"It's all right," Nero said softly, crouching down to make himself less threatening. "They can't hurt you now."
The child's lips moved, but no sound emerged. Shock, Nero realized. He'd seen it in soldiers after their first real battle, that peculiar stillness that came when the mind couldn't process what it had witnessed.
"What's your name?" Nero asked, keeping his voice gentle despite the urgency clawing at his chest.
"R-River," the boy whispered finally, his voice barely audible. "Mama? Pa? Why won’t they wake?"
Nero's heart clenched. The boy was too young to understand what he'd witnessed, too innocent to comprehend that his parents lay dead mere yards away. "They're gone, River. I'm sorry."
The child's face crumpled, tears streaming down dirt-stained cheeks. "I want Mama," he sobbed.
"Did anyone else live here?" Nero asked quietly, taking a cautious step closer, glancing around the devastated farmstead. No other buildings stood nearby—this family had lived in isolation, probably choosing the remote location for safety. That isolation had become their death.
He felt Casteel's presence flicker—still alive, still conscious, but something was happening. The connection carried undertones of wonder mixed with fear, as if his mate had discovered something miraculous and terrible simultaneously.
Nero needed to move. Every moment he delayed was another moment Casteel remained in danger. But he couldn't leave a traumatized child alone among the bodies of his family, couldn't abandon him to die of exposure or become prey for the next group of soldiers who passed this way.
"River," he said carefully, "do you have other family? Grandparents, aunts, uncles?"
The boy shook his head, still pressed against the stone wall. "Just Mama and Pa. They said if ever bad men came, Pa wouldprotect us." Fresh tears coursed down his cheeks. "But they hurt Pa first, and then they hurt Mama, and I couldn't do anything."
Nero closed his eyes briefly, fighting back the memories of his own loss—his wife, his unborn child, Romash wasting away while he watched helplessly. It was too close.
"I have to go," he said gently. "Someone I love is in danger. But I can't leave you here." He extended his hand, palm up, offering rather than demanding. "Will you come with me?"
River stared at the offered hand with wary incomprehension. "Where?"
"To find my mate," Nero replied honestly. "And then..." He hesitated, unable to promise safety or security when his own future was so uncertain. "Then we'll find somewhere safe for you."
The boy's eyes darted to his parents' bodies, then back to Nero's face. "The bad men might come back?"
"Yes," Nero admitted. "Which is why we need to leave now." He couldn’t even risk a delay to bury the dead, and he hoped taking their son to safety was enough recompence.
River took a shuddering breath, then reached out with a small, trembling hand. His fingers were ice-cold when they touched Nero's palm, and they clung tightly when Nero gently closed his hand around them.
"We need to move quickly," Nero said, helping the boy to his feet. "Can you run?"
River nodded, though his legs shook beneath him. "Papa taught me. For if the wolves come."
Nero felt a twist of irony at the words, given what now resided within him. He looked around the farmstead one last time, wishing he could give the dead the proper rites, but there was no time. Instead, he quickly gathered what supplies he could find—a small waterskin, a half-loaf of bread that had somehowsurvived the destruction, a child's cloak that hung from a peg near the door.
"Here," he said, draping the cloak around River's shoulders. "It's cold in the mountains."
The boy clutched the familiar garment, burying his face in the rough wool for a moment. When he looked up, his eyes were still terrified, but there was a flicker of determination there as well. "I'm ready."
Nero spared one last glance at the bodies, silently promising that the men who had ordered this atrocity would pay. Then he took River's small hand in his and led him away from the ruins of his childhood.
They moved east through increasingly rugged terrain, Nero simply picking River up, humbled by the trusting way River wrapped his little arms around Nero's neck.
Casteel's presence remained constant but distant, like a star glimpsed through heavy clouds, but he didn't seem afraid. No immediate danger.
"Are we going to find your mate?" River asked, his small voice breaking the silence as they navigated a narrow mountain path.
"Yes," Nero replied, scanning the horizon for any sign of pursuit. "His name is Casteel."
"Is he lost?"
Nero's jaw tightened. "In a way. Bad men are trying to take him somewhere he doesn't want to go."
