him safe, whole, and unharmed. What-e’er so happens to him, happens to you. He stays alive, or you die—your life now tied to his. By the Sisters, I so bind you.”

The invisible lock had slammed closed between their souls upon his release—the reason Caius was still alive. Only he could sever the magic of the oath, and the bastard wanted it gone.

Not fucking likely.

He walked right up to Caius, shed his stolen visage, and reverted back to himself. “Come, Thaddeus,” he called back over his shoulder. “Say hello to your father.”

Everything within Caius stilled.

Ach, Sisters, I beg of you—say it isn’t true.

His beautiful son crept into his limited field of view, shuffling in a daze.

—Thaddeus! Our little lad!—

“No. No!”

“What the fuck,” Thad breathed. “What the fuck.”

There were no other words. All of them fled as his mind broke and went numb.

He stared and stared at the two versions of his father before him—one whole, thriving, the other so ravaged that he was barely recognizable. He watched them speak but couldn’t hear a word they said over the buzzing in his ears. The hammering of his heart.

When the one that led him down here morphed into someone else, he sank a little deeper into himself.