Born of Shadows (The League Gen 1 #3)(3)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Never let me see your underbelly.

Flashing a wicked grin, Caillen couldn’t resist shouting to them. “It’s not my friends in high places you need to worry about, Gov. It’s the low ones who are going to crawl up from the sewers to cut your throat. You know, my brother assassins who’ll be honor bound to come after you and the rest of your sycophantic morons while you sleep. Forever Sentella! We’re cleaning the gene pool one fatality at a time.”

The mention of the phantom rogue agency of assassins out to challenge the corrupt governments that were led by the League and her goons sent the media into a frenzy and made the governor look around as if trying to find an assassin in the crowd. Like he’d be able to ID one. Beautiful thing about Caillen’s friends—by the time you saw them coming for you, your head was already rolling across the floor.

But as much as Caillen wanted to pretend otherwise, he knew his friends couldn’t help him today. He’d gotten himself into this and for once there was no escape.

I’m dead. Completely. Utterly…

Painfully.

Twenty minutes and counting…

Might as well accept it. It was what it was and he’d volunteered for it.

“I’m so sorry, Cai.” Kasen’s tear-filled words whispered through his mind from her last visit.

Not half as sorry as I am. Darling always said his sisters would be the death of him. Little bugger had been right.

C’mon. Better you than her. You know that.

Yeah, that thought not really comforting right now. I should have drowned her when she broke my favorite toy fighter as a kid. It’d been the only toy he’d had and she’d stomped it into pieces in a fit of anger because he’d stuck his tongue out at her.

It’s all right, Cai. Calm down. You’ve faced worse.

Yeah, but I didn’t die then.

There was that and he was getting tired of his brain bitching at him over things he couldn’t change. He’d kept his promise to his dad. Kasen was safe.

Him, not so much.

Sliding down the wall to crouch in the small space between it and his bunk, Caillen banged his head against the wall, welcoming the distracting pain. Why couldn’t the bastards just come and kill him already? The waiting was the worst part. No doubt that was their intention. Make it as miserable as possible.

Closing his eyes, he rubbed his hand over his face. At least he wasn’t leaving Shahara in a bind. Now that she was married, she had someone else who could protect and take care of her.

Which was what really pissed him off at Kasen. There’d been no sense in her making that run. Yes, money was good. But it wasn’t worth your life and it wasn’t like they were in dire straits for it. Not like they’d been in the past. Their freakishly rich brother-in-law would have gladly given her the money had she only asked Syn for it.

Stupid moronic idiot.

Selfish—

“You ready, convict?”

He dropped his hand and opened his eyes to see the warden in front of his cell with six guards. He was flattered they thought he’d be that much trouble. And his spirit was certainly willing to give them a fight and then some. However, they had a neuroinhibitor on him that prevented him from doing anything other than glaring at them. If he tried to attack, the inhibitors would bite down, flood his body with pain, lock his muscles tight and send him straight to the floor.

Worst of all, it’d make him piss his pants.

They would never have that satisfaction—not until he was dead and couldn’t control his bladder anymore. After all, he was a Dagan and Dagan, no matter the poverty or situation, were proud people.

Show no fear to your enemies. Only contempt. Never let anyone look down on you. You’re just as good as any of them. I don’t care who they are. Better in fact. In our world, Dagans are royalty and you, my son, are a prince.

His father had trained him on that and he held those words tight as he faced them.

Activating the electromagnets in his cuffs that caused his hands to lock together behind his back, the guards lowered the force field that kept him inside his cell.

Caillen curled his lip as he looked at them. “You could have waited until I stood up, guys. Kind of hard now.”

The warden returned his smug glare with one of his own. “We’ll wait.”

He snorted. Were they really that afraid of him that he couldn’t even stand up without them sweating?

Wow, Cai, even a hard-ass assassin like Nykyrian would be impressed with that feat.

Then again, they had good reason to fear. But for the inhibitor, he’d already be free and they’d all be bleeding or dead.

