The Hand That Feeds You

Prologue

• Azrael •

 Time progresses no matter how desperately we wish it not to. If I could go back and do everything properly—pay more attention to my mate, not worry abysmally about a person who was dead—I perhaps would have noticed how my life was deteriorating rapidly.

As someone who prides themself on the ability to notice small details, I hate myself for not understanding all of it sooner.

And when I finally put everything together, it was too late.

Far too late.

By the time I had finally understood what was happening, I was chained to a tree, a silver collar around my throat. And when I realized exactly how terrible I had been towards my mate, we were already in a hospital, hours or maybe days later, with someone I barely trusted having to quite literally slap sense into me.

I will never forget the first time my mate cried in front of me.

I will never forget because it was entirely my fault.

Neither will I ever forgive myself for the way I treated him during what would be nearly the worst time of our lives.

I said terrible things to him.

All of this is your fault, Grayson!

Said terrible things to myself.

How pathetic do you have to be?

And yet none of it surmounts to the pain of hearing my mate in tears, pleading for my forgiveness.

I'm so sorry, Azrael, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry—

The weeks in the hospital would pass in a blur as the staff struggled to pull all the silver out of my system, to keep me breathing. To stitch me up and make sure I didn't die from grief or blood loss. I would be in and out of consciousness for several days.

If I could go back in time and fix a single moment to prevent all of this, I would change the very first moment I ever hurt or neglected my mate.

There was only one problem.

I do not know when that was.

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Please comment if you enjoyeddd.

Lots of foreshadowing in this if you can tell lmao.

Byeeeeeeee.