Rexford extended his arms, handing the baby to Mads. The little one snuggled up against him and buried his face in Mads’s neck with a coo.
“Thank you.” Mads hugged onto Caspian and held him, eyes closed, taking deep box breaths.
“I only meant to be gone an hour at the most. I honestly thought I’d end up taking Justin for a month or so while we waited. I didn’t—” Mads rocked gently with Caspian making his soft coos of happiness, being fawned over by an omega. A little alpha if Marquis ever saw one.
“Marquis?” Mads shivered, his wheedling voice mid-sob.
“Yes?”
“Baron is going to be punished, right? He’s not loose anymore, right?” Mads sniffed hard, tears flooding his nostrils.
“Baron is dead,” Rexford answered quietly, his voice soft and full of a kind of hope, if Marquis could put a finger on it.
“Can we go home, now? Please?” Mads squinted his eyes shut and continued his deep breaths.
Marquis shook his head. “There needs to be a lot of talking, Mads. I thought you ran away, left us.”
“No. How could you think that? I would never… I love you, Marquis. I love our ba—Rex.” Mads glanced up to give Rexford another stare as if trying to piece together the puzzle of eighty years between then and the moment.
“I tried to… Father said you’d left willingly. I was forbidden from trying to reach out.” Marquis found tears stinging his eyes, and his heart sang with Mads near him. Their bond, small and weak, was still present, humming in his chest.
“But you don’t want me back. After what Baron did to me. After all the cheating…” Mads closed his eyes and held onto Caspian, fawning over the little one as if trying to reclaim the baby Rexford once was.
“It wasn’t cheating. Nothing that happened to you was cheating, Papa.” Rexford’s face went pink as Marquis turned to stare up at him. He’d never used that word with anyone,papa. “Nothing that happens against your will is cheating.”
“I—thought I wanted it. Sometimes I did. It’s a haze.” Mads choked on his words.
“I’ve done worse, I fear.” Marquis took a deep breath. “I believe my betrayal was willing. Perhaps. Maybe at first or…”
“If there were others, I understand,” Mads said through a whimper of a breath.
“One other. After you left, Doris, from the council. She was there for me. She raised Rexford. She inserted herself into my life and I—we were married after a time.”
Mads stiffened and nodded jerkily. “I deserve that. I can understand. I suppose I cannot go back to you—”
“No! No. You can. Please.” Marquis bit his tongue. “When the doctor says.”
“But Doris.” Mads patted Caspian’s back.
“Doris was in league with Baron. I’m afraid we don’t know if she manipulated Father with magic or worse.” Rex didn’t call her mother, whether to spare Mads or because she’d lost the title; he wasn’t certain. “She died with Baron.”
“And Damien… We found his grave.” Marquis patted the back of Mads’s hand.
“Damien… Yeah. I think I remember… Baron accidentally…” Mads shuddered. “That part I remember—a moment of clarity. I wasn’t the same without Damien there keeping the spells up…”
“Anything you can tell us puts more pieces together, Mads.” Marquis couldn’t help holding Mads’s hand, squeezing it, taking deep breaths as his familiar scent came back.
“He kept using Damien in shifted form as a battery sort of to contain his potential paroxysm… It was how he was surviving all the wish…” Mads shook his head and shuddered.
“Potential paroxysm?” Rexford interrupted.
“Rapture. I think you called it. When wish is ingested, it accumulates in the body. It increases your magic capacity, yes, but it crystalizes in places it shouldn’t because there’s only a certain amount of wish a body can hold. Beyond that, it culminates around the heart and in the viscera. You crave more because it gets used up, but the physical mass remains, but the last power in it doesn’t have any potential for use, only energy… Baron figured that out early when users with omegas were dying slower.” Mads swallowed hard and held the baby out to Marquis. He took Caspian and backed up to stand when Mads stood, eyes locked on Rexford. “Damien was used up, so he tried ripping the fox from him to put in another omega to use them.”
“Did it work?” Marquis cradled Caspian as he stared around curiously.
“Not as intended, no. In place of my magic, there is only emptiness now. Emptiness and an animal.” Mads glanced from Marquis to Rex. “You look so much like your father, you know?”
Rexford shrugged and, surprisingly, opened his arms, welcoming his papa in for a long hug.
