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“Nerida Taylor is a part of your past.” He stiffened. “I suggest you let her go just like she will learn to let go of you. You will never see her again.” Looming over me, his tone turned thick and terrifying. “I’ve dedicated my entire life to finding you, Aslan. And now that I have, you will rule in my stead. You will learn that this is your rightful place. I will do whatever it takes to turn you into the man you would’ve been. And once you have accepted your place and proven you are my trueborn heir, you will inherit all that I have built. And you will do it gladly.”
I held his stare even as pain tugged me down. “You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do.”
He nodded, clasped his hands, and stood. Looking down at me, he said softly, “You are my son, so I will treat you as such. I am obligated to love you and treat you with respect because you are my flesh and blood. But...you are also a stranger. We are strangers to one another, which makes us enemies.”
His face distorted with the darkness that he hid so well. Darkness I sensed because it sang to the darkness inside me. I might have lived across the world to him. I might’ve been raised by good, kind people and fallen in love with a sweet, wonderful Australian girl, but I couldn’t escape this man or ignore the potency of his blood.
“You get one chance, Aslan. One chance to prove to me that you are still mine, or...I will make you mine.”
I stiffened. “I will never be yours.”
He sighed. “Please don’t make me show you how easily a person can be broken.” Touching my cheek, he studied my face as if imprinting me. “We are more alike than you want to admit. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can be happy.”
Shoving his hand away, I held his eyes so the room didn’t turn upside down. “We are nothing alike.”
He chuckled sadly. “And I suppose it’s up to me to show you how wrong you are. I’ll tell you what. Once you are strong enough, I will request a paternity test. How about that? If you’re so sure you are not my son, then let us have blood speak the truth. But...if the results show what we already know, then you are mine, Aslan.”
His hand suddenly pressed against my throat, shoving my pounding skull into the pillows. His touch pinned me with dominance, but he didn’t choke me. He merely held me in his paws and growled, “I love you, Aslan. As the stranger you are and the son you will become. I only do what I must to protect my empire so I can one day give it to you. And I know you won’t believe me, but remember that each time I hurt you, it hurts me ten times worse.”
Letting me go, he looked at the floor as if unable to hold my stare. “You have four days to decide. Four days of convalescing before you are moved to your new quarters and we will begin your education.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “Rest well, my son. You will need all the strength you can muster.”
Chapter Forty
*
Aslan
*
(Heart in Javanese: Ati)
“WAKE UP. WAKE UP, ASLAN. TIME TO see your new home.”
I cringed from the annoying tapping on my cheek, cursing the pain that encroached on my body the more sleep ebbed away from me. I wanted to dive back into the dreamless state. It was better there. Painless there.
“Efendim, I really must insist. I gave him the light sedative as you requested. I obeyed your guards and your desire to move him down here. But...this will not do. He needs sunlight for health. He needs rest. He’s not ready—”
“That’s my decision to make, not yours.”
My eyes opened just in time to see Cem whirling on an older guy. A guy with a stooped back and bowed legs, his dark eyes intelligent but also kind. Far, far too kind to be mixed up in this den of beasts.
“It’s been three weeks,” Cem hissed. “His stitches have dissolved. The X-ray you took showed significant improvement to his ribs and hip. His fever is mostly gone, and the antibiotics have kept him alive. I wanted to begin his training weeks ago, yet I obeyed your suggestions. But now, I’m done waiting—”
“He’s not ready, efendim.” The doctor rolled his shoulders into an even deeper hunch. “Injuries like this take time. His system has a lot to overcome. Outwardly, he might be on the mend, but inwardly...he still has much to—”
“Enough.” Cem crossed his arms over his immaculate graphite suit. “He is my son. He carries the Kara bloodline, which makes him strong. He is strong enough. But...if you are this insistent, tell me one reason why he can’t endure a simple lesson? Tell me and I’ll have him sent back to that sick room he’s been going mad in.”
Cem shot me a look, his eyebrows raising when he noticed I was awake. With a quick nod, he looked away again, glaring at the doctor. “He’s doing himself more harm up there than he will be able to down here. He attempted to escape last week. He tried to knock out a guard a few days after that. If he’s well enough to fight, he is well enough for this.”
“That is instinct, efendim, not proof he is healed. His body is still weak. His leg is still—”
“Badly mangled and will always have half his calf missing, but you did your job. He’s alive. I called you here to assess and clear him for his lessons, not to argue with me.”
The doctor flashed me a look where I’d been laid on a bed carved from rock. Thick furs insulated me above and below along with a pile of woollen blankets stacked on the floor beside the three-legged stool serving as a bedside table. But the missing softness of a mattress wasn’t the only sign I was no longer in that awful room with its locked doors, barred windows, and mocking courtyards below.
Cem was right that I’d tried to escape on a leg that had no strength. I’d fought back tears full of horror as I’d unwrapped the bandage around my calf one night, coming face-to-face with what they’d done to me.
