Chapter 5: The Wolf Awakens

Kieran POV

It was simultaneously slow motion and fast moving. The gun went off. My wolf screamed inside me. But Adrian didn't fall. Victor had fired too late. The boy is hit by the bullet only by inches and on the wall behind him.

I was there already, already changing. My bones broke and reformed. My skin ripped open with fur. My hands became claws. I was no longer fully Kieran. I was a wolf and man and aggravated with rage.

Victor's eyes went wide. He threw the gun and pushed Adrian away, throwing the boy on the ground. Adrian came down on his side with a scream of pain. But he was alive. That was all that mattered. The boy was alive.

I crashed down on Victor as a truck. Both of us had fallen on the floor, and I was lying over him, my wolf having subdued him now, my claws in his breast. Victor attempted to push me away, attempted to battle, but he was not well adapted to my anger. He could not compete with a man guarding his child.

Victor's hand came up. There was a knife in it. It was a silver blade and even my wolf understood that silver was pain. He drove it toward my side.

I could see the flesh being burnt by the knife cut. But I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. I shook my teeth in the shoulder, of which I tasted the blood, and I could feel my teeth deepen in the muscles and bones.

"Kieran, no!" I was screamed upon from behind me by Evelyn. "You'll kill him!"

I didn't care. Victor had taken Adrian. Victor had attempted to shoot a child. My father had been poisoned by Victor. He deserved to die.

But then I heard it. A little crying and frightened voice. Adrian's voice.

"Daddy?" Adrian said. Just one word. Daddy. He did not know my name, but he was addressing me as Daddy.

The phrase lynched my wolf as a sword sliced a silk cover. I stopped. I turned and looked at the boy, and he was staring at me. His eyes were open and horrified. He was receding towards me in fear of the monster I had changed into.

I dropped Victor and repelled myself. The knife stabbing on my body was burning. The blood was streaming off my shoulder. However I needed to take the wolf back in line. I had to be human again. Adrian required a father, not a monster.

I had to make myself turn around. The bones snapped as they moved. Fur fell away. Skin came back. It was painfully bad, and I would have liked to scream, but I did not. I simply lay there on the ground with my legs open and my blood streaming down and my body aching.

Adrian stopped backing away. His eyes were a puzzled look at me. "Daddy?" but this time he said it was a question.

Evelyn came before I could reply. She took Adrian up in her hands and breastfed him. She kissed his head a thousand times, examining his body to see that he was alive and intact and sound.

"He's fine," I managed to say. My voice was not smooth due to the change. "He's okay."

She only glanced at me a second, and I caught a glimpse in her eyes that I had not seen in half a lifetime. It wasn't forgiveness. But it was something. It was one of the cracks she had put around herself.

Then she walked off and ran back to the back door with Adrian. My men now moved to prevent Victor from rising. He was seriously bleeding and the knife was still embedded in him where he fell on his run away to my claws.

"Get him tied up," I said to my men. The tone of my voice was becoming stronger. Wolf had been settling since he had heard that Adrian had been safe. Don't allow him to go out of this building.

I attempted to rise, and my legs failed. One of my men caught me. "You need a doctor, sir," he said.

"Later," I said. I glanced upon the door towards which Evelyn and Adrian had turned. "I need to go after them first."

I crept towards the door, and my entire body ached with pain. Each of the steps felt as though it were walking on broken glass. But I should be careful that they were all right. I needed to ensure that Evelyn did not vanish away.

There I spotted Evelyn sitting in her automobile in the outside of the warehouse with Adrian on her lap. She had him by the hand in a grip which suggested her fear that he would crack. The boy continued to cry; though the noises were becoming less pronounced. The fear and the exhaustion were getting him to sleep.

I opened the passenger door and entered. I had been naked, I was still bleeding, but I did not mind. Evelyn didn't even look at me. Her eyes had remained on Adrian, her hand stroking his hair.

"He's my son," I said quietly. "Adrian is my son."

She didn't answer. She didn't deny it. She sat down, and simply held Adrian, and cried down her face.

"I'm sorry," I said. The words were too little, too feeble. "I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I'm sorry I took Damien. I'm sorry I made you suffer."

Still nothing. She wouldn't even look at me.

"There's another boy," I said. "His name is Damien. He's Adrian's twin. He is five years old and does not know of the existence of Adrian. He doesn't know about you." I paused. "I kept him from you. I kept them apart."

Now she turned to look at me. Her eyes were filled with anger, and also, red and swollen with crying. Pure, burning anger.

"Take me to him," she said. "Take me to my other son. Now."

My phone rang before I had a chance to reply. It was my assistant. This was during the middle of the night and she was calling, so something was seriously messed up.

"Sir," she said. "There's a problem. Damien is gone. Your son--he's gone. He left the house an hour ago. He left a note. He claimed that he was heading back to the warehouse on Fifth Street since he knew that Adrian was in trouble.

My heart stopped. I looked at Evelyn. "My wolf felt it," she said. "The twin bond. He thought his brother was going to be killed.

"He's here somewhere," I said. I turned back and gazed at the warehouse. "He came to help save Adrian."

Evelyn's face went pale. She peeked out of the car window to see the dark and deserted street about us. "We need to find him," she said. "Now. Before Victor--"

An internal sound in the warehouse occurred. It was a scream. A young child's scream. But it wasn't Adrian. It was someone else.

It was Damien.

Victor must have discovered him there. Victor had snatched him before he could have been stopped by my men. And now my other son was in the mercy of a murderer.

Still holding Adrian, Evelyn jumped out of the car. But I grabbed her arm. "I'll go," I said. "You stay here with Adrian."

"No," she said. As she turned to face me her eyes blazed with fierce determination. "We go together. He's my son too. This time, I am not letting you take him out of my hands.