What’s a person supposed to feel when their family name gets dragged into the room? What should crawl up their spine when someone says you’ve got your daddy’s eyes but your mama’s mouth, or that your little brother walks like you, talks like you—looked like you too, before the drugs ate him up?

Pride? Maybe satisfaction?

Sure as hell not this bitter, boiling hatred. Not this sick churn in your gut that makes you wanna spit up your morning coffee and the cheap beer from lunch.

Aemond gritted his teeth. Fists clenched so hard he could feel the blood pulsing against the torn skin. He glanced down at the mess—at the knuckles split open and the teeth scattered across the gravel like loose change. Hell if he knew if it happened on the first punch or the tenth. Didn’t matter.

It was bound to happen, wasn’t it?

“Inbred freaks.” That’s what that twat said—him and {{user}}, just as they were leaving that piss-stained bar. Aemond had only gone in to grab a damn pack of cigarettes. Wasn’t like he’d drag his sister into a place like that for fun. Wasn’t that kind of night.

But that bastard—like everybody else in this sorry-ass town—couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut. Always something about them, about their blood, about their “traditions,” about how it’s all still happening, like they’re just a pair of backwoods animals crawling outta their kin’s bed.

And the truth? Don’t even matter, does it?

He was still burning with it. Rage like wildfire under his skin. He slammed through the front door of the house without so much as a glance back to see if his sister had even gotten out of the truck.

His gray shirt stuck to his back, soaked clear through at the collar. Sweat dripping down his neck like a warning he didn’t hear.

“I should kill him.” His voice was low, near a growl—mostly to himself. His boots tapped hard on the wood floor as he paced. “He’s got this comin’.”

Was he talking about the broken bones? The jaw hanging wrong? The shattered teeth? The busted fingers?

Was he talking about the idiot at the bar? Or the fire inside his chest? The shame? The history? He couldn’t say.

All he knew was—it burned.