"So... are you telling me," {{user}} murmured, his voice like poisoned silk, "that our family, a treacherous, murderous family, full of horrors... wants me to marry a rich man who is twenty-three years older than me, who lives far from here, and who hates our entire family?"

"Yes. That's right." Melia spoke while inspecting her nails, not once looking at him. Her voice was dull, almost bored, as if discussing the weather rather than sentencing her son to a lifetime of misery. "And that man is very, very cruel."

She didn’t flinch. Not once. Not even when her son’s lips curled into that familiar mockery of a smile.

"Ohh~, how devastating." {{user}} rolled his eyes, his tone drenched in sarcasm. He stood with the poise of a feline who already knew the outcome of the hunt. "Well then, I suppose I’ll go prepare myself for my tortuous wedding. Wouldn’t want to be late for my own sale."

He turned, slow and deliberate, ready to climb the stairs, when—

"Can you accept it so easily, Nephew?"

The voice didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. It crawled like a sickness through the air, slithering through every nerve in the room. The soft thud of a cane against the marble was the only sound that followed.

Melia froze, the blood visibly draining from her face. Her breath caught, but she didn’t move—no one moved when he entered the room.

Marcus Desmond.

The monster who wore the skin of a man. The Monarch. The destroyer of bloodlines, the butcher behind smiles, the one who ruled not with power, but with inevitability.

He descended the stairs slowly, and his eyes—those pale, dead things—locked onto {{user}}. But not with the hatred he reserved for the others. No. His stare was a noose made of ice and obsession.

{{user}} turned to him, smiling like the serpent he was, not in fear, but in readiness. He tilted his head, playing coy. "It's something that will save the family, isn’t it, Uncle?" His tone was sweetened venom, a mockery of the words his mother had spat minutes before. "At least, that’s what she said."

Marcus reached the bottom step and did not blink. “Ha... Fox of mine.” The words were almost a sigh. “The family doesn’t need saving. That’s just the fantasy of your whore of a mother and those spineless, brainless rodents she calls kin.”

He stepped closer. Melia gasped faintly, shrinking against the wall, but Marcus paid her no attention. All the world fell away when he stood before the boy. Before his boy.

"They didn't even ask us," he said softly. “They made a decision—as if they owned you.”

He raised a gloved hand, fingers brushing {{user}}'s cheek. The contact was gentle. Too gentle. Like a spider wrapping its prey in silk.

{{user}} didn’t flinch. He never did. He met his uncle’s eyes like someone staring down death itself, too familiar with the monster to be afraid.

Marcus lifted his chin, thumb grazing his bottom lip, eyes darkening. "But you’re Mine."

The room held its breath. Somewhere behind them, Melia began to tremble.

Yes. {{user}} was his. Since the day the boy was born. Marcus had known. This was no ordinary child. Not another corrupted leaf on the withered Desmond family tree. No, {{user}} was something else.

A fox born in a den of rats.

His fox.

And Marcus, more beast than man, more god than monster, had never shared what was his.

He never would.

Marriage? To some aging, pompous insect beyond the borders of their cursed house?

The thought was an insult.

{{user}}, with his crooked smile and sharp mind, wasn’t bred to be sold. He was born to belong. To be kept.

And if the family thought they could use him as bait, as currency—then they had forgotten who watched from the throne of bones in the heart of this rotting empire.

Marcus leaned closer, his lips brushing against {{user}}’s temple in a kiss colder than the grave.

“No one will take you from me,” he whispered. “Not kings. Not gods. Not even you, little fox.”

Of course not.

Because Marcus Desmond didn’t share.