Page 38 of Whispers of Fate

“You can’t save me, brother. No one can. I’m becoming a monster, and we all know and see the truth. Look at Alden, who can’t even form a coherent word any longer. How long before you admit he has to be put down? How fucking long before you take him out of that cage and end his suffering? And I assure you that heissuffering.” He aimed a pointed look at me before turning back to Ryder.

“No one is being put down,” I argued. “You and Alden are family, and no one is putting anyone down.”

“Look at him!” he snarled, which sent Alden into a frenzied state. Alden’s humming turned maddening, and he pounded on the glass while his hips thrust in a rapid tempo. His teeth turned into sharpened, needlelike rows of razor-sharp fangs. “Do you think he’d want that?” he demanded. “He has no control, which means he’s nothing but a fucking passenger to the horror show he’s become. Can you leave him like that, knowing he’s trapped in his mind? He’s completely helpless against the sadistic prick using him to fuel his people and those who joined together with them to destroy your power. Alden would slit his own fucking throat if he had any control over his mind.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, Zahruk. I won’t do this, and this discussion is over,” Ryder snapped with a tremor in his words.

“You’d let me become a monster like him? You of all people know what it is like to be driven by another. Imagine if your beast hadn’t been willing to meld and, instead, had taken total control of you? That’s what will happen to me eventually. Once the alterations are complete, I won’t be any better than he is. I’ll be the monster they want me to be, and you’ll either be forced to put me down or bury me so fucking deeply that I won’t ever be able to escape. The sad part is that there’s no place you could put me where they wouldn’t be able to find me and unleash the atrocity they created on the world. So, you need to make a choice right now—let me go to find Kahleena and bring her back to you or kill me.”

He looked to me, silently demanding I make the choice to let him free, and I shook my head. “Even if I thought letting you out was a good idea, which I don’t, there’s no proof she’s still alive.”

“You met Arius, Syn. Did he seem like the type to kill her without getting what he wants first? If he’d gotten what he wanted, he would be here already, and he’s not. That tells us everything we need to know.”

His words slithered in my mind, sending my stomach plummeting to the ground at my feet. Arius had taken Kahleena as leverage, while Kahleena thought he was her mate. So why would Arius need Zahruk? Unless he’d selected him specifically? If Arius controlled Zahruk, who knew every secret and trained every soldier, it would be catastrophic. Zahruk knew every one of our fail safes and battle strategies because he’d created them himself.

“Kahleena thinks Arius is her mate,” I disclosed softly, glancing to my right as Spyder stepped out of the shadows. His expression was one of shock as shadows drifted around his frame, slithering over his fingers like they were caressing them lovingly. “How long have you been hiding in the shadows?” I asked curiously.

Spyder didn’t reply before he flicked a glance to the cages and clapped his hands, activating the wards that prevented those within the cells from hearing anything being said beyond the four walls that trapped them.

“What the fuck did you just say?” he demanded, roving his gaze over my face. I repeated it, and he slowly shook his head. “That’s impossible. Arius, Heir and Prince of Etherlands, cannot be your daughter’s mate.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I just said, Spyder,” I countered with apprehension and confusion.

“Where the fuck did you hear that name, and why the hell would you think he’sanythingto your daughter?”

“He’s who took Kahleena and also who abducted me from the office the day you walked in to find Zahruk and I stabbing each other. Kahleena was given a vision of him as her mate,” I disclosed, frowning when he laughed and shook his head in denial.

“That isn’t possible.”

“Why?” I countered hesitantly as he continued slowly moving his head back and forth.

“Arius was locked inside the mansion two thousand years ago.” Spyder turned, peering through the cell at Zahruk, whose eyes shimmered and became the color of liquefied silver. “He’s a calculated, twisted son of a bitch, Synthia. The fates wouldn’t be that cruel to Kahleena.”

“How do you know that?” Ryder asked hesitantly.

“He’s my son,” Spyder replied softly while holding Zahruk’s silver glare.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Theentirecorridorwentso silent I doubted a single person was even breathing as Spyder’s announcement reverberated like a war drum around us. Alden had even abandoned his rage and was watching Spyder just as intently as Zahruk was. The mercurial coloring of their intense stares revealed the truth of Arius’s threat of having eyes on us. He had the ability to watch us through the eyes of those infected. Arius was able to merely slide in, and see whatever he wanted as long as he had someone infected in the vicinity he sought to spy on.

“Say what?” I countered, gaping at Spyder’s statement. “I’m sorry, but I think I misheard you. He’s your what now?” I was trying to soothe the rapid beat of my heart, which pounded hard and so fast I feared I’d black out.

“Not in the way you’re thinking. I didn’t fuck someone and make him. IcreatedArius with magic, using my blood, a sliver of essence from Lucian, Nyx, and Eris, to formulate and produce something no one could destroy. It worked, but it worked a little too well. He surpassed every expectation and was brilliantly ruthless. I didn’t give him the capacity to love anything other than himself, so if he is her mate, he likely has no idea. Honestly, I’m not sure why no one tried to stop me when I created him. It was a bad fucking idea from conception,” Spyder explained, flicking a look of consternation at Lucian, who grunted.

“Arius severed our link and went mad with the need for destruction and mayhem. That is why he ended up in the mansion, the one place I’d been confident he wouldn’t be able to free himself from.” Spyder looked proud that Arius had bested him, which made me want to throttle him a little. Okay, that was a lie. I wanted to throttle the smug, proud creator of the little monster.

My mouth hung open, and the world spun around me while I attempted to wrap my head around what he’d just said. The implications of Arius being that old and powerful were as vast as my horror that such a creature held my baby girl hostage.

“You’re telling me that your fucking creation stole my daughter?” I enunciated every single word, watching as he spun and grimaced at my horrified, pale complexion. “A fuckingtitanhas my child?”

He blew out the air from his lungs and shuffled his feet before pegging me with a guilty stare. “That’s pretty much the gist of it, I’m afraid.” Spyder shoved his hands into his pockets and shook his head. “I never imagined this would happen. He shouldn’t have been able to unravel the time riddle to escape the mansion, but clearly, he did. Obviously, I miscalculated just how intelligent he would become.”

“I did not see that coming,” Lena muttered with a tremble in her tone. “Oh, Spyder, you fucked up.”

Lucian stood behind Lena, laughing without offering Spyder any pity. He tenderly pulled Lena back, sliding powerful arms around her before setting his chin on his shoulder, smiling roguishly. Midnight-blue depths shifted from amused to worried as he looked at Spyder.

“Why are you looking like you’re about to throw up?” Lucian inquired carefully.

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