Chapter Thirteen

I think the final straw came with Four's imprisonment.

I hadn't known of any of the details until after the fact, but that didn't change the fact that it had happened under my nose. Four was my responsibility at the end of the day, and I had failed miserably to protect him. I had let mother lead me by the nose for the last time.

The Ceriss island compound had felt off the moment I arrived from running yet another errand for mother. No one else seemed to notice. In fact, the compound was strangely quiet and I had gone to Four's usual hangouts, which had been the gym or his room. I hated finding him in either place too, because it meant he was either pissed, hurting, or depressed.

Of course, when I had gone in to check on him, his room had been cleared out, including the couple of strange things he'd brought back with him from travels. Little things he didn't even realize he was collecting, like ticket stubs or candy wrappers or a little piece of a flower crown. Trash to the unsuspecting eye, but Four saw the little treasures as reminders to his connection to the outside world.

Because as much as he scorned it in public, he'd felt a strange ache to be free of those four white walls.

"Agent Jasper," one of the most annoying voices in the world had me grinding my teeth to keep from lashing out just remembering his existence, "What an absolute fucking joy it is to have you back on campus." I turned to glare at Micah, who was standing with his beefy arms folded over his thickly padded chest. The darker male tended to command quite the attention with his height, his soldier's stance, a voice that knew no other octave aside from fucking shouting like a drill sergeant.

I hadn't had the pleasure of being trained by him or his shit staff, but I'd seen the damage it had done to the artificials and it took everything I had not to vaporize him on the spot.

"Where's Four?" I demanded instead. Micah blinked, but unlike mother who was a pro at deflecting and covering her tracks, Micah fumbled with the ball and it gave me ample opportunity to slip through his barriers and into his head.

A flurry of images assaulted me at once and my stomach dropped so low, so suddenly, I swore I was going to puke. From Four's kidnapping from Atlantean custody, to watching him lay drugged up on a hospital bed for a brief time as the doctors confirmed mother's worst fears; Four's powers were triggered by his interaction with Hades. It hadn't manifested physically, but according to Tenjin and his doctors, the simple interaction had caused his magical reserve to surge.

Four was about to be one of the most powerful artificials to date.

There was just one problem.

Four hadn't been inducted into the handler/beast program like I had. Mother had assumed he would show no signs of having a Beast. She hadn't gotten that far in her studies.

But that was because Four was something else entirely.

Mother had found the genetic trait she wanted.

Now she had to manipulate it like she did with the Beast. The only problem was that she wasn't fucking with a Beast anymore.

Mother was fucking with the antichrist.

An Abrahamic prophecy, obscured over the years, but boiled down to the fact that there had to be an anti to Christ, as there was the Devil for Yhwhwa. Balance was required to maintain its health as a pantheon. The antichrist wasn't just Christ's anti, but an entirely new species of creature that had yet to survive to adulthood, except for one recorded time; the Great Apollyon, who broke away from heaven and ran to hide with his lover, the demon Lilith.

Since then, antichrists didn't even survive conception.

They were too powerful, too great, and too much to handle.

So Yhwhwa kept a cap on them and sent his angels to destroy any and all suspicion of antichrists. It was why Bethany had gotten involved with mother; she knew the stories of the antichrists and mother needed to know more. She needed to know exactly what to do to create a monster of epic proportions.

It was more than just creating the perfect child.

She needed the perfect weapon to boot.

I had come close, Four had come close, Kali, and Polly, but now Polly was starting to deteriorate. Her magic was so unstable, and whatever genetic mutation she'd picked up from Blaine's side of the family was sending whatever Beast traits she had out of whack.

The chances of Polly surviving the next week were slim to none.

Jasper... Please help.

I groaned at Kali's fuzzy voice at the back of my mind. I turned my head away and I could start to make out a faint beeping somewhere beside me. A soft whooshing sound, the sound of fingers tapping on a computer keyboard, an occasional bubbling followed soon after.

