Kaden frowned at the thought, and pushed each hand inside his opposite sleeve, gripping his arms and hunched forward. Why should I be the only one who gets to escape he'd said to Tragos, used that as reasoning to convince him to run too, to convince him to run with Lil T. And now Tragos was dead and they'd lost the baby and there was no way in Hell or Hades or any of the eternal-torment places that definitely existed that Kaden deserved a new beginning when neither of them got one.
He didn't deserve a pancake either, but Hecate still gave him one. The fluffy pancake steamed, waiting to be spread with butter, with syrup or honey or any number of the sweet things in little jars in the middle of the circular table. His hunger roared, and deserving or not, he freed his hands and pulled the plate toward him. "So what?" he asked, looping an instinctive, protective arm around the plate while he slathered the pancake with butter. "You guys are gonna give me a new identity and I just go and... be that?"
"No," Hecate poured another serving of batter into the pan, swirling it to even it out. "No, you get to choose who you want to be. You can build a new identity, and I'll help you bring it into reality." Dare she trust Hermes with the official paperwork, Hecate wondered. He certainly was no friend of Ares or Apollo, but she wouldn't be making any decisions about who else to widen the circle of secrecy to just yet.
"I don't want a new identity," Kaden said, already feeling it was a useless thing to say, but the words forced their way out, pointless or not. "I want my brother back."