Page 1 of The Devil's Mercy

Chapter 1:

Everything felt…fuzzy. Calix groaned, blinking as he dragged himself from a deep sleep that had left him with a headache.

Wait.

No, it hadn’t been a sleep at all, had it?

He jolted, cursing when something rough tugged at his wrists, keeping them bound behind him. His ankles had been secured as well, and he frowned at them, lost for a moment. How had he ended up chained to a chair?

And where the hell were his clothes?

Calix stared down at his chest and thighs, unable to process exactly what he was seeing and why.

He was covered in love bites. Hickies and full-on bite marks, some still wet with saliva, decorated his bare flesh. When he shifted in his seat, he felt tiny stings and burns from some of the worst injuries.

Like the outline of teeth that had broken skin on his inner left thigh. A few droplets of blood had rolled from the wound.

“You’ll have to forgive Aodhan,” a calm voice cut through his jumbled thoughts. “He’s brilliant, but he often struggles to see the forest for the trees, so to speak.”

Titus Mercer, the director of Hopeful Heart Hospital, and the man Cal had once had a sort of crush on, stood in the center of the room, seemingly putting something together. His focus remained on the task at hand, never once sparing Cal a glance, despite obviously being aware he’d woken up.

It felt dismissive in the worst of ways, which only added fuel to the fire, helping to shove some of that confusion down.

Did it really matterhowhe’d ended up here? All that counted waswhy.

“He’s too reactive. I’ve warned him countless times that his sporadic nature was going to get him in trouble someday, but he never listens,” Titus continued, moving to attach what appeared to be a metal pulley to the opposite wall.

They were in a small white room with a cot and the chair Calix was currently stuck on. There weren’t any windows, so he couldn't gauge what time of day it was or how long he’d been unconscious. The single entrance had been left ajar, but he was only able to catch a glimpse of a hallway and nothing else.

Were they still in Aodhan’s house, or had they brought him somewhere else? Somewhere off the beaten path, where they could murder him and cut him into pieces uninterrupted?

A cop had been shot and Aodhan was the one behind what had happened to him the night of the reunion. Neither of those things were good signs. Added to the fact it’d been the doctor who’d brought him to that party where the merman had been cut in half and…Well.

Cal wasn’t stupid.

Or maybe he was, because despite knowing all of that and realizing he’d gotten himself tied up in a shitshow, he still felt a tug of annoyance and jealousy toward Titus.

“I don’t need you to tell me about Aodhan Solace,” Calix growled, trying to test the cuffs at his wrists more carefully now that he was aware of them. The metal seemed thick and didn’toffer much give. He could lean forward a few inches, but that was all.

He wasn’t going to be able to get out of them on his own.

Fuck.

In actuality, he did need the director to tell him about Aodhan, because obviously everything Cal thought he knew about the man was false. Granted, they hadn’t known each other for long, but still. They’d been close…intimate, even.

Images of the video he’d been played in their kitchen before Titus knocked him out caused him to still as bile rose in the back of his throat. It wasn’t because he was disgusted by the doctor who’d raped him the night of the reunion and pinned it on someone else though.

All of that disgust was aimed directly at himself, because Calix also recalled his initial reaction to discovering the trick.

Relief.

He’d been relieved that the person who’d witnessed him blubbering and begging for it like an idiot had been Aodhan and not Heathe.

That relief was gone now, however, replaced with a deeply rooted mortification that instantly had him wanting to cave into his own skin and disappear.

“Should I tell you about myself then?” Titus asked, casual tone such a juxtaposition to their situation and the way Cal was feeling it was insane.

Then again, all of this was.

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