27. Lorcan
LORCAN
By the time I reached Lasair Manor, rain had started falling across the grounds in a thin cold mist. Water slicked the gravel paths black beneath the moonlight.
I barely noticed it. My mind kept circling the same impossible truth over and over until nausea climbed the back of my throat.
Deargán.
My father.
And Alistair knew.
Every lesson. Every punishment. Every test. Every time he looked at me with bitter disappointment.
I had been doomed to fail him from the start. Because I was never his son to begin with.
A bitter laugh scraped out of my throat as the first memory of his lessons invaded my mind.
I’d been ten years old on a hunting trip with him to Africa, too small for the rifle he had shoved into my hands.
The lion had moved so beautifully through the long grass until the shot tore him down.
Walking up to the fallen body, that great head lifting weakly, golden eyes still full of life, a low sound grating from his throat that was not quite a growl and not quite a whimper.
I had started crying. I couldn’t stop myself. Tears hot on my cheeks at the sight of all that strength and majesty leaking out into the dirt.
“You pathetic little shite,” Alistair said, disgust turning his mouth. He forced a knife into my hand, the handle too big for my fingers. “Take his head off. I want it for my study.”
The memory of the lion’s rough mane under my fingers still lived in my palms. Coarse hair, warm skin beneath, the slow shudder of his slowing breath.
I had the urge to bury my face in his mane, to hug him, to tell him he did not deserve this.
Instead, I had whispered I was sorry and set the blade to his throat while Alistair stood behind me.
“For fuck’s sake,” Alistair had snapped when I had hesitated, the barrel of his rifle nudging the back of my skull. “End him. Or I end you.”
Blood had sprayed hot across my face when my knife finally bit deep. The sound the lion made as I sawed through his neck still scraped the inside of my ears, the screaming of a great beast brought low.
He hadn’t been hammering me into a man. He’d been punishing another man’s son, placed into his house like a changeling. Every cruelty had been personal.
I entered through the front door and climbed the staircase in the dim, navigating my way by feel.
The old house groaned softly around me while moonlight stretched long fingers across the corridor.
By the time I pushed open my bedroom door, exhaustion sat deep in my bones.
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me without bothering to turn on the light, tossing my jacket and bike helmet aside.
I walked to the window overlooking the lake, out to the spire of the Ravenwood tower, my thoughts still trapped upstairs in that attic room with her.
I should have stayed.
I kept seeing her face when I left with everything between us split wide open. The tears she tried to hide. The way her hands shook.
I had kissed her forehead and walked out anyway, like distance would somehow make any of this easier to carry. I had walked away because my head was too much of a mess.
I should have circled back.
I should have turned around at the Ravenwood gates. Should have gone back up those winding tower stairs and lay beside her no matter how badly my thoughts were tearing me apart.
Instead, I’d come here.
Back to the manor.
Back to Alistair’s house, returning to the place I’d been trained to like a fucking dog.
I understood Rua now in a way I never fully had before. Understood how a place could poison you while still pulling you back every single time. Conditioning buried deeper than logic. Deeper than self-preservation.
I no longer thought of Rua as pathetic for returning. Some cages rewire you so thoroughly that freedom feels wrong.
Liath and me.
Her and Deargán.
Me and Deargán.
Father and son.
How was I supposed to reconcile that. The man I’d been raised to fear. The man who’d come for me while I’d been growing inside my ma. The killer who murdered my grandfather.
My enemy as my blood.
The man fighting me for Liath, my own fucking father.
Did Deargán know? Or would this news rattle him to the core, just like it did me?
I pictured the way he glared at me across rooms. The violence in his eyes. The vitriol that spewed from his mouth directed at me. He hated me like I was Alistair’s.
What the fuck did that mean for us now?
Did I owe him anything because we shared blood? Did Liath expect us to swallow two decades of being on opposite sides and stand side by side?
Movement shifted somewhere behind me in the dark.
I exhaled sharply. “Really not in the mood, Rua.”
The sting of an injection bit into the side of my neck.
Fucking Sons and their dramatics.
I snarled and grabbed blindly for the arm behind me while my body spun on instinct. “Dammit, do you have to knock me out every—”
The words died halfway out as my gaze locked on his pale half-mask.
Deargán.
He dropped the syringe in his hand and drove me into the wall, slamming the breath out of me.
I had no idea what he’d injected me with. But none of the possibilities racing through my head were good.
I blocked his punch and drove my fist hard into his jaw.
He staggered back.
“Wait,” I wheezed, holding a hand out.
He lunged for me again.
I blocked him and threw a knee at him, connecting with his ribs.
He doubled over with a grunt.
The edges of my vision began to blur.
No.
I blinked hard as my body betrayed me, the power ebbing out from my limbs. My legs felt heavy, wet cement poured slowly into my veins.
I staggered back half a pace, my voice coming out rough. “We need to talk.”
He grunted and drove into me while we crashed together sideways, bouncing off the desk and slamming into the floor. A lamp tipped over and shattered.
The room spun.
My right arm faltered. Strength vanished out of it so suddenly my fist barely held when I tried to block.
I tried to force out the words “I’m your son” but it came out garbled.
He drove his elbow into my ribs, rolling his weight over me.
Fuck. I tried to shove him off but my arms had nothing left. Panic flooded my veins as numbness crackled across me like frost. My legs buckled, arms collapsing to my sides.
Cold terror flooded through me.
A paralytic. That bastard. He knew he’d never win in a fair fight.
Deargán loomed over me, breathing hard. Blood darkened the corner of his mouth and bruises already formed along his jaw.
Then a knife glinted in his hand.
Inside my head I screamed at my body to move. To fight back.
Nothing obeyed.
My chest dragged shallow breaths in and out while my body lay lifeless beneath me.
Deargán pressed the cold knife’s edge against the side of my throat, my pulse roaring underneath it.
He wouldn’t.
He would.
He didn’t know that I was his.
I stared up at him, unable to speak. Unable to stop him. Unable to do anything except watch.
Rain battered the manor windows outside while silence stretched between us.
Then he spoke quietly, sealing my fate.
“All you have to do to keep Liath safe… is die.”