Chapter 19: Gods, Fathers, and Other Leashes

Elias blinked once. Slowly. As if the weight of the streetlamp halo above them had suddenly doubled and was pressing down on his shoulders with every syllable his father uttered.

"What comes next?" Elias repeated the words, flat now. "You make it sound like I've been offered something."

Jonathan tilted his head, his amber eyes glinting in the lamplight. "Do you think I'm here because I don't have anything better to do?"

"No, I think your ego is the one driving you here. I'm disowned; that, in my books, means that we have nothing to do with each other anymore." 

Jonathan didn't answer immediately. He simply stared, like Elias was a riddle carved from familiar stone, one he had once understood in youth but now only recognized by shape. The silence stretched, polished and suffocating, until it gleamed with all the things left unsaid.

"You were disowned," Jonathan said finally, tone cool, "because you made choices that left us no alternative."

Elias's laugh was soft. Fractured. It cracked against the quiet like a pane of glass warping under heat

"Choices," he echoed. "You mean I didn't bind myself to a god-approved alpha, didn't chant the family litany loud enough, and didn't bend far enough to make you proud."

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. Every word cut clean. Made sharper by how little they shook.

"You were supposed to serve a purpose," Jonathan said, like it still mattered. Like Elias hadn't already lit that purpose on fire and scattered the ashes in a place too sacred to touch.

Elias tilted his head, slow and elegant, the ghost of a smile playing at his mouth but never reaching his eyes.

"I am serving a purpose," he said, each word deliberate. "Just not yours."

A muscle in Jonathan's jaw ticked.

"I came to offer you protection, Elias. Not an apology. You may have left the family, but you're still marked by what we are. And by who you met."

There it was. The real reason. The shadow curled under the words.

Victor Numen.

The gods.

Inheritance, divine or not, came with a cost. And Elias had always known the Clarke family wouldn't pay a price unless they thought they could collect something greater in return.

Elias took a single step forward, not close enough to bridge the distance, just enough to make sure the light caught his face fully. Unflinching.

"You were never going to protect me," he said, his voice like silk cut on glass. "You were just going to use me until I was too broken to be useful."

Jonathan's expression didn't crack, but the flicker in his eyes gave him away—a flash of something that might've been fear, if fear ever wore tailored suits and called itself legacy.

"You have danger latched to you," he said again, quieter now, more like a truth than a threat. "And this is what you decide to do? Walk around the capital like you're not carrying the weight of an entire bloodline's mistake? Victor could've killed you on the spot for what you did."

"What did I do?" Elias echoed, one brow lifting with surgical precision. "You make it sound like I poisoned his wine or seduced a god out of boredom."

Jonathan stepped forward, just enough to narrow the space between them but Elias didn't flinch. His voice didn't rise. 

"I didn't do anything," Elias continued, his tone calm, clipped. "I had a conversation. One I didn't plan, didn't chase. Just an exchange of words in a room I didn't ask to enter. If that's enough to summon divine wrath, then maybe your gods are more fragile than I thought."

He shifted, coat catching the wind, rings flashing faintly beneath the streetlamp. The movement was elegant. Dismissive.

"And if that matters to you, if it matters to them, then they can come deal with it themselves," he added. "You don't get to crawl out of the ruins of fatherhood to play the martyr now."

Jonathan's jaw worked, but Elias didn't give him time to speak.

"Just forget that I exist," Elias said, softer now, like the words weren't for his father but for himself. "As you and the others have done so easily until now."

And then he turned.

Back straight. Shoulders squared. Walking like the pavement belonged to him and the shadows had nothing left to take. Matteo was already opening the car door, gaze tracking Elias like he was waiting to be needed.

Matteo entered the car with a quiet thud of the door, not speaking immediately. The soft hum of the engine activated with a flicker of light across the dash, and the autopilot engaged—a silver-threaded interface lit in gentle blue, the kind of ether-infused system only people with real access could afford. It didn't even make a sound as it pulled them smoothly into the low-traffic lane and began its route.

He didn't look at Elias. Not right away. Just pressed his palm briefly to the console, as if grounding himself.

"It seems," Elias murmured, gaze fixed forward, "like one of your questions was answered."

Matteo finally glanced at him. His jaw tightened, but not with anger, something quieter than that, something that sat just beneath the skin like pressure before a storm.

"The family reached out to me," Elias said, shifting slightly in his seat, the fabric of his coat rustling like a whisper of tension that hadn't yet decided where to settle. "I wasn't expecting them."

Matteo's gaze stayed on the road ahead, though the car didn't need him to drive it. The lights outside flickered across the windshield in long, slow stripes, painting his expression in gold and shadow.

"I've heard about your father," he said finally, voice low. "From you. From others." A beat. "But he is… a force."

Elias let out a breath, short, not quite a laugh. "He was trained to be. Sermons and strategy. Conviction as a weapon."

"He looked at you like he was still deciding whether to forgive or detonate you."

"That's how he loves," Elias replied, his voice so soft it almost didn't register. "Or claims to."

Matteo didn't say anything. 

The silence between them wasn't empty. It was laced with mutual understanding, with the kind of tension that defies comfort but dares the other person to stay anyway.

"He doesn't come without orders," Elias explained after a while, his tone distant and almost clinical. "He came because someone higher ordered him to. Maybe because of Victor. Maybe it's because of something I accidentally touched.

Matteo's fingers drummed once on the console, slow and thoughtful. "You think your project was bait?"

"No," Elias murmured resignedly. "It's just a leash."

His gaze drifted to the window, to the city sliding past in quiet gold and blue, all motion and nowhere to rest. "They're making sure I'm still under control. Like always. Just dressed it better this time. Gave it funding and a title."

The car hummed softly, streets unfurling in obedient lines ahead of them. A long pause settled, and then—

"Can you let me off at the dorms?" Elias didn't look at him. "The night… was ruined."

He didn't say by whom.

Didn't say how tightly the old chains still fit under new sleeves, or how quickly the memory of that voice, his father's voice, had slipped beneath his skin like it had never left.

Matteo's jaw shifted, not from protest, but from the effort of not saying anything he couldn't take back. He tapped the screen, redirecting the autopilot.

"Sure," he said, finally. 

Elias closed his eyes and leaned back, fingers folding over the curve of his watch like it might tell him a different kind of tim, one where this wasn't how things ended. Or started again.