Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CADEN
My boots punched at the ground in rhythm with my lungs.
My skin prickled, my muscles on alert. My eyes darting to every dark corner or doorway though the shadows didn’t veil much from me anymore.
My sight was sharp, perceiving things I had never noticed before.
Details and colors I didn’t know existed. Until I became fae.
Fae. I will admit that I was not a man with a deep imagination. Brexley had filled that role for me, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this would be my life now, that I would become fae.
Was I a hero or a villain? I no longer knew.
One time the answer was so clear. Black and white, right and wrong.
Human, fae. I was raised to be the hero—the prince—a future king in our world.
Leading Leopold, taking over my father’s position.
It was the blueprint from the day I was born.
A role I never questioned, even if I might have wanted something else.
I had no choice. It was the only path I was given, and I took it on with pride and dedication.
Then my life imploded. Nothing set, the path gone, leaving me out in the middle of nowhere trying to figure out how to get back . . . or maybe just end it all.
Somewhere along the way, that changed. I no longer wanted to find my way back. Magic hummed through my veins, sharpening my senses, my strength, my mind, and my drive—for food, death, life, and sex.
Fuck. The sex . . .
My dick thickened even at the thought of it .
. . or maybe it was death. I didn’t know anymore.
I seemed to get a thrill from both, thanks to whatever my father turned me into, attaching me to the one person I wanted to hate most in this world.
He took her from me. The girl I had secretly wanted for so long.
He stripped me of hope, chance, of what could have been.
Or what the old Caden wanted.
That was a life I would never have anymore. Maybe Brexley was right. It wasn’t her as much as what she represented. The old me. The old life. When things made sense. Pure, innocent, simple.
Safe.
My thoughts and fantasies were anything but safe now, and it wasn’t Brexley my mind conjured, hardening my dick to the point of pain. It was a girl who drove me insane, irritating the hell out of me until I could rip her clothes off and bury my dick inside her to shut her up.
I couldn’t escape the memory of bending Birdie over the dresser last night, plunging so hard and deep that I no longer could feel the world around me.
The image of her straddling me, her small, strong hands locking down on my airway.
Riding me until I lost consciousness. The unbelievable high.
It was like nothing I had ever felt before.
The instinct to feel disgusted at myself still kicked in along with the idea I had not only fucked a fae once but every night, multiple times, until we both passed out from exhaustion.
That’s all we were. Hate sex. An itch my fae side needed right now. Nothing more. Though, I still couldn’t seem to take the edge off needing more. Needing her.
A growl crawled up my throat, shaking her from my thoughts, and putting them on the target where they were supposed to be. My father.
Hate spewed up the back of my throat, my chest pumping quicker, my nose picking up a whiff of my father’s scent. Emotion colored my vision, the intensity making me want to slaughter everything in my path.
Turning down another passage, my gaze locked on his back, two soldiers on either side.
“Father!” My voice echoed down the corridor, my fury slamming into him.
He pulled up short, twisting around. The blue eyes I had looked into all my life widened only for a moment, his focus scanning me, perceiving with a shrewd gaze that I wasn’t quite the same anymore.
Bigger, stronger. My presence was ten times what it had been before.
I would never be at the level of Warwick, but I also wasn’t the son he had last seen in the pit.
Hoping to eliminate the awkwardness of his old family from his new one.
“Caden.” He fully turned around, using the calm, almost patronizing tone he had all my life.
“Oh, my boy, I can’t believe this. It worked.
” His focus went over me again, and this time I could see the switch in his demeanor, the spark of excitement in his eyes.
The thrill of knowing his experiment on me did not fail. “You should have come to me.”
“When?” I growled, slowly stepping closer.
His guards reacted to my movement, lifting their weapons at me.
“When you put my mother and me in the ring to be torn up by your monsters? Or when you ran off, hiding here, to create more mindless minions? Or maybe it was when you sent your guards to hunt us down and kill us?”