My eyelids felt heavy. It was like waking up in the middle of anesthesia. My vision was blurry, but it looked like I was in some kind of room. I turned my head abruptly the other way, which succeeded in making me a bit dizzy. I groaned and rolled over completely onto my side as a wave of nausea curdled my stomach.

I peered up at the sound of the beeping getting louder. My vision focused in on a heart monitor, which made me frown slowly in confusion because last I checked, they didn't keep heart monitors in hotel rooms.

Why would I be in a hotel room?

Maybe because the ceiling looked so fancy with tiered white levels leading to a large diamond glass chandelier that looked like it was spilling from the ceiling. I blinked, staring at it in confusion. I needed to sit up, but it was a slow process with every bone in my body protesting any kind of movement. I pushed myself up, almost slumping over onto my side again when my elbow gave out, but I caught myself on the edge of the bed and held myself up, looking around.

I was in a very nice, very well-kempt room. A massive four-post mahogany bed with thick blankets, a colorful quilt, big pillows. There was a sitting area in the corner around a large flat screen television, a coffee table with a little tray of half-eaten food.

Someone had been in here.

Here, I thought dimly as I felt around on the bed, trying to figure out how I was going to get to my feet. I still felt sluggish and heavy. I reached out to catch myself on the nightstand when I felt a gentle tug and looked down to see that an IV was connected to my arm. I followed it over to the IV drip, recognizing a small bag of sedatives connected to the line.

I cursed, grabbing the IV and tearing it out with just a pinch of pain. I tossed it aside, dragging myself to the edge of the bed.

Fuck.

No, double fuck. I wasn't in a hotel.

There was no doubting the subtle undertones of vanilla wrapped in volcanic smoke and ash.

I was in Hacian.

Specifically, I was at the palace.

I had never been inside, but I'd seen recon photos from an imp that mother had intercepted to get information from. It was a true testament to the love and adoration shared between Hades and Lucifer.

But I didn't have time to enjoy the scenery.

I tried to teleport right off the bat, but nothing happened. It didn't surprise me. I felt the barrier the moment I tried to teleport, but figured I'd give it a shot anyway. The barrier immediately caught my magic and bounced it back without harming me.

I narrowed my eyes.

It was a Viv barrier. She was awfully good at conjuring barriers that could keep specific people in and out. It was one of her specialties, and hence why it was a pain in the ass to find the artificials that had defected. I hadn't bothered too much with it because mother told me not to risk alerting her attention, and frankly the artificials were safer where they were at than they were with the mother.

So that meant my carelessness now led me to being trapped.

Fuck. That's what I get for not staying on task.

I went to conjure magic, to see if I could just blow out the windows, but when I thrust my hand at the windows to do so, all they did was rattle slightly in the panes. I cursed, reaching up to rake a hand through my hair. I went to teleport again, but the door to the room opened.

I moved fast, ducking back beside the wall as I watched someone come around the corner.

I grabbed Wren fast, throwing him down on the floor and sitting on top of him, making him gasp and stare up at me with wide surprised eyes.

"Well, well, well," I said with a slow grim smile as Wren stared at me, "Here I was expecting Hades to guard me personally. Cute that he thinks sending you is going to make a difference." Wren gritted his teeth as I gripped the front of his shirt, ready to make threats if I needed to.

"You're not going to hurt me," Wren said, and he said it with such confidence that it actually pissed me off a little, "You would've done it by now." I glared at him, feeling my lips twitch with amusement.

"Is that what you think? You think because I sucked your dick a few times I'm going to bend over and let you fuck me over? Wow, that'd be cute if I wasn't so annoyed right now," I said, tightening my fist in his shirt and yanking him up off the floor. Wren winced, but he still faced me defiantly, daring me to hit him.

And the rage to do so was there.

Rage that he'd gotten to me, rage that he'd tricked me so well, rage at myself for falling for it, for not paying attention, not staying on the ball.

