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The memories pour into me. My body shakes as they hit one after another and the answering power that flows with it. I feel myself falling, yet I trusted my mates not to let me crash wherever I was in the waking world. I blink rapidly, clearing the fogginess of my vision away.
Lycus was kicking rocks on his way home from school. He appeared to live in a nice neighborhood. Yet as he got closer to home he groaned when he heard his mother and father arguing. From what I gathered from his thoughts, this was a constant thing he would witness. Lycus walked up the porch steps and opened the door. He tossed his bag in the corner of the entry, he heard something smash followed by a loud thump. Lycus sniffed the air and scented blood before curiously walking down the hall to see if his parents were okay.
In his child-like mind he knew they fought but that was it: yelling and arguing but never was their blood. He knew his mother ruled the home and his father was a drunk but never laid hands on her. No, he saved those fists for Lycus, and Lycus always took it, believing if he did his mother would never have to. However, as he stepped into the kitchen he was horrified by the scene that lay before him, his mother had her hands up in defense, blood coating the tiled floor red. And for the first time I laid eyes on this man, it was Porter. Lycus' father and he was as scary as he sounded.
“You fucking whore,” his father screamed angrily as his mother begged and sobbed on the floor, blood streaming down her face. Lycus takes in the scene, noticing the meat cleaver in his fathers hand, drenched in his mother’s blood.
“Please, Porter. Listen to me!” His mother pleaded.
“No, I am sick of your lies, Karla! Was I not good enough for you? That you had to run back to the prick your parents chose for you!” his father screamed at his mother.
“No, that's not it, I did it for you!” she screamed but Porter scoffed, and snarled. Her words making him angrier.
Suddenly, his father brought the meat cleaver down on her head. Lycus' scream was deafening and blood-curdling as he watched his father beat her head in, crushing her skull and spraying blood everywhere. He charged at his father wanting to save his mother but his father tossed him off, flinging him away and into the dining table.
He brought the meat cleaver down again, caving her face. A vicious growl tore from Lycus and his father startled; looked over at him just as Lycus lunged and shifted. He tore into his father who was momentarily shocked at his son yet. Lycus, not understanding he had shifted only saw red, animalistic snarls tore from him as he yelled at his father.
“Of course you’re that mutt's son,” his father roared at him and his hands turned black with his dark magic as he lobbed the ball of shadows at his son. It wrapped around his face and Lycus suddenly couldn’t breathe, his vision darkened as he tried to rasp in a breath and he didn’t understand what was happening to him. He only understood he couldn’t breathe before everything turned dark as he passed out.
When he came to, it was to his father clipping a muzzle on him. Lycus blinked up in confusion. His father glared down at him and for a few seconds he had forgotten what his father had done.
“Mom?” he murmurs yet no sound came out, just a strange, confusing whimper. Just then, his father clipped a collar around his neck. Lycus didn’t understand, until his father yanked on it and he got a glimpse of himself in the glass sliding door by the back patio. He had shifted!
Lycus stared at himself, shocked and tilted his head to the side only for his father to jerk on the lead and rip him to the back doors. He was confused because both his parents were Dark-Fae, yet for some reason he was a Were-Fae. Only as he turned to try to run back inside does he see his mother lying dead in a pool of her blood. Lycus loses it and tries to break free when his father ties him to a tree and picks up a baseball bat.
Each blow I felt, each blow grew harder as his father beat him from an inch of his life leaving the bat bloody. Lycus laid in a pool of his own blood that had turned the grass and dirt beneath him into mud from his blood. He tried to shift back but couldn’t, tried to break free but couldn’t. His father was trying to kill him yet he kept healing before he would die. Yet Lycus wished for death for days as he endured his father’s tortures, and learning of his mother’s infidelity, until one day it just stopped.
Lycus lifted his head as he heard the sliding door open and he got a whiff of his mother’s decomposing body inside the house. His father was drunk yet again and angry only this time he didn’t beat Lycus but grabbed the leash and dragged him up the side of the house. Lycus was too weak to fight him, his body constantly healing had exhausted him to the point he had one broken back leg. His jaw hung limply as his ability to heal stopped. He was limp as he was dragged across the cold ground, the leash strangling him but he no longer cared hoping he would die before whatever his father would try next.
He passed out just as he heard a door open. Only when he woke up, he found himself tied to a step out the front of a huge stone building. He looked around in fear of his father. Yet doesn’t see him, but sees his car driving off down the road. He whimpered before collapsing yet as the sky turned dark and the snow fell, he shivered in the cold, and his bones ached more. If his injuries wouldn’t kill him, he hoped the cold would.
My stomach twists painfully as the memory fades and a new one takes its place.
ChapterForty-Nine
It was the day Lycus met Kalen, the day Kalen’s bully beat him almost to death. Lycus' blood boiled as he watched for a few seconds before intervening, the rage inside him was like an erupting volcano. It grew hotter and hotter as the memories of his father standing over his mother and beating her to death returned to the forefront of his mind.
He couldn’t save her, but he could protect the boy being pummeled by someone much older. So that was what he did. Lycus' protective nature, I watched it grow to obsession. Kalen became his personal project to keep safe. Not only from the other kids but also the teachers.
Kalen was the weakest of the fae. Lycus should have been like him, a Dark-Fae. And he couldn’t bear watching the helplessness on his face, the same helplessness he felt tied to that tree muzzled and unable to fight back. Kalen distracted him, kept him intrigued as he watched who everyone called the strange boy, the outcast.
Yet as he watched Kalen, he realized he was the strongest of all. There was something odd about Kalen, something dark and hidden, and for years Lycus watched over him waiting for him to come into his own, only for him to remain the same.
It was odd seeing Kalen from Lycus' perception, he saw so much more than we did, saw a different side of Kalen I was yet to witness myself. A darker side that was destructive and dangerous, so much worse than I could have even known without his memories becoming mine.
Something drew him to Kalen as if magnets, destined to collide on the same collision course. Lycus believed his growing feelings for Kalen were wrong until he no longer cared, and Kalen became his world, his infatuation.
They were on their own, it wasn’t much longer after they escaped the orphanage, Lycus had killed the priests that raped Kalen when they were done beating him. He would not allow them to use Kalen against him and felt guilty for what happened to Kalen. So he killed all of them, leaving not one teacher that refused to help or look after Kalen. Anyone that participated in his torment earned death. After that he knew they had no choice but to run. So they did.
They were living on the streets, and in a dangerous neighborhood. Sleeping behind a dumpster one night by a busy nightclub. Some drunken men stumbled up the alleyway.
Lycus tenses because there was something familiar about the scent he could smell. He believed he was being paranoid and shook the feeling away until one the men stopped to urinate on the dumpster they were sleeping next to.
Lycus eyed the man disgusted as he pissed on the ground. He growled and the man jolted clearly not seeing they were there. Yet his startled expression turned to a sneer as he looked them over. Kalen was fast asleep, unaware of the danger that surrounded them. The man was grubby, his light blue shirt stained and he quickly zips himself up and steps back.
“Look what I found?” he called out to his friends down the alleyway making Kalen jolt and wake up, he rubbed his eyes as Lycus moved to get in front of him in a crouched position ready to shift. Kalen fell to the side not expecting Lycus' abrupt movement. Lycus growled menacingly as footsteps drew closer. His whole body then twisted, snapping and breaking as the shift took over.
He would kill any man that dared try to touch Kalen. Yet before the shift took over, the other three stepped forward and Lycus, stunned by his fear, froze as he set his eyes upon a man that starred in his nightmares for years.
