Chapter 99 The long-lost family
"What is your name?" Orion asked, his voice shaking. He had just realized the impossible truth: they were exactly the same. He couldn't understand how this could be true, and the shock felt like a heavy weight in his chest.
"Aren't you scared?" the man teased. Orion's confusion turned into a sudden flash of anger. He grabbed the man and slammed him hard against the cold stone wall.
"I want to know who you are," Orion said. He started to laugh, but it was a sad, wild sound. He felt overwhelmed by a mix of fear and a strange sense of relief that he wasn't alone anymore.
"We are going to be trapped here for the rest of our lives," the man said, his voice eerily calm. "Don't ask everything at once; we need to save some secrets for the long days ahead."
But Orion couldn't wait. A desperate hunger for the truth burned inside him, and he was ready to do anything to find out who this man really was. Just as he opened his mouth to demand an answer, a sharp clack echoed through the room. The heavy gate was swinging open.
They both froze. The sound of steady, rhythmic footsteps began to fill the space, getting closer and closer, yet the shadows were too thick to see who—or what—was approaching.
"Who is there?" Orion shouted into the darkness, his voice cracking with tension.
He didn't get a verbal answer. Instead, he heard a soft, familiar hitch in someone's throat. It was the unmistakable sound of Esperanza catching her breath, hiding somewhere in the gloom.
The air in the cold, damp chamber suddenly shifted from tense silence to a frantic, metallic clatter. Blinded by a thick cloth tied around his eyes, Orion began to thrash violently, his wrists raw and bleeding as he fought against the heavy iron shackles bolted to the stone. Every pull sent a stinging vibration through his arms, but he didn't care about the pain.
"Esperanza!" he roared, his voice tearing through the stillness like a physical blow, filled with a desperate, gut-wrenching need to know she was still alive.
From somewhere deep in the shadows, a faint, trembling voice drifted back through the dark. "Orion..." she whispered, her breath hitching with relief and exhaustion.
At the sound of that name, the man pinned against the wall went completely still. The mocking smile he had worn just moments ago vanished, replaced by a look of pure, bone-chilling shock. His eyes widened, searching Orion’s face as if seeing it for the very first time through the haze of his own confusion.
"Orion..." the man breathed out, his voice now thin and fragile, barely a ghost of its former strength. "My... my son?"
The words hung in the air, heavier than the chains. The man’s body, which had been tense and defiant against the hard stone, suddenly went limp. He was utterly startled, his mind reeling as the reality of who was standing before him finally took hold. He wasn't just looking at another of his kind; he was looking at his own flesh and blood.
The heavy iron door groaned on its hinges as Esperanza stepped out of the shadows, her footsteps light but her presence filling the suffocating room. She moved with a purpose that ignored the cold stone and the smell of damp earth, stopping directly in front of the rusted bars of the cell where Orion lay bound. Her eyes swept over his bruised skin and the way the shackles bit into his wrists, and a flash of white-hot protective fury ignited in her chest.
Slowly, she turned her head, her gaze locking onto Ezra with the sharpness of a polished blade. "What have you done to him?" she demanded,
Ezra didn't flinch. He stood his ground, his silhouette tall and unyielding against the torchlight, his expression as impassive as a statue. "He is a prisoner," Ezra replied, his voice dropping several degrees into a chilling, clinical frost. "I was treating him exactly like one. No more, no less."
Orion’s veins were pumped, He strained against the chains, the metal clashing against the stone with a violent, rhythmic ring. "I am not your prisoner!" he spat, his voice thick with a feral, raw anger that seemed to vibrate the very air in the cell. He leaned his head forward, his teeth bared in a snarl. "Release me. Just once. I will show you exactly what happens to men who treat me like an animal."
Ezra’s eyes snapped toward the cell, then back to Esperanza. He took a step toward her, his eyes widening with a mixture of disbelief and genuine alarm. "Have you even looked at him?"
Ezra asked, his voice rising as he gestured toward the shadow-drenched figure in the cage. "How could I possibly release a monster like him? Look at the rage in his eyes, Esperanza that isn't a man anymore. It’s a storm."
"Orion, stop!" Esperanza’s voice cracked, a fragile sound that seemed to hang in the damp air between the bars. She pressed her forehead against the cold iron, her breath hitching as she looked at him. "Stop saying those things. They make me feel like..." She trailed off, the sentence dying in her throat as she pulled back, her eyes filled with a sudden, sharp flick of uncertainty.
Orion froze, his raw aggression momentarily silenced by the tremor in her tone. He leaned his bruised face closer to the shadows of the cell, his voice dropping to a low, urgent rasp. "What? What do they make you feel like, Esperanza?"
She swallowed hard, her hands trembling at her sides as she finally forced the truth out into the open. "Like you are going to drain me," she whispered, her voice laced with a deep-seated terror. "Like you are going to reach out and pull every bit of power from my soul until there is nothing left but an empty shell."
The words hit Orion harder than any blow from Ezra ever could. The anger drained from his face, replaced by a look of pure, agonizing betrayal.
"I would never do that to you," he vowed, his voice thick with a desperate sincerity. "How can you even think that? Do you not trust me? After everything we’ve been through, do you really see me as a predator?"
But Esperanza couldn't meet his gaze. The seed of doubt, planted so carefully by Ezra’s whispers, had already begun to sprout. She turned away from the cell, her shoulders hunched as if trying to shield herself from his very presence.
"Look! I told you!" she cried out, turning toward Ezra as if seeking refuge in his cold logic. "I told you he speaks like that!"
Ezra didn't move. He stood in the flickering torchlight, a slow, dark smirk spreading across his face like ink in water. He watched Orion’s desperate struggle the way the man strained against his chains, not just for freedom now, but for a scrap of the trust he had just lost.
"Oh, I see it, Esperanza," Ezra said, his voice dripping with a cruel, rhythmic satisfaction. He leaned back against the stone wall, crossing his arms as he watched the boy's agony. "I am truly enjoying this. Look at him, squirming like a fish caught on a dry dock, gasping for air that isn't there. His helplessness... it’s the most honest thing about him."
"Let me out!" Orion bellowed, his body thrashing against the stone wall with such force that the shackles groaned in the masonry. "Just once! Release these chains and I will show you exactly who is going to squirm! I will make you crawl on this floor until you beg for the mercy you never showed me!"
Esperanza flinched at the raw, jagged edge of his voice. She turned, her eyes swirling with a mixture of terror and heartbreak, only to find Ezra standing there with that same unbearable, oily smirk.
The sight of his satisfaction was like a physical blow to her.
"Stop it!" she cried out, her voice breaking as she stepped between the bars and the man who held the key.
"Both of you, please... no more of this! This isn't who we are!"
Ezra’s smirk widened into a jagged, triumphant grin. He stepped closer to the bars, his eyes gleaming with the sadistic joy of a man who had just pulled the final string on a puppet.
"Oh?" Ezra asked, his voice dripping with mock surprise and cruel delight. "Have you finally met your father, Orion? The man who gave you that 'monster' blood you're so proud of? Your long lost family"