HADES
I let her feed —because she would not give any other chance. Or maybe it was because I had a soft spot for her... because she reminded of Elliot.
He was still waiting at ho for to bring back his uncle Kael.
The plate was empty in no ti, and I had to admit—it had been more than just a little palatable.
As soon as the last piece of bread was gone, the door swung open and I let Cerberus take over imdiately, ready to pounce.
Sage’s reaction was nothing but annoyance, laced with a scolding.
"You shouldn’t shift so quickly after eating. You’ll end up with an upset tummy."
A woman stepped in. She was middle-aged, brown eyes glinting with amusent.
"Sage, thanks for the good work, but aren’t you being too hard on the Alpha of Obsidian?"
Sage leapt off the bed and straight into her waiting arms.
"He was nice enough." The little girl tapped her chest, pride blooming through her smile. "My heart is still in my chest."
The older woman laughed. The scar that ran from her cheek to her jaw and extended to her throat left a jagged trail like lightning frozen in flesh. It twisted when she smiled, but there was warmth in it.
The kind that said she’d seen hell and still chose to be kind.
"You must be starving if you let a child feed you," she said, setting Sage down gently. "Either that, or desperate."
I didn’t respond imdiately. Cerberus was still beneath the surface, teeth just shy of showing, breath slow and calculating.
But he receded as Sage wrapped her arms around the woman’s waist and whispered sothing in her ear.
The woman turned back to .
"I’m called Maera. I’m sure you want to see your friends... especially the one Wolfsbane almost killed."
That made my shoulders stiffen.
"Yes..."
I didn’t get to finish before she smiled and turned toward the door.
"Follow ."
And with that, she simply stepped out.
"But you might want to shift back. Not everyone here is as open as Sage to interacting with a Lycan." Her voice turned serious, just before it could have drifted out of earshot.
"So were conscripted. They do not take kindly to your kind."
I glanced down at myself.
Regret bubbled up despite the more urgent issues at hand.
I had a full belly. No poison in the food. I was alive. And I was being promised that my n were too.
Maybe a leap of faith...
Maybe a leap of faith was overdue.
With a deep breath, I let Cerberus slip beneath the surface.
The blackened claws retracted, bones shifting and sinew snapping in reverse as I took my human form once more.
The cold of the cell kissed bare skin, but I didn’t shiver.
I wasn’t sure I could anymore.
I followed Maera and Sage through a series of tight, winding corridors.
The stronghold had none of the grandeur of Obsidian Tower, nor the clinical aura of the fortress Sage had called the Cauterium. No runes etched into silver to trap or weaken into submission.
Just stone. Shadows. And silence.
It was well built—that was sure.
The way my footsteps echoed back to told the structure had integrity.
It slled of salt, blood, and old war.
Sage walked ahead with a skip in her step, humming sothing off-key.
Maera walked beside her with slow purpose.
? I walked like a man preparing for judgnt.
The corridor opened into a vast stone chamber, and the first thing that hit was the noise.
Not noise like battle or chaos—
Life.
Laughter. Chatter. Murmured conversations. Clinking spoons. The rustle of cloth as people moved between makeshift hos.
The space looked like a hollowed-out canyon beneath the earth, and every inch had been claid and repurposed.
Old wood, stone, and rusted sheet tal had been stitched into tiny hos and pods. No two looked alike, yet sohow... there was order.
It was a whole new world beneath the surface.
It looked like so kind of dieval camp.
Clothes hung on lines. Potatoes simred in communal pots.
A boy tossed a cracked rubber ball between his hands while an older woman braided a girl’s hair beside a half-nded crate.
I watched as a man leaned down to kiss a toddler on the forehead, brushing soot from her cheeks with the back of a trembling hand.
And I noticed sothing else.
The fabrics they wore—tunics, cloaks, shawls—had all been sewn together from remnants of older garnts.
Survivors.
Maera slowed her pace beside . Sage skipped ahead to one of the hos, vanishing behind a curtain of beads.
"These people," Maera said softly, "either tried to tell their families about the second verse of the prophecy and were turned away... or we pulled them from Darius’ cells before he could finish what he started."
I looked around again, more carefully this ti.
The little girl who had been stirring a pot near the fire turned as I passed, revealing that one of her eyes was missing.
Scar tissue ringed the socket like cracked earth.
Another child nearby had only one leg—the other replaced by a crude wooden prosthetic bound with fraying leather straps.
An older boy, barely a teenager, sat silently against a pillar, half of his face lted like wax.
My stomach turned.
"Darius..." I said slowly, my voice a stone being dragged across gravel.
Maera nodded grimly.
"If one mber of a family tried to speak out—if they so much as whispered about the Blood Moon or the prophecy’s second verse—the whole family was taken.
Parents. Siblings. Children."
I clenched my jaw.
"They were used," she continued. "As experints. Test subjects. Tools.
He ran trials on them—injecting them with unstable prototypes of the serums his inner circle used for immunity and control.
He wanted his own bloodline safe first, so he tested on the rest. On them."
A woman turned to look at then, her expression unreadable.
Her son, perhaps five who clung to her waist, his skin pale and eyes too wide.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t scowl.
She just watched .
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