Still, he would try. He would mold me and break me until I was unrecognizable. Through it all, he would be wearing that damn smirk.
“You still have six other tasks to complete,” he said, turning on his heel. I wasn’t worth the attention he had given me, apparently. Asshole. “The next task will begin tomorrow. Sleep while you can, my daughter.”
Before I could react to his admittedly terrifying statement, the King stiffened as something was thrown at his feet. Only his head moved to survey the second head rolling beside the first. The King’s eyes were blank, expression carefully impassive, as he stared at his eldest son’s severed head.
Dair stood a foot away, breathing heavily. His hands were balled into fists.
After a long moment of staring, the Mermaid King began to chuckle. It was so unexpected, so sudden, that all I could do was blink at him. His first reaction to seeing his dead son was to laugh?
“Son, son, son,” he tsked at Dair. “I didn’t know you had the balls to do it.”
As if Tavvy’s head was nothing more than a soccer ball, he kicked it out of the way. Guilt, for the first time, clawed at me.
Maybe guilt was too strong a word. It didn’t fully encapsulate what I felt. It was...sadness.
Nobody had loved Tavvy. Even his father had discarded him the second he was no longer useful. He lived in a world, in a family, that deprived him of love at all cost. It was no wonder he turned out the way he did. That wasn’t to say I excused any of his actions, because I didn’t, but it made me wonder how Dair would’ve turned out if he had been raised solely by the King. No Pearce, Angelica, and Juliet. No Ryland, Bash, Killian, Jax, Lupe, or Devlin. Alone. Unloved. Unwanted.
Maybe things would’ve been different for Tavvy if he had been loved. Maybe.
But I couldn’t focus on the maybes without completely spiraling down a hole I wasn’t sure I could crawl myself out of.
“Dair,” the Mermaid King said, redirecting my attention to the matter at hand. I wouldn’t grieve or mourn for Tavvy, but I would remember him. It was the only consolation I could offer.
“Yes, father?” Dair’s voice was resigned. Already, he knew what his father was going to say. My hackles rose, hair standing on end.
“You know what has to happen now, don’t you?”
Dair’s face was pinched tight. I didn’t like that - not one bit.
“Yes, father.”
“Meet me in my office in five minutes.” Without another word, he clambered up the stairs and disappeared from view. The second he was gone, I spun to face my Mermaid mate.
“What does he mean?” I asked breathlessly. My hand wrapped around his corded bicep. “What’s going to happen? Are you going to be punished? I can take the blame. He doesn’t have to know it was you.”
“With the Mage spell, who else would it be?” He tried to smile at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I accept what’s going to happen, Z. And I think you do too. You just don’t know it yet.”
“Know what?” My voice was desperate. High-pitched
Dair cupped my cheek with his palm.
“I promise you, I’m going to be okay. We’re going to get through this.” His words did nothing to calm my racing heart. I tried to think of what the Mermaid King could do to him, what the Mermaid King must’ve already done to him if his haunted expression was any indication, but I came up blank. The knowledge was there, right there, but it remained just out of reach. It burned the tip of my tongue…
Dair grabbed my ass suddenly, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as he kissed me. A quick, desperate kiss that spoke louder than any words ever could.
“I needed to do that one more time.” His tone took on a hushed murmur, so soft I wasn’t sure if he intended for me to hear it. He placed me back on my feet.
“Wait! Dair!” But he was already racing off, his golden hair disappearing inside the large wooden doors.
How many more monsters did we have to fight? We had already killed so many.
Thousands of monsters in this world, and the worst was my mate’s own flesh and blood.
I shook my head, coming out of my daze, when Killian put a hand on my shoulder to capture my attention. I turned to meet his anxious, slightly frantic, gaze.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I tried to find him.” His stutter was more pronounced than before, and he absently scratched at one of the many tattoos adorning his arm. “I looked and I looked and I looked. He’s gone, Z. He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” I whispered, but a part of me already knew. A part of me had felt his absence acutely when I had stepped out of the car.
Searching once more, just to be one-hundred percent certain, I felt my body fall. Fall. Fall.
The day had been long and daunting, but I had survived.
This? I wasn’t sure I could come back from it.
Because my mate was gone.
Jax was no longer in the Capital.
EPILOGUE
JAX
The bugs whispered to me. I couldn’t discern exactly what they were saying, but the meaning was clear.
Alone.
Alone.
Alone.
They were practically screaming it at me.
Light pierced my eyes, and I lifted my hand to block the worst of it. A dark silhouette came into view, kneeling down in front of me.
“Z?” I whispered, hope clenching my heart. But if you clenched a heart too much, it broke. And that was what happened to me.
My heart...it shattered.
It wasn’t Z looking back at me, and it wasn’t Sasha. No, this woman with the orange hair and dark eyes was unfamiliar.
“She left you, Jax. Even if she didn’t leave you now, she would soon. I can see the poison running through her body. She can try to deny
