He knows it. I know it. And soon, Amauri will too.
I don't doubt her.Not for a second. The moment the words leave her mouth, the truth hits me with a force that has nothing to do with reason. It doesn't ask for proof. It doesn't pause for logic. It settles deep, heavy, and final, like something my body has always known but my mind refused to touch.
My son.
The rage that follows is immediate and visceral, so sharp it steals the air from my lungs.
MINE.
Not metaphorical.
Not imagined.
Not a lie meant to corner me.
Mine in a way that reaches back through blood and bone and instinct. I'm in her face before I remember moving. So close I can see the pulse beating wildly at her throat. So close I can smell fear, sweat, the faint trace of her soap, something soft and domestic that does not belong anywhere near what she's just done to me.
My vision tunnels.
My son.
The words detonate again, louder this time, ripping through me with fresh violence.
MY SON!
Mine.
The realization hits like a second betrayal layered on the first, cutting straight through bone. She didn't just leave me. She didn't just disappear while I was broken, drugged, stitched. She took my blood. She took my heir. She took ten years I will never get back. Ten years of first words. First steps. First scraped knees. Ten years of my son learning how to exist in a world that didn't have me in it because she decided I didn't deserve to know.
The rage is so intense it goes white-hot. I've killed men for less. I've burned empires for less. My hands curl into fists at my sides, because if I touch her right now, I don't trust myself to stop.
"How," I grind out, my voice sounding barely human, "could you do that?"
The question isn't curiosity. Its disbelief sharpened into something lethal. How could you look at a child who was half me and decide I wasn't worthy? How could you let another man raise him? Put my son in another man's house, give him another man's name, another man's lies? Carter fucking Whitford, no less! How could you keep him from me?
Every instinct in me screams to end her. Not quickly. Not clean.
But I don't.
Because killing her now would be mercy. It would let her escape the weight of what she's done. Let her avoid the reckoning she owes me. I want her alive. I want her to feel this. To understand exactly what it means to steal something sacred from a man like me and live long enough to regret it. My jaw locks so hard it hurts. I lean closer, straining to keep my voice low, shaking with barely contained violence.
"You didn't just betray me," I snarl. "You erased me."
My chest heaves, my breath burns as I fight the urge to tear the room apart with my bare hands.
"You took my son and never told me." My eyes burn. I've never felt this furious. Not at my uncle. Not at the men who tried to kill me. Not even at the city when it turned its back. This is different. This is personal. This is raw.
This is a wound that never had the chance to scar over because I never knew it existed. I pull back a fraction, just enough to keep myself in control.
"Pray," I tell her coldly, "that killing you isn't the easiest solution."
Because right now, it's the only thing keeping her alive. She opens her mouth. I see it, the instinct to defend herself, to explain, to carve space for survival out of whatever scraps I'm leaving her. A knock at the door spares me. The sound is jarringly normal. Max, my top guard, sticks his head in, "Doc is here."
Finally.
I turn on her with a sneer sharp enough to cut. "Patch her up," I snap, jerking my head in her direction like she's a problem that needs managing. Not the reason my world is tearing itself apart. "Then get her out of my sight."
She flinches. The doctor nods quickly, already moving, already choosing obedience over questions.