But it had been so sweet, I thought in a moment of despair. It had been such a brief time of peace. Getting up, going to work, seeing Wren a few times a day, then heading home to wait for the next day just so I could do it all over again.

It was so hard to glare down at him, so hard to stay enraged to be honest. It was getting hard to hang onto that rage, and the only thing that kept me in that state was the fact that I was on a time crunch and didn't have time for their interrogation games.

"Let me out," I ordered at last and Wren narrowed his eyes challengingly at that. I gritted my teeth, lifting him up and slamming him back down on the floor. At the same time, there was a strange soft metallic sound of something hitting the marble floor and I scowled, glancing over to see something plop out of Wren's jacket and roll to the foot of the bed.

It looked like a ring.

And for a moment, there was a strange sensation creeping up my back as I stared across the floor at the ring as it rolled to a stop after it hit the bedpost. Even from here, I could see a crudely made metal ring with Celtic engravings etched in with careful, but unsteady work.

My heart shriveled.

"Where did you get that." I looked back down at Wren, who stared at me.

"I don't know—" I picked Wren up and slammed him down into the floor again. This time, the blow was serious and Wren hissed in pain, reaching up to grab at my fist in his shirt. I planted my feet on the ground and dragged Wren up off the floor, making him gasp and scramble as I picked him up off the floor and threw him onto the bed. He bounced a few times as I stalked over to the ring, bending down to pick it up.

I paused for a moment, because I almost expected my fingers to pass through it.

Like a ghost.

Because the last time I'd seen that ring, the last time I had touched it, it had been covered in Milo's blood, tightly clenched in his fist, like he'd done everything he could to keep someone from seeing it, from taking it.

I swallowed thickly, carefully plucking it off the floor to look at it in my hands.

"I was found with it," Wren said suddenly from the bed and I jerked my head around to glare at him as he sat on the edge of the bed, watching me cautiously now, "It was the only thing I had with me when they found me in the desert."

"That's impossible," I snapped, making Wren frown as I clenched the ring in my fist, closing my eyes as I tried to find some level of control, "This ring is one of a kind. There's not another one like it anywhere else in the world. Where did you get it?"

"I told you," Wren insisted, and his insistence on something I didn't believe was pissing me off, "I was found with it. I have no idea where it came from." I plunged into his head, fast and hard, enough to make his head snap back and his eyes slam shut in pain.

I went through his head like a hurricane. I shredded through the surface layers of fear and confusion and anger and concern. I blew past the memories he had of playing with his Cousins growing up, past the memories of Hades cradling him to his chest, murmuring sweet reassurances. I went past memories of going through several tutors before finding one that wasn't a fucking creep. I dug deeper and deeper, ripping my way through his head, and the noise meant nothing to me now.

Suddenly I was surrounded by chaos. Memories flying by me everywhere, voices overlapping and screaming and wailing and laughing and crying. Images of Wren as an adult, as a teenager, as a child, and the further back I went, the weirder the memories were.

I found myself arriving in a blurry memory.

Hot and dry. My mouth was suddenly parched, my skin suddenly felt like it was on fire, my breath left me under the oppressive heat as a gasp for air. I couldn't look up as a blinding light suddenly shone down on me and I blinked back tears to stare down at a scorpion.

The thing was small and waddling on his merry way without a care in the world. He clamored over rocks and walked around brittle desert vegetation. I frowned, blinking as I watched the black arachnid heading deeper into the desert.

I looked back where he came from and froze.

There was a child laying on the ground.

Stark naked with skin blistered by the boiling heat of the sun. Bubbled welted skin spread across his bony shoulders, skin peeling away from sunburnt cheeks and a little nose crusted with blood. The child was tiny, oh so very tiny, with hair bleached by the sun, lips so burnt they were cracked and bloodied. He was just laying there on his back, staring up at the sky with cloudy eyes damaged by the sun.

