Page 40 of His Eternal Claim

Strangers can kill you. But blood… blood knows exactly which parts of you are still human. And blood doesn’t stab.

Blood rots. Blood festers. Blood infects.

It eats through muscle… through memory… through loyalty… through every goddamn piece of you that you once mistook for love, until all that’s left… is something unrecognizable. Something hungry. Something violent.

Something that looks in the mirror… and finally understands, monsters aren’t born.

They’re raised. They’re groomed. Fed.

Broken.

Made.

And tonight… as rain beat against the glass like heaven itself is trying to warn me, I realize something that made my hands stop shaking… made my pulse slow… made the devil inside me smile.

I am not walking into my Father’s house tonight… I am walking into my own autopsy. And for once… I am not planning on leaving with a pulse.

Rain follows me all the way to the estate. A violent fucking storm. And I can’t care less. All I can think of is her shivering voice, her helpless cries, and the goddamned blame she laid on me.

A sane man will probably go to her, cradle her, love her, and make her realize she means the world to him.

But I am not sane.

Sanity left me the moment our eyes met. The moment she held my hand and promised me forever, I was hers. And no words, no fucking words in this godforsaken universe could name the emotions I feel for her.

As I said, I can die for her. But when it comes to her, I can kill for her too. Even if it’s my own goddamn Father.

Thunder split the sky in half as my Aston Martin tears through the private roads leading up to the ancestral grounds.

The gates open before I even stop.

My hands tighten around the steering wheel.

I step out. Rain drenches my suit.

And I feel nothing. The guards standing outside the estate exchange glances. One moves toward me.

“Young Master Vitale… you can’t go in. Your Father is in a meeting—”

Crack.

My fist connects with his jaw so hard I feel bone give beneath skin. He collapses without another word, clutching his face and groaning. The others freeze but make no move to stop me. They know better.

The estate doors swing open. And I walk into hell.

My footsteps echo through the silence, every step heavier.

Every breath darker.

Every heartbeat… closer to murder. “Zagreus?”

My head snaps to the stairs, where my Mother stands with a look so dull and unrecognizable on her face, I mistake her for a corpse.

If I were five-year-old Zagreus, I would’ve run to her and hugged her. Cried in her arms while she sang me a lullaby.

But I am not five. And I am most certainly not a son to her, because if I was, she would’ve never let Father destroy us like this.

I blamed her ten years ago; I blame her now.