Caleb
The sun was too bright.
It beat down on my bare skin like a punishment, but my humiliation burned more.
That whore had stripped me bare and dumped me at the border like common trash.
No.
Not common trash.
She’d made sure I was nothing.
My wrists were bound behind me with a rope, tied to a wooden post that had been driven into the ground.
I strained against my bonds, ignoring the biting pain.
“Help!” I screamed.
“Someone help me!
I’m Caleb Ashford!
Connor Ashford’s son!”
The words echoed across the empty forest, swallowed by the heat of the summer and the distant buzz of insects.
I slumped against the post, my throat raw.
The sun continued its slow arc across the sky, and I could feel my skin starting to blister.
I’d been here for hours….I didn’t know how many.
My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might crack.
How long was I to last before father came for me?
The thought hit me and suddenly the sun didn’t matter anymore.
My father.
He would come for me.
He had to.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture him.
Tall and commanding, with that cold, calculating gaze that could make lesser wolves tremble.
Connor Ashford.
The most powerful wolf in the region, no, in the entire territory.
Everyone said so.
Everyone feared him.
Everyone except my shitty Cousin and that Stormborn bitch.
My hands clenched into fists behind my back, and I felt something warm trickle down my wrist.
Blood.
The rope had broken the skin.
“You think Magnus is going to protect you?” I’d said to her.
“He’s weak!
He’s always been weak.”
Even now, I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it fully.
My cousin was like a legend.
They said he’d single-handedly held off an army of rogues when he was barely seventeen.
They said he’d never lost a fight.
They said…
None of that mattered.
My father would come.
He would make them all pay for what they’d done to me.
My father would come.
He would come for me.
He loved me.
Didn’t he?
The doubt crept in before I could stop it, My father had never been what anyone would call affectionate.
He’d raised me with an iron fist and colder expectations.
I was his heir, his legacy, his…
He would come.
“You’re nothing.”
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere.
I opened my eyes, but there was no one there.
Just the dust and the heat and the endless, empty sky.
“You were never anything but a disappointment.”
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the voice.
It wasn’t real.
It was just the heat, the dehydration, the desperate hope that was slowly killing me.
And then, another voice came.
This was softer and warmer, filled with a love I’d almost forgotten.
“Caleb, my sweet boy.
What have they done to you?”
“Mom?”
I’d been thirteen years old when she died.
I missed the way she’d call me her “sweet boy” when no one else was listening.
After she was gone, my father had erased every trace of her.
“Mother,” I breathed “Mother, please.
I need you.
I need you so much.”
For a moment I thought I saw her with her golden hair floating around her with her arms outstretched.
She was wearing the same blue dress she’d worn in my memories, the one with the tiny white flowers embroidered on the collar.
“Caleb,” she said, and her voice was like honey.
“Come to me, sweet boy.
Come to me.”
I strained against the rope, desperate to reach her.
“Mother, I can’t.
They tied me.
Please, help me.
Please.”
She smiled, but her eyes were sad.
“I can’t help you, my love.
No one can help you.
You have to help yourself.”
The image flickered, and I blinked hard, tears streaming down my sunburned cheeks.
When I opened my eyes again, she was gone.
“You were never strong enough.” My father’s voice came back.
” You are weak, just like your mother.
I should have known.
I should have seen it from the start.
You’re weak.
Pathetic.
A stain on the Ashford name.”
“Shut up,” I whispered.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
“Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
“SHUT UP!”
The scream tore out of me, raw and animal, and I threw myself against the post with all my strength.
The wood groaned, but it didn’t break.
Mother wouldn’t have been ashamed.
She loved me.
She was the only one who ever loved me.
And she was dead.
I was alone.
I was all alone.
***
Connor
I didn’t move immediately when my private line began to ring.
I took another slow sip of my bourbon, letting the amber liquid burn its way down my throat, before setting the crystal glass aside with deliberate care.
Only then did I reach for the phone.
“Connor.
Your son is an idiot.”
Celestine’s voice was sharp and I felt my jaw tighten.
She never called unless something had gone wrong, and she never opened with pleasantries.
It was one of the few things I respected about her.
“I assume there’s a reason you’ve interrupted my evening,” I said flatly.
“Make it quick.”
“Your precious heir…” she spat the word like it was poison, “…just got himself stripped naked and tied to a post at the Shadowbane border like a common criminal.
He’s been there for hours.
The entire territory is laughing at him.
More importantly, they’re laughing at you.”
The bourbon curdled in my stomach.
That bastard.
What had he done now?
“What,” I said, and my voice was barely above a whisper, “happened?”