Instinctively, I abandoned whatever I was doing to rush to the kid. The rocks and sand crackled under my boots as I made my way over, kneeling down carefully. There was nowhere on his body I could touch without his skin basically falling off. He was just a bloody raw mess.

He was literally cooking in the sun.

I threw off my jacket, carefully draping it over his body.

I heard a strange sound come from his lips and turned to look at his face. His skin was starting to welt and boil around his face, his eyes completely blind now from sun damage. I leaned over his face, looking down at those cloudy eyes that simply stared into nothingness with such a calm acceptance.

I heard the whooshing sound again.

He was trying to speak, I realized.

I wanted to conjure water, something, anything, but magic didn't work in this world.

Those lips parted just slightly, and it cracked the corner of his lip so blood sailed down his cheek, only to practically get cooked right onto his skin, sizzling for a hot second.

I went to adjust the jacket over him, to try and cover his face from the sun, but the pieces of the jacket that had been touching him were now stuck to his skin. A slight adjustment resulted in a whimper deep in his throat, so I didn't move anymore. I held up my hands, staring down at him and trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong with people.

Wren couldn't have been more than a few years old.

He'd been abandoned to die.

That had to be the intention, because he had nothing with him. Not a single piece of clothing was on or around him.

I looked down at his hands. One of his fists was tightly clamped shut over something and I frowned, staring down at it. I looked up at his face, but he wasn't giving any signs that he was going to move any time soon.

I reached down to his little fist and my stomach surged with nausea when I tried to pry his little fingers open, only to find that his fingers had melted around the ring in his hand. My stomach rose into my throat at the sight of that ring so tightly clasped that his skin had fused around it, melted into the center hole. It was practically embedded in his hand now.

"Mm mm." I looked at tiny Wren, watching him struggle to breath now. I started to put my hand on his chest to start CPR, only to catch myself because I knew the moment I tried, I'd pull my hands away with chunks of his flesh. On top of that, Wren was a tiny child. I could crush him.

His breathing was getting raspy and short. It was like he was sputtering to a stop.

"Sssh," I found myself whispering as Wren's breathing became softer and softer, "It's okay. You'll be okay." I had no idea where the reassurances came from. I should've been angry still, should've just gunned for his subconscious and tore it apart long enough to leave him a vegetable, then take off and find mother.

Except it made my chest hurt to see Wren like this, even if it was in the past.

This was a memory he had in his head, something he probably would never be able to shake off, and what a horrendous memory to have. To know what your skin smelled like when it cooked, what it felt like as it melted and peeled right off your bones, what it was like to have your organs boiling inside you.

And he was just a child.

They had left him here.

A baby.

"Mmm," Wren murmured again and I looked at him, watching his lips part again, "Mas... mm..."

"You don't need to talk," I whispered, resisting the urge to stroke his hair to comfort him, knowing it would only cause him pain. Wren's eyelids were getting heavy, his breathing slowing considerably. Blood oozed from his nostrils anew, like it was boiling inside him and needed escape as it poured down the sides of his face.

"D... dah...ling..." Wren died with a final soft intake of breath.

A cold icy chill crept up my spine as I stared down at the child in the desert, who died staring up at the sun that boiled him alive. I held my breath because I was waiting for the memory to end, waiting for everything to just shut down, but nothing was happening for the most painful three minutes. All I could do was stare down at his body as one by one, his organs shut down and gave up the fight.

At least, for those three minutes.

A strange sound came from the distance. I looked around, but all I saw was miles and miles of untouched desert and heat. I looked down at Wren, but the sound wasn't coming from his body. It felt like it was coming from... above?

I looked up at the sky, frowning because I didn't see anything that would have made the noise I heard. It had almost sounded like a scream, but it was hard to tell out in the middle of fucking nowhere.

There it is.

I heard it again, the sound of a distant wail. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but when I looked back down at Wren, the cloudiness was gone from his eyes. I blinked, rearing back in case he got up, but he wasn't moving yet. His sun damaged skin was slowly reversing, to an extent. Left in the wake of all those blisters and burns was nothing more than a soft spray of freckles on his otherwise creamy smooth skin.

