That night, Askold had knocked out a doctor, stripped him of his coat, and wheeled me straight out of the operating room while I was still unconscious.
Then, risking both their lives, he and Adam had hooked our veins together using the crude Hemotranslator Askold built himself. He fed his own blood directly into my dying body, hauling me through the rain on his motorcycle all the way down to the Lower District.
It was madness. An absolute, desperate gamble. If my body had rejected his blood and I had died, the shock of the broken connection would have killed him, too.
He had done the unthinkable to save my life—and in doing so, he sacrificed his only chance to find his missing wife in the Upper District.
After crashing his bike through the security gates during our escape, the authorities slapped a permanent containment order on him, locking a tracking bracelet onto his ankle that barred him from ever setting foot outside the Lower District again.
When I first woke up in this place, I thought I wouldn’t survive the night. I couldn’t. I was shattered down to my very foundation, terrified and disoriented. Seeing Askold standing over my bed felt like a hallucination.
And then... he told me the truth.
As it turned out, I had a real family all along—an elder Alpha brother, grandparents, even an uncle. My father had been born right here in the Lower District. My grandparents had given birth to twins, but something went wrong in the womb: my father was born completely human, without a trace of the wolf gene.
My grandparents carried the gene, and so did my uncle. But my father was branded a defective outcast.
Power over the clan was set to pass to his brother, a reality my father refused to accept. After finding a wife, he decided that as soon as she gave birth, he would murder his own brother and claim leadership of the pack by force.
But when his firstborn child—Askold—was born an Alpha, my father descended into paranoia. He nearly smothered baby Askold with a pillow, convinced his wife, Suzy, had slept with his brother and spawned a bastard...
Suzy exposed his plot immediately. My father launched a desperate attack, failed, and was exiled from the clan in absolute disgrace. Heartbroken, my grandfather handed him a stipend, secured him a one-way permit into the Upper District, and cast him out. They never saw him again.
Until Askold began digging years later, connecting the pieces, and realized we shared the exact same bloodline. And that was how... I turned out to be the alpha breeder.
My broken, dormant gene wasn’t a curse of my own making after all. My father had known the truth all along—and he had hated me for carrying his dangerous weakness.
But now, I had a family I’d chosen myself. I had people who genuinely cared for me. And more importantly...
"What’s going on in that head of yours?" Askold suddenly asked, inspecting my face with a slight frown. "You’ve gone too quiet."
"Just thinking..." I shrugged, pulling back slightly, reluctant to plunge into the past again.
"Are you nervous?" He pressed still.
"Terrified," I admitted softly, looking away. "He’s coming today, isn’t he?"
A warm, almost tender light flickered in Askold’s eyes. He glanced down at the watch strapped to his wrist. Then, he turned his head toward the window, a wide grin cutting his face as he announced:
"The car just pulled up."
My heart instantly jumped to my throat. I bolted off the sofa and nearly jumped out the window, pressing both hands against the cold glass while my eyes found the sleek black car parked outside the estate.
Without even realizing what I was doing, I tore down the stairs from the second floor, taking them two at a time.
"Be careful!" Askold warned me, but his words barely reached my mind.
I did not want to be careful––I did not mind a few broken bones if it meant I’d save a few precious seconds that way.
I had missed him to the point of trembling. Every single second spent away from him had been unbearable—every hour, every minute an agonizing torture that left me aching inside, barely able to breathe, eat, or sleep.
I had done nothing but wait. I couldn’t take it anymore.
My feet nearly flew over the floor with the urgency of my movements. I finally reached the main doors and then, bursting out onto the porch, I saw the rear door of the vehicle swing open.
"Mommy!"
"Matthias!"
A tiny white whirlwind hurled itself out of the car, ignoring Adam’s annoyed shouts, and raced straight into my open arms, his loud giggles filling the air like a dozen tiny ringing bells.
I dropped to my knees, opening my arms wide to catch him.
My little boy. He was finally back from the clinic.
He slammed into me with so much momentum I nearly lost my balance, but I held my ground, wrapping my arms tight around him and burying my face in his soft blonde hair. He smelled of sterile clinic halls, antiseptic, and something sweet—a mix that made my heart ache with pure tenderness and relief.
He was home. He was finally home. With me.
"Mommy, Mommy, I missed you so much!" he babbled, clinging around my neck so tightly he was practically suffocating me, but I didn’t care at all.
"I missed you too, my sunshine. So, so much," I whispered into the crown of his head, pressing kisses into his hair as tears welled up in my eyes.
I couldn’t get enough of his warmth, his voice, his mere existence. I had missed him so terribly. Every separation ripped my heart to pieces. But we had no other choice. We were out of options.
"Jane, a word," a rather stern voice suddenly shattered the moment, and I lifted my head to see Adam fanning his face gloomily with a blue file folder, gesturing with his chin toward the house.
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