The gods were punishing me. They whipped their power over my back and beat me into submission. They tortured me for the wrongs I had done.

Punished me for stepping outside of the bond, for crushing the beautiful soul that they had gifted to me.

They had warned me throughout Nelly's pregnancy. Taunted me with what could be. They made her sick, made her bitter and then when that was not enough. They made her body attack the life she nurtured for me.

They warned me, they had spat on my new bond just as much as I did. That faulty stupid bond with a sneaky female. The rotting bond that I had created over the sliver of moonlight the gods had given me.

Nelly. Nelly. Nelly. She was a black widow.

A poisonous viper who had used me and the gods laughed all the more. A fool I had been and she had taken me for her own.

Nelly had her own mate and when he would not claim her as she so wished she forced my hand. Her promiscuous body was a match for mine in that one moment. She knew all the tricks. All the ploys.

She knew that if she bit me during sex that my nature would see it as a claiming. She knew I was unhinged. She knew that I was on the precipice. One nudge and I would fall into a deep abyss, head first.

She had pushed me over and I had sunk so far down that my nails were bleeding as I tried to scrape myself off the floor.

She was a viper and she had tricked me. Wrapped me in her lithe body as she sunk her poison through my veins. Heart beating fast and sweat licking against my clammy skin as she had shattered me with one fateful bite.

She had marked me and I had marked her back. We had been mated for all of one second before her grand plan was released. Her mate Niko manifesting from thin air, on his knees and at her beck and call.

Begging and whining for his mate back and she would have, taken him back that is. If it wasn't for my son.

She hadn't anticipated how potent my genes would be and neither had I. Not weak little Carson. It seemed that even my ancestors were out to get me. The ever present Manasseh genes, one hit wonders that we were.

Her mate had refused to take her back with a pup in her womb, he had told her to abort it. Abort it, as if my son was some Thing. My hand clenched around the small life in my arms. Body wriggling and a toothless cry escaping thick lips.

I peered down at the fickle life in my arms. He was fleeting, here but for how long we did not know.

I was forsaken and because of my choices my son suffered. My poor weak son. He had been fighting all his short life. From conception he had fought against his mother's violent hands and then her body as each cell rejected my son. As her very nature refused to cradle the life we had created by default. Wires and tubes, travelling through her veins as we tried to stop her nature.

He had fought and won through his birth. A birth that had ripped his mother in places no human wanted to be torn. Places that would perhaps never look the same. His nails clawing at the womb that had tried to kill him.

My son was a fighter and he would fight through this ailment that had gripped him since birth. He was strong and we prayed daily that the gods would give him more strength. Lessen the pain and ease his suffering.

The gods ignored us.

They had forsaken me and now my poor sickly son was becoming sicker by the day. No cure in sight because some old world disease had caught him in its grips. Months and months of scouring over books and nothing. I couldn't name it. They couldn't name it. The healers just knew his genetics were not right.

It was sign enough.

The gods were punishing me through my innocent son, tormenting me because they knew that the best way to hurt a parent was through their child.

My son, my motherless son. Good riddance to her, let her run back to her snivelling mate. We didn't need her.

My son was all I needed.

Neema hated the sight of me, even though she was eternally grateful that I had cured her. She couldn't control her bodies reactions around me, the sneer on her face.

My one true friend and I had disappointed her. To think she had pushed me to become a better and stronger man and this was what I became.

A disgrace.

The female the gods had given to me no longer wanted me and I couldn't blame her because though Nelly had tricked me into mating her, I had voluntarily lay with her. I had lay with Nelly and countless other females over the years and what for?

So I could be a sheep amongst wolves, blindly following the herd. Submitting to the will of society. The same society that had plagued me for years.

I had let them decay my mind, had allowed them to degenerate every part that had made me Carson. I had allowed them to twist something that was pure. I had listened to the whispers of my world and those whispers had climbed into a cacophony of sound. Sound that had been impossible to ignore.

Too human, too weak, too young. Age, what was age to the ageless. We barely celebrated birthdays or tallied our ages. Such things were inconsequential unless of course it came to mates. Then it became a tally chart, each hour, second, day counted right down to the nth degree.

We lived in a hypocrisy and I had fed into it. How could I be so foolish. How could I see age when all I should have seen was absolution.

The worst part was that she would have taken me back. At any given moment she would have accepted me, had I not done the unthinkable. And didn't that say something about me. I was weak, not her.

She was strong enough to face all that I had done, face my insecurities face society and just love me. But me? I had been weak. I was born weak.

I was at fault. I couldn't blame anyone but me. Had I treated Vanya the way she craved, the way she deserved then we wouldn't be here.

And in the end, the whispers still climbed around me because I was still too young. To weak, too human.

I was never enough and before that would have plagued my soul until I had a fix of the nearest female but now? Now I had my son.

I had my son I could never give him up. He was a part of me, a part that was so innocent so pure.

He was beautiful.

His foggy grey eyes peered up at me, blinking in wonder at the failure that was his father. His skin was a sickly yellow. The ghostly hue to his skin the first sign that he was ill.