The cracks in his lips and nose were mending, his fingers falling away from the ring in his palm, revealing it was completely unharmed, both the ring and his hand.

The wailing was getting louder. I grimaced, reaching up to put a hand over my ear, then covered both as the wailing seemed to suddenly come from right on top of me. I cursed as the sound grew louder, ear-piercing, and on the ground in front of me, Wren was healing so fast, it was as if he'd never been injured. He was still skinny, still tiny, but he was no longer melting to the desert floor.

He blinked his eyes a couple times, then let out a long, tired sigh.

"Yes... I can wait..." His tone was so mature, but his voice was just that soft toddler voice and he closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep.

Confused, I reached out to touch him, to touch the ring in his palm, but all of a sudden, I was being yanked out of the memory. The force of it scrambled me and I gasped as I was violently thrown from Wren and went rolling across the floor, slamming into the far wall of the bedroom back in Hacian.

I panted hard, trying to catch my breath and recover from being so abruptly yanked out of someone's subconscious. I blinked rapidly, looking up to see that Wren's father, Alaric, had come running into the room. He went right to Wren, grabbing him in his arms. I was surprised to see Wren just sigh in defeat, and a second later, watched Hades and Stanton come into the room.

Despite Wren not being Stanton's biological child, he sure had the look down pat. Black leather jacket, t-shirt with some musician plastered on the front, snug black jeans with chains dangling off the side, big black boots, and that look that said he was about to fuck up your whole day. No, rather, the look said he was about to fuck up my whole day, considering that glare was locked on me.

Of course facing Death was always a concern, but I'd done it plenty of times, so I wasn't particularly worried about him.

It was Hades that put me on pins and needles.

It was rare I came across someone so close to my height. Ryk had been close, but not quite, and whereas he was thin and lean, Hades was leanly muscled and less friendly looking. Those glowing blue Source-gifted eyes that watched me like a predator, dark black brows slashed down in a glare, long silky black hair coiled into a hair clip that made him look quite pretty. Judging from his casual t-shirt and stained jeans, he had come out of the laboratory.

Or maybe just a fun paint job.

"Are you okay," Alaric demanded of Wren, cupping his face in his hands to study him sternly, "Are you alright, did he hurt you, are you bleeding—"

"I'm fine," Wren groaned, "Just a headache—"

"Did you try to block him out," Alaric demanded and when Wren just gave him a headshake, Alaric groaned and looked over Wren's head to glare at me, "You're very lucky he's still up and talking or we'd have a problem." I curled my lip at him, taking a stance to let them know I wasn't going to be intimidated by threats.

"Yeah, we already have a fucking problem," I said, then swung my eyes back to Stanton and Hades, who were watching me cautiously, "Luckily it can be solved by opening the doors and letting me out." I gestured to the balcony doors. Stanton grimaced at that, glancing at Hades, who raised an eyebrow at me.

"Actually, I have a better way to solve the problem," Hades said as I folded my arms over my chest, fucking thrilled to hear his solution, "How about you take a seat and give me a second to check your vitals to make sure you're stable—"

"I'm fucking dandy, asshole, open the door or I'll open it myself and I guarantee you're not gonna like my methods," I warned, taking a step back away from them and putting my arm out with my hand facing the balcony doors. Stanton tensed, but he didn't move and Hades just watched me, clearly calling me on my bluff.

"You can try," Hades said with a shrug, making me narrow my eyes, "But in the end, you'll just hit the barrier on your way out the door, so I mean, go for it, kid."

"Do not call me that," I snapped, making Hades shrug again and I glared, "You need to let me out of here. I don't have time to waste with your stupid familial bullshit. Take your happy happy fun family time and shove it, prick."

