"She was not as they say," is what bursts from him, first. "She was not a whore -- she married unhappily, and fled her husband. She could not obtain a divorce, even on grounds of mistreatment, as he was powerful on the island, with the judiciary populated by his friends. She removed herself to another island entirely, and when she met my father, she truly wished she could be Mrs. Hamilton, and, for a time, he and she tried to make that fiction real. That was the earliest I remember: my older brother, my parents both. And then something changed."

He pauses, a long moment, trying to gather his words. "Later, I learned it was that her former husband had sued for divorce, and accused her of adultery. They could no longer pretend, as her secrets were published." Publication was a court requirement, to give notice of the court hearings to a woman who could not be personally served with papers -- but, in this case, it was a deliberate cruelty, as well.

"My father did not remain for long after that," he recalls. "Perhaps it was for the best, as his debts burdened us, as well. After, though, it was very hard -- all of us worked. I went hungry, often. She was omega, and she wanted, more than anything, to have an alpha who would have taken care of her and her sons. It was before I understood the cage -- that she must have wanted that only because being without it was terribly worse."

Perhaps this explains some of his ignorance, some of his tendencies.

"It was not two years of this when she and I both took very, very ill, with the yellow fever." A soft breath. His eyes have grown hot, with angry and grief-stricken tears, and one falls, as he shuts them tight. "She died holding me, while I was too insensible with fever to know -- we were found a day after, perhaps two."