But not today.

Caillen leaned his back against the wall and wiggled his shoulders until he made it to his feet. The guards moved forward with trilassos—a noose attached to the end of a three-foot pole—to put around his neck so that they could drag him forward and keep him six feet away from them.

He laughed at them and their fear. “Bloody wankers.”

They tightened the noose around his neck until he was coughing from lack of oxygen.

“Careful, men. We don’t want to kill him in here.”

The warden might feel that way, but the look on the guards’ faces said they’d be more than happy to send him to death fifteen minutes early.

Caillen wheezed and coughed as they dragged him down the lackluster hallway and out into the common ground where spectators, dignitaries and newspeople waited to catch a glimpse of the legendary smuggler who, until now, had been more myth than real. The networks would make a fortune charging for this show.

Ironic really. He’d had to fight every minute of his life to scrape together two credits, but his death would make some a**hole a nice rent payment for a few months.

I should have taken them up on the offer for a tranq. ’Cause right now as he walked up the platform and neared that gleaming blade, his panic was seriously setting in.

Ignore it.

How? Look around you, moron. You’re about to die. And there was at least a hundred people here to witness and gloat. Damn them all for their sadistic entertainment.

< size="3">Don’t think about it.

Something hard to do since he was being forced to kneel under a ten-foot blade that was shining with metallic bloodlust over his head.

You can do this…

I don’t want to die. I don’t. I need to live. I got plans. Well, not really, but I could make some. Some that don’t include my head rolling into a plastic bucket that still bears stains from the last execution.

He ground his teeth together to keep from begging for his life. He wouldn’t give them that satisfaction either.

“Any last words?”

Caillen glared at the warden. “Yeah… See you in hell.” He looked over to the group of three giggling young women standing in the dignitary section. One of them bore a striking resemblance to the warden. “And for the record… your daughter has a hot ass.”

She let out an excited shriek.

The warden’s face flushed with rage.

The guards tightened the noose again, choking off the rest of his words.

Caillen’s sight dimmed as his ears buzzed. Oh yeah, much better to strangle to death.

Not.

They forced him to his knees, then bent his head down on the arc that had been designed to cradle necks and hold them in place until the blade fell. Still, he choked as the guards refused to loosen the noose. He heard something loud, like maybe someone shouting, but he couldn’t tell what it was or where it came from.

It was almost over.

A few seconds more.

Just let go.

Relax…

He was too much of a fighter for that. He tried to hang on to every gasping, ragged pain-filled breath. But the fight was useless as he heard a loud clattering sound.

In the end, the darkness took him under.

3

Caillen came awake to a vicious pain throbbing around his throat and a worse one pounding in his head. Yeah, he was in hell. He had to be to hurt this badly.

“Is he coming around?”

He didn’t recognize the concerned tone that belonged to an older man.

Someone pried open his eyelid and rudely flashed a light in his eye that made his headache pound even harder. Groaning, he flinched, moving his head away.

Gently, the doctor turned his head back and held it in place while he continued to test the dilation of his eye. Good thing Caillen’s arms were strapped down or the man would be bleeding over the intrusion and that light would be shining out of an orifice the gods had never meant to hold it.

“He’s conscious.” The doctor lowered his voice as he stepped back from the bed and gave Caillen a reprieve from that vicious light. “Do you know who you are, son?”

He licked his dry lips and cleared his sore throat before he answered raggedly. “Caillen. Dagan.” Or rather that was who he’d been before they beheaded him.

Did the keepers of hell not know who was sent to them?

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Caillen had to blink several times before the doctor’s pudgy phalanges came into focus. At least he hoped that’s what he was seeing…

If not, that man was real popular with women.

“Three.”

The doctor turned to his right and bowed low. “He’s awake and alert. But he’s still weak from the asphyxiation and the subsequent resuscitation.”

Resuscitation? From beheading? What the hell had they done to him and why would they bring him back?

More torture?