"Jesus, he's as bad as Niko," Alaric muttered, trying to get Wren to come with him out of the room, but Wren was shaking his head. He looked down at the floor where the ring was sitting after I dropped it, then looked up at me. I stared at him and went to grab it, but he snatched it up fast and I couldn't charge him to take it, because Alaric was there to block my path and I stopped short of running him over.

"That doesn't belong to you," I snarled at Wren, who clenched the ring in his fist.

"I know," Wren said, making me frown as he looked at me, "It's... Milo's, isn't it?" I stared at him, then looked over at Stanton and Hades, who were watching intently. They were waiting for something. Stanton seemed to be waiting for me to go into Beast mode, waiting nervously on pins and needles, and it made sense given his personal trauma with Beasts.

I went to look into Hades's head, to see exactly what he was expecting from me, but I felt like I was hit in the face with a cast iron frying pan. I snarled, grabbing the sides of my head as pain exploded in my skull, blood immediately gushing from my nose and over my lips. I choked, sinking down to one knee against the blinding pain.

"Don't hurt him!" Wren's exclamation seemed to surprise everyone. I didn't even know what to say when he got down beside me and took my face in his hands. My instinct was to snarl and push him away for daring to get near me, but I couldn't bring myself to lash out. His hands were so soft and warm and went a long way in soothing the headache in my temples. I closed my eyes against the harsh brightness of the chandelier overhead as Wren brushed his thumbs across my cheeks to wipe away blood, and I felt the little bits of his magic going in to heal any damage.

"Wren," came Alaric's voice with a warning note.

"I'm not a kid anymore," Wren said with a growl, "Stop talking to me like that, please. He's not a danger to us." I wanted to laugh and tell him that was far from the truth. In fact, I was in the perfect position to reach out and snap his neck without a second thought.

But just knowing that, another headache spiked in my head and I knew it came from Hades having seen the threat. I gasped at the pain rocketing down my spine, making me groan as I shut my eyes in pain.

"Hades, stop!" Wren's cry was dismayed, like he couldn't believe Hades was still going after me. His faith in Hades was cute, but it wasn't actually a trip in the park for me as I struggled to stay upright. Wren's hands caught my shoulders to try and hold me up, but the lights were actually hurting my eyes even through my eyelids. When I cringed away from the light, Wren immediately put his arms around my head and pulled my head against his chest, shielding me from the light.

For a brief moment, I was relieved of the pain.

Wren's arms around me were nothing more than skinny limbs, yet it felt like a fortress against the rest of the world, and I felt Darling begging me to sink into his arms, begging me to hide away from the world there. The scent of home wrapped around me and I moaned, so grateful to get a taste of it in that moment with my head throbbing.

"Alright," I heard Hades's voice growl after a moment, "Alaric, Stanton, I need one of you out and I'd actually prefer it be Alaric."

"Excuse me?"

"Alaric, your overprotectiveness is going to trigger his Beast. Step back. Stanton knows what to do."

"He's got a point, babe," Stanton's voice muttered somewhere to my left, and I could feel Alaric's anger at being put on the spot to leave, "It's not anything personal, but if his Beast feels like you're a threat standing between them, he'll kill you. No hesitation. So just step outside, maybe go check on the boys back at Niko's place."

"No," Alaric said, but I could hear his footsteps moving away, "No, he needs me—"

"I'll protect him," Stanton promised and there was a pause, "You know I will."

"I know you will," Alaric whispered back immediately. There was another pregnant pause before I heard footsteps and a door close. I wanted to take the opportunity to get up and try and make a run for it, but Darling wasn't listening to me. He wanted to stay put. In fact, he was starting to nuzzle us into Wren's shoulder and it took me a moment to realize Darling was getting under my skin.

I cursed, abruptly grabbing Wren's arms and pushing him back.

"Stop doing that," I snapped in frustration and Wren glared at me.

"You're the one trying to get into my armpit."

"It's not me—"

"Keep your Beast on a leash," Stanton said, making me snap my head around to glare at him, but he met me with one of his own, "Or I'm sending Wren back to his room." Wren sputtered at that.

