Axel’s pov
We were in for it, Alaric and I, the moment we stepped through the palace gates.
Father was pacing back and forth like a beast in a cage, his hands curled tight as if they were already strangling someone. The guards around him were all but frozen, afraid if they so much as dared draw breath in his presence. His voice rattled the stillness of the courtyard. “Find them! I want my sons found!”
“Sir… they are behind you,” a guard said as he turned to us.
The second his eyes landed on us, the world stopped.
His anger became something else entirely. A rage so dark and consuming that I think for the first time in my life I was actually afraid of my own father.
“Inside. Now.”
Alaric and I didn’t even think to argue.
“On a scale of one to ten, how mad do you think he is?” I ask
