Chapter 2
Killian sat down on the couch with a huff after wiping his forehead and washing his hand.
If there was one thing he didn’t like, it was the feeling of others’ sweat.
Mainly as…well, he didn’t sweat on his own, so why would he want other people’s sweat touching him, even if he did happen to love that person.
Killian didn’t mind it much during sex, but. ..any other time? No.
Crossing his legs and arms, he glared across the room at the swirling golden metal lines of the sculpture on the wall.
His eyes, out of habit, followed the one thread he’d found years ago that was whole.
It was the only line, the only thread on the wooden base that never broke, even as it twisted and bent in various ways.
Stupid Fates and their threads. Regardless of what Cyrus was claiming, he knew something was going on, and that something involved the threads of fate. More than whatever the Fate was trying to see, the man was acting…off.
For instance, while Cyrus was usually affectionate with him, it was mostly in private. They had their boundaries at work, and Killian had never been one for public displays of affection, and neither was Cyrus… Yet, lately…
The Cryptid was bordering on clingy…just overly affectionate, and he seemed almost hesitant to let Killian out of his sight. The question that kept coming into his mind was: what had the Fate seen?
Because the man had to have seen something, this couldn’t have started for no reason. Just…
Killian groaned and rubbed his face. “Whatever, whatever…”
He was going to let it go. Yep, he’d let it go until it likely blew up in Cyrus’ face, or more likely his own. Ah, water’s wrath be damned.
Sighing, he pulled out his phone, and despite not really wanting to read it, he found himself going straight to his inbox, and reading the dumb fuck email his father had sent him that morning—the one he’d ignored until now.
As the hologram tried to pop up, to obnoxiously voice aloud the nonsense on the screen, he canceled it, his eyes scanning the words instead.
To my most precious child, Killian.
He scoffed. ‘Precious’—hah! Ah yes, precious enough to be bestowed with the fate of death.
Precious because Killian was miraculously the only child he had sired, out of who the hell knows how many, who could give fucking birth.
Gee, what an honor to be so valued for my working womb, he thought sarcastically before reading further.
Too many years have gone by since I last laid eyes on your face, my child.
And while it’s true we have had our differences, no one can say I haven’t been more than lenient with your need for freedom.
That leniency stops now. It is time for you to relinquish your stubbornness and honorably return home.
As per my previous emails, your engagement to Cydra Zedrissus is set, the date selected, and plans are in place. You will be marrying, and you will be fulfilling the duty that is owed to the family who raised you.
This is my final warning. I have attached plane tickets, and reservations for all the accommodations you could possibly ask for or need on your journey. It is time for you to return to our tides.
Sincerely,
Poseidon’s chosen ruler, your father, King Thaitros Ortilan Nyvanus.
“Lenient, my ass,” he hissed, not hesitating to delete the email.
It was one of many he had deleted over the last few months, all demanding the same three things. One, that he returned to his people; two, that he married the mysterious and no doubt awful bastard they’d picked out for him; and three, that he began his fate of popping out kids until he died.
Killian had blocked multiple email servers, set up many digital blocks, yet somehow, they still fucking managed to get another email to him.
He wasn’t sure why he was surprised. His father had ensured that he’d have a plethora of offsprings all over the dumb fucking universe, who no doubt would help send it.
The audacity of the fucking bastards. The audacity of them still thinking he would do as they asked.
That they had any fucking right to demand anything from him, after what he’d seen, after what they’d done!
Yet, over two hundred years, and an uncountable number of attempts by them at tearing his free will away, they still wouldn’t stop…
But then, he knew they wouldn’t. She had warned them that they wouldn’t. That he would always…always have to keep fighting…
Over two hundred years… Killian sunk further into the couch.
It had been that long since he’d seen her…
His heart ached as his mother’s face flashed into his mind.
He looked so much like her… In fact, Killian looked like a copy of her when he changed his form to female—not that he did it often.
Usually, he only did it when the ache of missing her got to be too much… He had no photos to remember her by…
“Flee!”
