Cassius had always known Morpheus was strange. Not simply arrogant, not merely powerful but strange. There was something beneath the man's skin, something humming and coiled and unnatural, and it never sat right with him. Morpheus walked as if the world itself bent around him. As if destiny was nothing more than a script that he, personally, had written. As if every path, every life form, every breath of existence would obediently fall into place for him because he wanted it so.
And Cassius had seen that kind of delusion before.
He had grown up around kings and monsters, tyrants who thought themselves divine, vampires who believed their blood made them chosen by fate. But Morpheus's confidence wasn't simple ego. It was… evident by his bloodline, backed by something Cassius had never imagined would be real.
Half of his blood belonged to the King of Hell.
A hidden son. Born of a mortal woman. A creature with both human frailty and demonic supremacy fused in his marrow.