“I didn’t know you were with them,” he replied, not dissuading his men from pointing their guns at me. “If I had known . . . If I had known it had worked. How magnificent the experiment turned out—”
“What? You wouldn’t have tried to have me killed?
” My lip lifted, my feet carrying me even closer, my shoulders widening.
I felt no fear, though my father appeared he didn’t either, but I could taste the slight uneasiness of his nerves.
He understood he had created something that could kill.
“You wouldn’t have turned your back like a coward on your first wife and son?
We meant so little to you when you thought we couldn’t help you.
You wanted us out of the way. But now that you see I have turned into one of them?
A legend? Now you reach a hand for me again?
” Deep grief and raw fury clamped down on me, dredging up from my soul—unbearable pain, confusion, and anger.
A father was supposed to love their child, protect and guide him.
Mine had never been warm or kind, but I still thought love resided within his strictness and demands for me to be better.
He wanted me to be better, to be a better man and leader.
But it was never about that. Only his ego and power mattered.
My life was nothing more than a reflection of him.
A shallow pond imitating what he wanted.
A robot.
A mindless soldier.
“Caden, my son.” He stressed the term, hitting it like the words mattered to him.
Like I mattered to him. That need inside to want your parents’ love never went away, especially if it was hard to earn.
I worked my whole life to please him, to hear him praise me, to just say I love you once.
Unconditionally. But my father only knew conditions, terms, stipulations, and requirements to earn his respect.
And for once, I felt like I had it. “Don’t you see what this means?
What we can do together?” He motioned to me.
“What we can accomplish. With you ruling by my side, the sky is the limit for us.” His irises sparkled with possibility, looking at me like I was the most precious thing to him.
For years I’d yearned for that, to see my father behold me how I had seen Benet look at Brexley, or Andris had.
I had been so envious of Brexley and her dad; he worshiped her, would do anything for her.
“Let’s forget the past, start over, you and I.
” His gaze locked on mine. “We will take down the fae and rule this country, this world, like it should be.”
“Take down the fae?” My hands rolled into balls, gnawing anger nipping at the back of my neck. “I am fae. You are turning everyone into fae.”
“Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.” The heavily decorated general stood before me, his chin raised, now having to look up at me.
“Of course, there will be exceptions. You are no ordinary fae, Caden. You are not only my son but you’re constructed from a Legend.
Now that I know it works. That his powers can transfer.
I will become one too. We both can be as powerful as him, if not more so.
His status and abilities have always been unrivaled.
Until now. You can lure him in, and we transfer his powers to me, and then you can kill him. ”
“What?” I blinked.
“Don’t tell me you don’t want his death. I know you, son. You want nothing more than to destroy the man who took Brexley from you . . . the woman you have loved all your life. The woman who betrayed you, kidnapped you, turned her back on you. You can show her how she chose wrong in the end.”
My shoulders jerked back; an instinctual growl caught in my throat.
The impulse took over to not only protect Brexley, the girl who had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, but Warwick as well.
The sensation crawled up my spine like an insect, burrowing in my bones, even while there was a contradicting urge, a piece of me who still wanted my old life back, to do exactly what my father said, washed over me.
I could have Brexley. I could have more power. I could be the one people feared and worshipped.
I could have my father’s admiration.
At one time, destroying the Wolf, killing fae, and having humans take back control of Earth was all I wanted and desired.
That time had crumbled away so slowly that I hadn’t noticed those goals were not what I wanted anymore.
Was it my time as a captive in Sarkis’s army?
Was it being fae myself, or was it in the strands of long blonde hair, a sweet smile few had seen, a strength you wouldn’t expect from a tiny girl, along with brutality she could give and take, and a past with parents that broke her?
I liked to pretend she was just a fuck, but I had told her things I had never told anyone, and she had spoken of her past, which was heartbreaking and cruel.
Opposite ends of the world, and we found very similar themes in our situations.
A common bond. A connection I never thought I’d have with a fae.
I no longer saw fae as the ones without humanity.
Humanity.