"Why not just let me die?" Casteel said finally, his voice steadier. "You'd be free."
Nero loosened his grip slightly but didn't release him. "Because I don't understand what's happening. That... thing out there. The burning on my neck. The wolf. None of it makes sense."
A bitter laugh escaped Casteel's lips. "Welcome to my nightmare. One day I'm mucking out the pigs, and dreaming of my own horse, the next I'm transforming into some prophesied savior."
Nero stepped back, keeping the dagger in hand but lowering it. "You were really just a stable boy?"
"Back when they had horses not just in the army." Casteel rubbed his throat where Nero's arm had pressed, and Nero frowned at the bruises. Had he held him that hard? "Now they just have pigs and chickens."
"The palace servants claim you bear royal blood."
Casteel moved away from Nero, his movements cautious, eyes never leaving him. "The Emperor had many... diversions. My mother was one of them."
The implications hung heavy in the air. Nero had heard the rumors about Johannes' appetites, his casual cruelty toward the palace servants.
"And now they want to make you king, savior, whatever."
"They want a figurehead," Casteel corrected. "A symbol to rally around. The drought, the famine—people are desperate for salvation. When you changed me, I knew I was out of time. I've been hoping for escape. I can't—"
Nero watched him, noting the elegant line of his throat, the way his dark hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. How desperate was he to try this?
"And what do you want?" Nero asked,carefully,gently, because Nero wasn't a bully.
Surprise flickered across the boy's features as if no one had bothered to ask him that question before. "Freedom," he said simply. "The same as you."
The word resonated between them, charged with shared understanding. Nero absently touched the back of his neck where the burning sensation had receded to a dull warmth.
"What is this mark?" he asked. "I've never had a birthmark."
Casteel's expression darkened. "The priests claim it's the divine counterpart to my wolf's crown marking. In my true mate it will appear the moment we touch because the gods ordained our union."
"And what do you believe?" Nero asked.
"I believe men with power will manipulate any circumstance to maintain control," Casteel said bitterly. "They needed this ceremony to succeed because they tried to make me shift a second time and I couldn't. Who knows what they've done to make it appear as if we're... connected."
Nero ran his fingers over the heated skin at his nape again. The mark he felt beneath his fingertips was undeniable—a raised pattern that hadn't been there this morning.
"They couldn't have known I would be there," he argued, though he wasn't sure why he was defending this madness. "I wasn't even supposed to attend the ceremony."
Casteel's eyes narrowed. "You were there to kill me. Why?"
Nero hesitated. How much should he reveal? This boy—this man—was supposedly his destined mate, yet minutes ago Casteel had been prepared to slit his own throat. Still, something about those piercing blue eyes demanded honesty.
"I fought in the rebellion," he said finally. "Lost everything to the royal family. When I heard they were crowning another king—"
"I'm not one of them," Casteel interrupted fiercely. "I never asked for this."
"And yet you bear their blood," Nero countered. "And now their power."
Casteel turned away, his shoulders tense beneath the bloodstained tunic. "A cruel joke of fate. My mother was a kitchen maid. The Emperor took what he wanted, including rape, as he always did."
The bitterness in his voice rang true. Nero had heard similar stories from other palace servants during the rebellion—women used and discarded, their children hidden away or worse.
"How did they find you?" he asked.
"It was insane," Casteel said, pacing now. "I’d have been drafted into the army at fourteen if I had ever shifted into a wolf. When I was small, I dreamed of having one but I never thought it would actually happen. Then I thought I was getting sick, but the pigs still needed to be fed, and there was a snake in the straw that shocked me. The shift happened in front of others." His mouth twisted. "The priests called it divine intervention. I call it bad luck."
Nero set the dagger down on a nearby table, a gesture of tentative trust. "And this... mark they claim I have?"