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not—"

"Wren, you could be a thousand years old, wrinkly and decrepit, and you will always be my fucking child. And I will always be able to send you to your room, whether you like it or not. I am doing my very fucking best not to just blast the fucker and be done with it, so appreciate where I'm coming from, to some degree, thanks," Stanton growled out. Hades looked at him.

"Yeah, appreciate you not killing him; somehow I doubt that'll be great for Rowan's mental health," he said, making Stanton scowl at him.

"What, like you give a shit about his mental health," he said, and I expected Hades to react with something snarky, but he actually had the decency to look a little uncomfortable with the accusation, so Stanton turned back to me, "You, on your feet, on the bed. Hades has to take your vitals to make sure you're not a powder keg waiting to snap."

"Touch me and I'll show you exactly how big a snap I have," I ground out. Wren reached out and squeezed my arm, making me glare at him.

"Stop fighting," he said, and I curled my lip in preparation to argue, but Wren gave my hand a squeeze and tilted his head so he could catch my glare more directly, "They're not going to hurt you. They just want to make sure you're okay. No pokes with needles, nothing, I promise." I didn't believe that for a goddamn second, but Darling didn't seem to give two shits about rationality or paranoia. In fact, the cure to my trust issues was just Darling taking the reins on our body and directly us to the bed.

"Well, that was easy," Stanton said, folding his arms over his chest and looking at Hades, who raised an eyebrow. Wren looked relieved as he came and sat beside me on the bed, but I turned my face away from him, not wanting to make any more eye contact than I already had.

Darling was an idiot.

He fell for every little kind word, every little Bambi look, every little plea.

"I don't have time for this," I growled as Hades made his way to the medical equipment beside the bed to gather his data, "How long have I been here?"

"It's only been a few hours," Wren told me and I resisted the urge to sigh heavily in relief, knowing I still had at least twenty-four hours to get out of here, get back to Polly, and get the rest of the artificials.

I gritted my teeth.

I was in the perfect position to bargain.

I could give them any information they wanted on mother, if they got the artificials out.

The Styx compound was close and still functioning as far as I knew. It hadn't been compromised, even if I had been captured, but once they found out, chances were that security protocols would be implemented.

Meaning the staff would commit mass suicide and the artificials would be immediately sent to Valhalla.

"No," I blurted suddenly, and I reached out to grab Hades's arm, yanking him away from the computer and he actually looked surprised I was able to pull him away so forcefully, "Fuck the tests, get my sisters and my brother out." Hades stared at me and Wren's eyes widened. He looked at Hades, who finally pulled his arm out of my grasp with a slow frown.

He was suspicious, and rightfully so.

"What happened to having no family?" Stanton asked. I glared at him, but didn't answer him as I turned back to Hades.

"You want Hera, right? I'll give you whatever you want to know, but you have to get my sisters and my brother out of our local compound. If you can get them all safely back here in Hacian, I'll give you everything I have on Hera," I explained. Hades was silent for a moment and Wren looked at him expectantly, which slowly turned to confusion because he clearly didn't get Hades's hesitation.

Stanton also looked curious at Hades's pause.

I wasn't surprised.

Hades was smart. He wasn't going to believe me right off the bat. He needed something to make him believe me, something to make him trust me. He needed a token of my loyalty to him, if he was going to risk anyone going into hostile territory, whether it was his land or not. He needed proof I wasn't about to send his people into an ambush.

"There are three compounds in Hades," I blurted and now everyone was staring at me.

"Impossible," Stanton called immediately, making me glare at him, "No way you could set up three whole locations here without Hades ever finding out."

"We set up three bases in Atlantis," I stated and this time, Hades held my gaze because that was information that only he was privy to, "The last one blew up very recently when you guys went in to extract information after its location was compromised. Hannibal sent his people in, but when they got inside, the place self-destructed. The last two forms of life in that explosion disappeared, so his people marked them as deceased. That was me and my brother, Elias." Hades stared at me.