“Exactly what I just told you.” Celestine’s tone was clipped, impatient.
“He decided to provoke that bitch Aysel…”
“What?”
“I’m sure I’m not speaking gibberish, Connor.
I don’t like repeating myself.
Your son.
Caleb walked into a restaurant, threatened her, tried to attack her, and she had him stripped and dumped at the border like the fool he is.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the shame and fury rising in my throat.
My son had become laughingstock and a liability.
“Do you have any idea what this does to our plans?” Celestine continued, her voice rising.
“I’ve spent years cultivating contacts, building alliances, positioning myself for the moment we strike.
And now your incompetent fool of a son has handed the Magnus a weapon he can use against us.
The entire region knows what happened.
They’re mocking you.
Mocking me!”
“I told him to stay away from Magnus.”
“The way you told him to stay away from everything else that might threaten our operation?” Celestine laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“Face it, Connor.
Your son is a disaster.
A walking, talking catastrophe who can’t be trusted with even the simplest tasks.”
I had to sit here and listen to this little girl speak to me this way because of my stupid son.
And she was right.
Ever since his mother died, Caleb had spiraled.
The grief had been one thing, understandable even.
We’d all mourned her.
But he’d never recovered.
He’d grown wilder, more reckless, more desperate to prove himself.
Each failure only made him try harder, and each attempt only made him fail more spectacularly.
I’d tried to rein him in.
But nothing had worked.
He was too much like his mother, too soft and emotional.
But I’d had no choice.
I was too old now to have another son, the thought of trying filled me with exhaustion rather than hope.
Caleb was all I had.
The only heir I would ever have.
I pressed my hand to my forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache pulsing behind my eyes.
This was a disaster.
A complete and total disaster.
We’d spent years building toward this moment, years positioning ourselves for the strike that would finally bring Magnus Ashford to his knees.
And now one stupid, arrogant, reckless act had threatened everything.
“I’ll go get him,” I said finally.
“I’ll bring him home and deal with him.”
“And then what?” Celestine demanded.
“Let him ruin everything else?
He’s already compromised us.
We can’t trust him with anything important, and we can’t leave him to run wild.
What exactly do you propose we do with him?”
“I said I’ll deal with him.”
“I need more than that, Connor.
I need to know that this won’t happen again.
That your son won’t be the downfall of everything we’ve worked for.”
My grip on the phone tightened.
“You seem very concerned about my son’s behavior for someone who’s supposed to be an ally.
Tell me, Celestine….how exactly did you learn about this so quickly?”
“You have people in Shadowbane,” I said slowly.
“People you never told me about.”
“Of course I have informants.
This is a war, Connor.
You can’t expect me to go in blind.”
“I expect you to be honest with me.
I expect you to share intelligence, not hoard it for yourself.”
“I share what’s necessary.
What you need to know.”
“Don’t forget who made this possible,” I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“Don’t forget that without me, you’d still be nothing.
A minor player in a game you couldn’t hope to win.”
“I’ve never forgotten anything, Connor.
I remember exactly what you did for me.
I also remember what I did for you.”
“You didn’t do anything.
I was the one who….”
“I was the one who lured Kael out.”
“I was the one who made sure he was alone,” she continued, her voice flat and emotionless.
“I was the one who fed you the information about his movements, his weaknesses, his routines.
Without me, you never would have gotten close enough to do what needed to be done.”
“You arranged the meeting,” I said slowly.
“But I was the one who carried out the operation.
I was the one who contacted the rogues, arranged the ambush, made sure there were no witnesses.
You were just…”
“I was just the architect of the entire plan,” she cut in.
“Tell me, Connor, are you happy with how things turned out?
Because I’m not.”
“You think I’m happy about this?” I demanded.
“You think I wanted Magnus to rise to power, to become the strongest wolf alive, to be untouchable?
I wanted to destroy my brother’s line completely.
I wanted to ensure that no one ever challenged me again.
And now…”
“Now Magnus grows more powerful than ever.
Meanwhile, you’re scraping together what you can, trying to salvage a situation that’s spiraling out of control.”
“Because of your interference!”
“Because of your incompetence!”
“You forget who you’re talking to,” I snarled.
“I am Connor Ashford.
You owe me.”
“I owe you nothing,” she spat back.
“You used me as much as I used you.
You needed my resources, my connections, my knowledge.”
There was a long pause.
“This conversation isn’t over, Connor.
We have things to discuss.
Plans to reassess.
Your son has jeopardized everything, and you better fix it.”
The line went dead.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at the phone in my hand.
Fucking stupid bitch.
I grabbed my keys angrily from the table.
Time to fetch my fool of a son.