Born of Shadows (4 page)

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 asshole 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.

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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…

It all made sense.

Caillen couldn’t breathe as reality assaulted him.

Holy crap. I’m a prince
.

Now ain’t that a bitch? All the times in his life he’d had to scrape for every credit and here he was related to one of the richest men in the Nine Systems.

Yeah, that would be my luck.

The emperor took his hand again. “Don’t you remember anything about your life before you were kidnapped?”

“No. Sorry. Are you sure you have the right person?”

He let go of Caillen’s hand to pull out his wallet. He flipped it open to a picture and pressed it.

There was a beautiful woman in royal robes holding a bald baby boy who couldn’t even sit up on his own. She was smiling and waving the baby’s hand. “Radek… say, ‘Hello, Daddy.’ ” But what held Caillen entranced was how much the woman favored him. They had the same coloring, the same eyes, nose and lips. Same dark hair…

Something he’d never shared with his sisters or parents. His dad had told him he took his coloring from a great-grandparent who’d died before his birth.

Now he knew that had been a major lie too. He saw his real mother’s face and there was no denying it.

She was his mother.

And with that came a forgotten memory of his sister Kasen telling him once when they were kids and she’d been angry at him that he’d been found abandoned in a garbage dump. That had garnered her the worst beating of her childhood. He’d written it off as typical sibling harassment and a stressed parent’s overreaction.

But if he really had been found in the garbage, that explained why his father had gone ballistic over her taunt.

Weird as it was, a lot of things he’d questioned over the years now made total sense.

Shit…

I am royalty.

erwhelmed by his new reality, he looked up at the father he’d never met and wondered about the rest of his blood family. “That’s my mother?”

His father nodded as sadness darkened his gaze. It was obvious that even after all this time, the event still hurt him. “She died trying to fight off your kidnappers. I found her in your nursery, and…” He clenched his eyes shut as if trying to blot out that memory. “I lost everything that mattered to me that day. And I do mean everything. What good is it to rule the world when you can’t even protect the ones you love?”

Caillen turned his attention back to the smiling image of the mother he’d never known—he’d been just a kid when his adoptive mother had died. Even though he’d lived with her, he barely remembered her either, and he had no memory whatsoever of the woman who’d given him life and then died trying to protect him. He didn’t know which one of those scenarios saddened him most.

His father blinked back his tears and swallowed hard. “I loved your mother, Radek. She was beauty incarnate. And I’ve never remarried. No woman ever came close to her in any way and I didn’t want to shame her memory by marrying someone else to fulfill an obligation. Even a royal one. Not when she gave her life for us.” He closed the wallet and held it over his heart. “I wish she’d lived to see this moment. To see
you
. You favor her so much that it’s like I have you both back at once. I can’t believe I finally found you after all these years.”