Her desperate pleading echoed in his head as his heart clenched again, and the memories of the last time he’d seen her came to the surface.
“Mother…I miss you…”
Killian flinched as a scream that spoke of nothing but pain broke the tension in the water around him. His whole body ached to swim to the woman who had made the noise. To go to his mother as she once again was forced to carry a burden she should not!
But his tail remained stagnant, just floating there, listening to all of the noises coming from the room beyond the open entryway in front of him, even as the screams turned to weak crying.
Killian needed to move…
“Move,” he rasped softly, while his fear became almost a binding around his chest. “Move,” he pleaded to himself, as tears fell from his eyes, forming piles of pearls on the sandstone floor underneath his tail, some getting swept away with the gentle tide.
A tide much too gentle for the emotional turmoil inside of him.
Still, he found he couldn’t budge, even though he desperately wanted to. She shouldn’t have been in there alone with the doctors… She deserved to be with those who loved her, not the callous, uncaring Sirens that were currently around her, who didn’t care if she lived or died.
While it was something he wished to be true every single day of his life, Killian wasn’t his mother’s only child.
Yet, while he floated there in anguish, listening to her suffering, his siblings swam about, living their lives, as if what was happening to her didn’t matter!
And the man, the demon who he refused to call his father, who had yet again put her in this danger, was nowhere in sight!
No, the bastard who kept putting her into the same situation over and over again, was waiting in another room at the far end of the palace, so he wouldn’t be disturbed by her. By the great Goddess Ceto, he hated him.
When the smell of blood filled the water, Killian finally managed to move. His heart was racing in fear as he swam desperately forward, crying out when he saw her. She screamed right as he entered, and a baby’s cry followed.
With ombré dark-teal and purplish-gray hair floating around her head, his mother’s heart-shaped face and jaw seemed too sharp, her cheeks too shallow.
Her thicker bottom lip was bleeding from having been bitten, and her pearlescent skin looked almost colorless.
She lay unmoving with her eyes closed in the large carved sandstone bed, her gills fluttering swiftly with each shallow breath she took.
His mother was completely nude, and there wasn’t a scale in sight, as she had changed form so legs had taken the place of her tail.
But Killian could only assume that to be true based on prior births, because a cloud of blood obscured her lower half, flowing too freely for the water to filter it away.
The denseness of that cloud had his stomach dropping in fear.
Without thought of the consequences, Killian surged forward when the doctors tried to leave just seconds later, without even checking on her, pinning the closest Siren within reach to the wall by the throat.
“YOU WILL HELP HER!” he roared, for the first time using the power of his voice on another Siren—even though he was not sure if it would work.
The man sputtered, “Pr-Prince Killian, I—”
“I don’t give a damn what orders you have,” he said with a laugh, the sound harsh as he glanced to the others who had frozen at his actions.
“If you leave this room and my mother dies, you all will follow her. It may not be today, it may not be anytime soon, but I swear to Ceto, with every fucking molecule of water in my body, I will make sure you join her!”
His hand clenched on the man’s throat as the water started to swirl, the temperature around him dropping dangerously, before finally, one of the men blurted, “We’ll help her. We’ll help!”
Killian eyed them for barely a moment, before nodding and releasing his hold on the Siren.
Wading backwards, he came to a stop in the entryway, preparing to block their path in case they tried to leave again.
Killian wrapped his arms around himself, gripping his bare sides tightly as he tried to stop the trembling.
But the man who carried his father’s new spawn paused, while the other two went to the exhausted woman in the bed, and held out the child.
Killian’s gaze flicked down, barely registering the infant for any longer than it took to note that the little boy had no mark that would designate it as being capable of giving birth, before coldly saying, “I have no interest in touching it.”
And he didn’t, because eventually, they would become just like his other siblings…
heartless. He, like all the others had, would view him just as all of his kind did, as simply another vessel to be used.
He didn’t know what he’d do if a child ever came that had the same mark that was on the left side of his hip.
But it hadn’t happened so far, so he refused to think on it.