His breathing was jumpy, he went seconds without taking in air and then he would pant for seconds trying to retain it. The healers told me to spend time with him as if I needed prompting. I wouldn't leave him for anything.

We didn't know how long we had left and it hurt more than anything. He was the one good thing in my life, the one innocent aspect and even he had been tainted by my touch.

"Carson, let him rest." My mother's hands guiding my own as I placed his wiggling body down in his cot, it swallowed him up.

My mother's loving fingers scraped across my overgrown hair. Pushing the curly locks from my face. Her gentle hands scratching lightly down my face before she gripped my chin, forcing my eyes to hers.

Her grey eyes that I had inherited, that my son had inherited.

"He's still with us, son. Don't dwell on the what ifs." Her lips pursed together as she gave me her mothers wisdom, it was a little late for that.

"How can I not." I looked down at the weak heart beat in front of me, the sickly yellow skin.

"I did this! Me." My hand punching against my heart.

"Not, you or the doctors or Nelly but me!" My nails ripped at my chest, claws swiping and bringing forth blood. Anything to ease this pain. This crippling pain. I felt as if my inside were being torched alive. I was turning to ash.

"My being is wrong and the gods are punishing me." I sunk to the floor by his crib, my hands gripping the bars. My heart in my throat as I watched his little chest rising erratically, each breath a battle as my son fought the unseen battle.

"Don't be stupid." My mother growled but I didn't want to hear, I did this. My head sunk into my hands as I thought of every wrong I had done. Always seeing her by that tree, hair floating around her like a cloak before she would disappear.

I was wrong, the gods made me wrong. I wasn't born right. I was weak and age had not changed that.

"You think too much of yourself my son." Her words soft as she crouched in front of me, her grey eyes wet like the clouds before a storm.

"The gods wouldn't hurt an innocent life to punish you." Her hands stroking as she tried to comfort me but I knew she was wrong. The gods would do anything to punish the evil.

"Why when they could strike your heart quicker." She was sniffling, gripping my chin so I could look into her beautiful face.

"He is my heart, he's my life." Throat clogged at the thought that I could loose the only thing that kept me moving.

"I have done so much wrong in my life but not him. He's the one good thing left!" I couldn't, I couldn't bear this. I could feel the loss choking me before we had even placed his body in the ground.

My head flung up as she gripped my hair. "Carson, look at me!"

"You are not an evil person." Her head shook as I tried to argue with her.

"You aren't!" she gripped my neck in her hands, her strength surprising considering she could not shift forms.

"The little baby I cradled in my womb is not evil." Her fingers stroking along the back of my neck. Her face blurry as I stared at her through my tears.

"The little child with weeping grey eyes who-who would cry on my lap because of mean children is not Evil." Her words stuttering through her lips, head shaking profusely as she dared me to challenge her.

"The young boy who was belittled and ridiculed daily for being different, is not evil!" My eyes shuttered closed at those memories, memories that had carved me into the man I was today.

I was no better than them.

They had tormented me and in my bid to prove myself I had tormented her.

"And the man who sits in front of me, heartbroken and remorseful, is not evil."

My mother was a beautiful woman. She had coddled me all my life but I loved her more for it. She was the only place I ever felt safe, the only place I felt like me.

She was my number one champion, my safe haven away from the storm.

"You have made mistakes. Mistakes that are perhaps unforgivable but you are not evil."

She made me believe, even though I saw the pain I had caused every time I closed my eyes. The sight of her pink skin, blistered open by my callousness. By my love. Blue eyes cold and unseeing as I had crushed her heart.

My mother made me believe that I wasn't evil but I had crushed my butterfly. I had to be, only evil people could taint something so innocent, so pure. The darkness in me had created a shadow over her light. How could I not be evil? I saw her suffering and did nothing to console her, how could I not be evil.

I had to be, my mother was wrong.

"Look at me son," I raised my head, eyes blinking as I tried to see her. Her pale skin and blonde hair.

"You are lost and that's okay." Her milky hand rested against my cheek, rubbing at my tears like she did when I was just a pup. Rubbing away the pains of the world.

"It's okay to be lost sometimes, just come back to me." The storm crashed in her eyes, rain paling from the clouds. Gushes of water falling down her eyes.

"Forget what everyone whispers about you, forget what they want from you."

"Jut be you, be my Carson."

"The boy who would never hurt a fly."

My heart broke because I was not that boy anymore.

It was ironic, the gods had gifted me my own beautiful creature because I had never hurt a fly. But here I was a perversion of the male they had created. A male who would do more than swat at a fly. I was a male that would pluck at the wings of a Butterfly if only to stop it from flying away from me. I had become a male so far from myself. A male that was like them.

The tormented had become the tormentor.

Not anymore.

Perhaps I would never see her take flight, I would never be the male who would be gifted with the light kiss of her wings. I had ruined that but the least I could do was leave her to bask in the sun. I couldn't stop her. I didn't want to.

I would focus on me, I would find my way back and hopefully the gods would spare my son.