Gah, what did I do now?

Oh wait, that was too much to count. The point was what had they caught him doing now…

Caillen scowled as an older man stepped out of the shadows and approached his bed. Clean-shaven and well-kempt, he had finely boned features and vivid blue eyes. There was an air of refinement that seemed to emanate straight from the man’s DNA. Yeah, he was definitely an aristo. A major one at that.

Why would someone so high ranking be here to see a common piece of condemned filth?

The man’s lips trembled as his eyes misted—that concerned Caillen more than anything else. Was the man that angry or that upset?

Oh shit, don’t tell me I slept with his wife.

Or worse, his daughter.

The other thing Darling always complained about was that one day Caillen’s wandering penis was going to get him killed…

Was this the day?

“Do you remember me?” the man asked hesitantly. “Even a little?”

Did he owe him money? Caillen searched his mind, but couldn’t think of any time or place he’d have seen this man. “Uh… no. Should I?”

The old man’s lips quivered as he took Caillen’s hand that was bound in a padded lear cuff to the bed rail and held it in a cold grasp.

Completely weirded out by that, Caillen jerked his hand away from his grasp and balled it into a fist. But because of the restraints, he couldn’t move it far.

“You’re my son, Radek. Don’t you remember?”

Oh yeah. The man was high. He had to be sucking in some kind of serious fumes for that delusion. “I’m Caillen Dagan. My father was a smuggler.”

“No.” There was no missing the anger underlying his defensive tone. “You are Kaden Radek Aluzahn de Orczy,” he carefully enunciated each name as if trying to impress it on Caillen, “and you are my son. You were only a toddler when you were kidnapped. I paid the ransom they demanded. All of it. I followed every stipulation they made but they never returned you. My security detail assumed they’d killed you. Even so, I searched relentlessly for some sign of you for years. Nothing was ever found. Not a single trace… Not until now.”

Baffled, Caillen turned to the doctor. “Bullshit.”

The doctor shook his head. “You’re a lucky man. When the prison staff ran your DNA to see if you were a match for any unsolved crimes, it popped up your old kidnapping report and the DNA that was on file from your childhood hairs they’d collected. You are indeed his missing son.”

No, no, no, no, no.

“I came as soon as they notified me they’d found you,” the man interjected.

The doctor inclined his head respectively before he continued. “His Majesty arrived right before they issued the order to behead you. One more second and it would have been too late.”

Majesty… That title permeated the fog in Caillen’s mind. If this guy was an emperor and he was his son…

That would make him a…

Oh yeah, right. They were so screwing with him. This was complete and utter crap. “I’m not a prince.” No krikkin way. Fate would not be that bored today.

Nah, this was some shit one of his friends was pulling. “Who put you up to this? Nykyrian or Darling?”

The doctor smiled. “You are indeed a prince, Your Highness. We double-checked your DNA against your father’s when you were brought in and there is no doubt whatsoever. You are Emperor Evzen’s son. His only son.”

Caillen’s mind reeled. He might not recognize the man, but he knew the name Reginahn Evzen Tyralehn de Orczy. Emperor to both the Garvon and Exeter systems, his name was synonymous with power and wealth.

Was it really possible?

No. No way. His sisters and parents had always said he was family. If he’d been a foundling, wouldn’t they have told him? Given how poor they were why would his father take in another mouth to—

ther’the son I always dreamed of. I’m so glad to have you as part of my family…” His father’s often uttered words now took on a whole new meaning. All his life he’d assumed his dad was grateful for the additional Y chromosome in their all-female home. But if he’d taken him in…

“I’ve risked everything to keep you alive. Don’t let it be for nothing. Not after all I’ve given to keep you with us.” Was that what his dad had meant when he’d said that one day Caillen would understand?

Was that why his father had been so adamant that he never disclose his DNA? Why his father had been so damn paranoid about everything? When it came to conspiracies, the man was as creative as he was psychotic. But if he’d known who Caillen really was…