He needed to get in my head to see.

I didn't want him in there. Hades wasn't known for just stopping with the information he needed. Once the guy got his fangs into something, he wouldn't let go. If he saw something in my head he wanted to fuck with, he was going to fuck with it until I bled.

But he wasn't going to believe a single word I said until he saw the whole truth.

So against Darling's inner screams to simply attack and be done, I gritted my teeth and left myself open to Hades's mental assault.

He didn't slam into me hard, but he wasn't gentle. It felt like he'd drilled a hole directly through the center of my forehead and into my brain. Any protections I had naturally kept up in my brain were all torn to shreds and I felt a drop from my chest to my stomach.

A wave of sorrow crashed over me first.

The ache I felt when I saw Elias in the Atlantean compound. His fear from being raised like a science experiment and not a person, not a living breathing creature.

Immediately after, the sudden rush of fury and rage over what mother had allowed to happen to him... No, what mother had done to him. At the end of the day, workers only did what they were told. It was the one calling the shots who was the real villain, the puppeteer who kept trying to command the perfect performance.

Any time a toe was out of line, any time something went against her plans, her hopes and dreams, her fury was unleashed in the rawest and brutalist forms.

It had been easy to ignore in the beginning, because mother had justified it. She told me it was simply what we had to do in order to maintain peace. Sometimes we had to break a few eggs to make an omelet, except she didn't tell me that those eggs were people and the omelet was her own personal vendetta.

Milo had been there to show me that. In little subtle ways until the day finally came when he told me how he really felt.

"She's so fucking cruel," Milo snarled, making me look up from where I was fiddling with the ties on my sweatpants, "Gods above, I could just wring her fucking neck."

"Don't say that," I mumbled, making Milo glare at me, "She's... She's still my mother. She's..."

"She's no mother," Milo managed, turning to look at me as I looked up at him in confusion, "Jasper, the monster that walks these halls in heels so everyone can hear her coming and hide when they hear her, the monster that forces you to kill innocent people and watch as your brothers and sisters are kidnapped and hidden away— she's not a fucking mother, Jasper, she's a monster. Your real family is out there—"

"Don't," I said immediately, jumping up from the table uncomfortably and Milo glared at me in disbelief, "Milo, if she heard you—"

"Are you even listening to yourself right now? Are you telling me you're scared of her?" His challenge woke something in me and I growled at the accusation, turning to glare at him and Milo shoved away from the counter where he was leaning. He came at me, but not to hurt me. He just hit his chest against mine, like he was trying to make a point.

"Are you scared of that bitch," Milo whispered, making me grit my teeth as he pushed against me and pinned me against the table, "Are you telling me that you, you in all your strength and your beauty and your pride and your love, are scared of a heartless cunt like her?" Darling bared his fangs with a hiss, then clicked his tongue. Milo groaned, reaching up to grab my jaw to force us to meet his eyes.

"Don't you dare let her scare him, Darling," he seethed, squeezing my jaw and Darling growled in agreement, "Don't you dare let her hurt him. I won't always be around to protect you both, so you have to be there when I can't, do you understand me?" I groaned, because it was difficult to fight the command as Darling took that to heart.

Darling loved that. He loved Milo's love and care, his defiance, his authority, his dedication. He was going to do whatever Milo told him. Even if I didn't agree.

So of course every time I tried to escape the misery and the pain, Darling was there to stop me.

Every time I tried to take a step in the right direction, Darling was there to remind me that mother was the wrong choice every time. He was there to remind me that when we failed, people died. Just like Milo.

Just like Polly.

I gritted my teeth against the pain of Hades rifling through my brain like it was a fucking Black Friday sale on Amazon.

"Please," I said, taking a deep breath as I felt Hades slowly pulling out of my head and I looked up to meet those glowing blue eyes, "Please help them."