But she had changed. Only a day before, she would have trembled at the prospect of his impending transformation. Now, she stood and faced him, her arms folded tightly across her chest. The motion made the hem of the T-shirt hitch up, exposing the fronts of her creamy, white thighs. The sight was painfully arousing, and he closed his eyes in shame as he remembered what he’d done to her on that first night.

“Why would you say something like that to me?” Her lower lip trembled, not in fear, but anger. Seemingly oblivious to his distress, she tightened her arms around herself, lifting the shirt a critical inch higher.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, unable to face her or look anywhere near her. “I’m sorry.”

It was the first time he’d said those words in earnest to anyone. The realization shocked him, almost as much as if he’d been struck by lightning.

He said it again, for the reprehensible way he’d forced himself on her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured over and over, for every harsh word she’d had to endure from him. And for the fact that she was caught up in his father’s treachery, and it would ultimately cost her her life.

And she would die. There was no way to stop it. He couldn’t stand up against the might of his father’s adoring cult. Cyrus was nothing, no one, with no power to offer them or riches to seduce them with.

That’s when he appreciated the full horror of his humanity. They were at the mercy of fate, he and his Mouse, as he had been at the mercy of his father’s whim for centuries.

There was one way he could make what he knew of his father’s plan work in his favor. When they turned him, he could turn Mouse.

Cyrus remembered his wives, how he’d loved each of them and lost them to his father, and how they had died hating Cyrus. But then, they’d never really loved him to begin with. Perhaps as humans they had held some affection for him. After he’d changed them, they’d become different. The first had become a mindless harlot, seeking her pleasure wherever she could find it, but never returning to Cyrus’s bed. Two had prayed fervently that the Lord would take pity on them and spare their souls. Both had taken their own lives, one by exposure to sunlight, the other by bathing in a basin of holy water. The others, including his beloved Elsbeth, had been lost to his father’s appetite for power.

Cyrus couldn’t allow Mouse to meet such an end.

Still, his mantra of apology wouldn’t stop, nor the stinging tears that rose in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”