Chapter 20 Caius
The last of the daylight cuts sharp over the lake.
We park behind a wall of pines, needles slick from freezing spray, wind coming off the water so hard it makes the truck rock.
The house is just visible through the trees—a one story rancher, timber trim on the outside, but the walls are all concrete, glass, and steel, no neighbors, no mail, nothing but the view of a half-frozen beach and the blue water beyond.
Ophelia doesn’t say a word until we reach the gate.
It’s not a nice gate. Wrought-iron, knife-tip points, a keypad that doesn’t accept codes but skin. I press my thumb, wait for the dead click, and pull the truck in. She doesn’t say anything. Just stares at the house like it might bite.
“This yours?”
“Mhmm.”
The drive up is gravel, long enough for a helicopter to land.
Everything here is overkill. The whole place is off-grid, paid for in cash and crypto, title buried three shell companies deep.
No cameras, but the motion sensors will text me if anything larger than a raccoon gets within two hundred feet.
There’s a fence around the property and a second one buried under the beach sand, electrified for anyone who isn’t keyed into the system, because even though one might call me paranoid, they’d never call me ill-prepared.
Especially coming from the family that I do.
I cut the engine. For a minute, the only sound is the wind screaming through the trees and her breath, rapid, shaky, fogging the window.
“Come on,” I say.
She looks at me. Her eyes are gold in the cold light, wide as I’ve ever seen them. She doesn’t ask where we are. She just follows.
The air outside cuts straight to the bone. She hunches into my jacket, pulling it tight around her, her hair still smelling faintly like lavender, which makes me want to pin her to the hood and fuck her stupid, but I don’t.
I unlock the front door. It opens into a foyer full of dead echoes and glass.
No family photos, no art, no color. Just steel, concrete, slate.
I throw the bags down, reset the alarm, and lead her to the living room.
The windows here go floor to ceiling, the only view a slice of the lake and a sky smeared with light gray clouds.
She stands at the threshold, arms locked tight around her waist.
“Sit,” I say.
She ignores me, so I drag her to the couch, force her down.
She’s still for a long time. The sun slips lower, paints her in colors, and I just watch. Wait. She doesn’t move, doesn’t talk, doesn’t even blink.
Then, after what feels like an hour: “Is this it?”
She says it quiet, but the words are loaded. I don’t pretend not to understand.
I sit next to her, elbows on my knees. The space between us could swallow the room.
“This is the safe house,” I say.
She doesn’t laugh, but her mouth twitches. “It doesn’t look safe.”
“It’s the only place nobody will look. Nobody knows about it.”
She shifts, fingers digging into the meat of her arm. “Not even your dad?”
“Not even God, if there is one.”
She looks at me then, hard. “Why did we need to run, Cai?”
I don’t answer right away. I don’t want to tell her the truth. I don’t want her to know how scared I am, how close I was to giving up and just letting the Board take us both, lock us in their little glass zoo and breed us like show dogs.
But she deserves the truth, so I give her the ugly version. The true version.
“They made a pact,” I say. “Before any of us were born. Board, Funders, Kings, all of them. The firstborn of every Hunt gets taken. Groomed. Turned into one of three things: Academy ruler, Billionaire heir, or Mafia king. No other path.”
She flinches, but doesn’t look away.
“Every match, every Hunt, every fucked-up tradition—they’re just finding out which of us are strong enough to survive. Once they know, they breed us together. The winners. The offspring don’t get a choice. The Board takes them at birth. Raises them like livestock.”
She’s quiet, but her breathing has changed. Faster. Shallow.
“My father,” I say, “gave me two weeks. Finish the ritual, claim you, get you pregnant and then never see you again, or they kill us both.”
She goes dead white.
I lean back, hands laced tight. My knuckles crack, loud as gunshots.
“When I refused, I made a decision. One that severed the ties my father has with the Academy. It’s irreversible.
My father has no other heirs to donate to the cause.
There’s no taking it back now. If the Board wants us, they’ll send someone to burn down the house before they let us go. ”
She laughs, but there’s nothing funny in it. “So this is what? A honeymoon?”
I can’t help it. I smile, sharp and quick. “Something like that.”
She doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are locked on the lake, at the way the water grinds the shore to powder. She giggles. “At least it’s nice in here. Could use some color or art… a woman’s touch.”
“Whatever you want is yours. I’ve already got wardrobes of clothing for you in our room… I preplanned for this. Just in case.”
