Atonement - Book Four (Man x Man)

Chapter 3

The whispers surround him like phantoms in the night, murmuring in and out of his hearing range as if to taunt him into madness. Some were more precise, and some were faint murmurs; the voices of the two battling monotones came and went like the tide. 

Verando sits on Adriam's bed, gazing into the intensity of the fire that crackles invitingly in the marble fireplace. At the same time, the more petite man checks his heart rate and then instructs him to look up so he can inspect his pupils.

 "Voices? Plural?" Adriam asks, taking the taller man's face in his hands to turn his head from side to side. "I'd always suspected you would go completely mad; I just hadn't expected it so soon."  Adriam's tone is light, teasing him more than anything, an attempt to lighten him from his somber mood. "I thought Alpha always had his own opinions? Why the sudden concern about his input now?"

"He does. But there are two voices now. Fighting with each other." Verando shrugs out of the French man's grasp, standing to pace from the stress.

 It was hard enough to come here, fearing judgment and concern, without Adriam looking at him like maybe he'd finally sprung a leak in the mental dam that held back all his father's influence. "I've been thinking about what Fergus said, more so worrying I suppose. There hasn't been a second voice before. "

 It'd be a lie to say it wasn't practically consuming him. Someone shows you an impossible thing, a play of your history; it's hard not to wonder if there is truth in it. 

"Naturally. It was odd to witness; unicorns are rather strange animals; he said things that I wasn't even familiar with." Adriam responds, yawning, and decides to sit on the bed since his companion would pace like a caged animal instead. "Is that actually why you're here? To get my opinion on all of this?" 

Verando pauses, making a face. "Of course not." But he sighs, failing at the façade. Adriam has always been able to see right through him. "I hate it when you do that. Yes, Adam, what can you tell me about my father? I knew him, but not like you did, not like I should have. The man was absolutely out of his mind; everyone looked at me as though it was my fault I was not more in tune with this creature, but God's be damned, Kavanza didn't make it easy to want to follow this path." 

His relationship with Kavanza was strained, to say the least; leaving him at the orphanage after his mother's death was a hard sin to forgive. Visits had been brutal; they were only to try to source an heir and inspect the children for signs of the white gene appearing. On the rare moments when he or his brother was pulled out for testing, it was to suffer at the comparison of Acer and Caspian. 

Verando had shown the most promise, as his aggression could be triggered much more quickly than his brother's, and a female was the least of his father's interests. 

Kavanza often reasoned that Temptrest was causing his wolf to take longer to present, and having her eliminated would give them more time to focus on their training when he came to visit. Verando spent most of his time protecting his sister, whereas Caspian pulled ahead with his selfish nature. 

Comparing the three boys was a constant disappointment and a continual sore spot.

A claim of the bloodline was never laid upon the children living in the Spanish ghettos, for having outward presenting, gray-haired children was far too embarrassing for a decorated general living among humans. Less they proved valuable with the sought-after gene; he had no desire to keep them with their mother dead.

 "Surely, if this were possible, he would have 'wanted' us? I don't know him as someone who would willingly give up that sort of power." Verando's childhood had been filled with begging the tyrant to take them with him on his escapades, to not leave them parentless in a city where rank meant so much. Losing his brother to the madness of their 'training' and tending to his younger sister, it was hard to imagine they wouldn't have been better off if this had been true.