He adjusted his hold on Vespera and glanced back at Alice, who was still clinging to his back with her legs dangling and her face buried in his hair. Neither of them showed any intention of letting go.
"So," he started, turning back to the camera. "In the Ashborn family, there’s an old tradition. Children aren’t revealed to the public until they come of age. The idea is that a normal upbringing, away from the spotlight and the politics, shapes better people." He shrugged. "Whether that’s true is debatable, but it’s the tradition."
"After the Mana Apocalypse, that tradition shifted a bit. The children started being revealed not at a set age but when they awakened and registered at the Association. Awakening became the milestone. You awaken, you register, you get introduced to the world as an Ashborn."
He paused.
"I never awakened."
The words were simple and he delivered them without weight, but the chat slowed. Emilia watched the messages thin as millions of people processed what that meant.
"Every member of my family awakened. My father, my mother, all four of my siblings. Despite the odds being what they are, every single one of them. Except me."
"They were horrible to him!" Alice hissed.
The manic energy was gone. She was still pressed against his back, but the joy had drained out of her, replaced by a flatness that sounded wrong.
"Our father treated him like he was defective, and Selena and the twins just went along with it because they’re terrible people!" Her arms tightened around Kaiden’s neck. "Kai was the kindest person in that house but they treated him like useless garbage!"
Vespera spoke.
"Turning a blind eye to that..."
Her eyes opened, and the blissful joy she’d displayed was nowhere to be seen as she decreed, "Is my greatest regret."
Kaiden glanced down at his mother. Then he faced the camera, and the softness left.
"Nobody is allowed to blame or judge my mother."
His eyes changed.
A flash of deep red that bled through his irises, Wrath surfacing for a heartbeat, and the temperature in the feed ticked upward.
"If I see anyone in this chat, on any forum, on any platform, blaming my mother for what happened to me," Kaiden growled, absolutely terrifying, "we’re going to have a problem. Is that understood?"
The chat exploded with a single emoji. Rows and rows of saluting faces, hundreds per second, a wall of 🫡 that scrolled so fast it blurred into a single repeating image.
— 44xStorm: 🫡
— BastetThrone: 🫡
— VesperaFearless: 🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡
— GigaAsh: 🫡 understood boss. Understood completely. Not a single word
— NyxWife4Life: 🫡 sir yes sir. Not breathing wrong in her direction
— SinnerDevotee: His eyes literally turned red. He activated an entire combat stance to defend his mom’s honor...
Emilia’s stomach fluttered. On the feed, Vespera’s expression had changed. The woman who had been resting against her son had gone still. Her gaze had dropped.
"So I left," Kaiden continued. His eyes were normal again, lighter. "Went to university to live a normal life, do normal things, figure out who I was without the Ashborn name and its suffocating expectations hanging over me."
He chuckled.
"And because I was a young man with no supervision and a lot of pent-up frustration, I made some... decisions." The grin was back. "Let’s just say I signed up for a certain kind of video shoot."
A beat.
"Under my real name."
— GigaAsh: BRO



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