She tucks her knees up, arms wrapped around herself. She’s so small in the cave of my jacket, hair wild, eyes gone flat. “Can you light the fire?”
“Yes, baby girl, I can light the fire.” I get up and get the fire going before sitting next to her.
The distance feels insurmountable, her life having been flipped upside down, but all I want is to hold her. Comfort her. Protect her.
I can’t stand it anymore. I pull her into my lap, arms tight around her waist. She doesn’t resist. She melts into me, breath hitching at my neck, hands curled into my shirt like she’s afraid I’ll disappear.
We sit like that for a long time, the sun gone, the lake gone, just the sound of her breathing and the thud of my heart under her ear.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She lifts her head, eyes burning. “For what?”
“For everything.”
She closes her eyes, lets her head fall against my shoulder.
“Don’t be sorry,” she whispers. “Just don’t let them win.”
I nod, chin in her hair.
“Never.”
We stay there, a tangle of arms and grief, until the room is black and the only light is the cold glow of the moon, sliding up over the water like an omen.
I think about all the things I want to do to her, all the ways I want to ruin her, but for once, I don’t move.
Sometimes, survival is enough.
Sometimes, just being alive is the victory.
I let her fall asleep against me, breathing slow, her body heavy and real.
I keep watch until my eyes shut against my will.
She wakes before me. I hear her in the kitchen, the click of a kettle and the scrape of a stool, but I don’t get up. I let her have the silence.
When I finally drag myself in, she’s perched at the counter, hair everywhere, mug cradled in both hands. She doesn’t look at me, just stares through the windows at the lake, like she could will herself out of this dream.
At least the sun is shining today and it’s warmer than yesterday. Almost warm enough to go for a walk on the beach.
I make my own coffee, black and scalding. I don’t talk. I wait for her to start.
“Did you ever care about them?” she asks. “The other Feral Boys.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They’re my brothers.”
She snorts. “Doesn’t seem like it. You left them, didn’t even tell them that you went. Didn’t warn them.”
I take a long sip, burning my tongue. “We all had a choice. We all knew the rules. They’d have done the same thing if it was them and a girl they’d die for.
Maybe they still will. Unlike those before me, I believe in freedom of choice and I won’t strip that from them just because I made mine. Just because I chose you.”
She flinches at that—just a tic, like a heartbeat. “Are they safe?”
“No one’s safe,” I say. “Not after what I did.”
She absorbs that, pulling her knees to her chest, mug tucked between her ankles.
“They’ll come for them?” she says.
I shrug. “If the Board can’t reach me, they’ll pressure the next in line. Maybe punish them to prove a point. Or maybe they’ll change the rules again. I don’t know. It’s hard to predict what those old fucks will do.”
She doesn’t cry, but her hands go white on the mug.
“I’m sorry,” I say, softer than I mean to. “But it was always going to end like this.”
She wipes her face on the sleeve of my jacket. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t write the rules.”
I want to agree. I want to let myself off the hook. But I can’t.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’m the one who broke them.”
She sets the mug down with a sharp little clink. “Good.”
She means it. I can see it in her eyes—the defiance, the pride. She likes that I’m the one who ruined everything. She likes that, for once, someone didn’t bend.
“Do you regret choosing me?”
“Absolutely not. I’d choose you, even if it meant standing in front of the gallows. Even if it meant giving them all of me.”
She jumps down, walks to the window, putting an extra little sway in her hips just because she knows I’m watching. The wind picks up off the ocean and slams into the glass, rattles it in the frame. She stares at the empty beach, arms wrapped around herself, lips moving like she’s talking to ghosts.
I go to her. Not because I want to, but because I have to.
She’s shivering, but when I touch her, she doesn’t flinch. She just sinks into me, her back to my chest, my hands locked around her ribs.
The smell of her hair is raw, animal. She presses her skull to my chin.
“You’re not getting rid of me,” she says.
I laugh, voice rough. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I slide my hands up her arms, over her collarbones, thumb the pulse at her throat. It’s fast, panicked, alive.
She lets out a shaky breath. “Promise me you’ll never let them take me.”
I bury my face in her hair. “I’ll die first.”
She turns her head, eyes searching mine. “You mean it.”
“I do.”
She nods, slow, and for a second, the air is just us, thick with threat and want.
My phone vibrates, slicing through the quiet. It’s a number I know by heart.
She feels me tense. “Who?”
“Rhett,” I say. “Stay here.”