“Damian?”
“Hm?”
“What happened to your father?”
He turns to me, frowning a little. He probably never thought I would ask. For a while, he remains silent, and I wonder if he will answer me at all. He might not. I heard about the Black Brothers’ story from others, but I don’t believe that’s something they would spread themselves.
Damian sighs and starts talking while looking at the city. “Our father was never able to handle his Alpha compulsions. Alphas are born to dominate. We have strong fighter instincts and don’t react well to orders. That also means we experience stronger urges to fight and are more prone to violence. My father was such a man. If he was annoyed, he would hit. If he was bored, he would fight. The constant fighting with the Vampires made it worse, and our mother’s Luna power was too weak to help. He was addicted to this.”
He stops for a minute while the waiter takes away our plates. When he resumes talking, his hand is on mine again, though his eyes are fixated toward the city.
“...Addicted to all that violence. It might have been okay if he was only fighting vampires or rogues, but he just didn’t know when to stop. He killed ruthlessly, even members of the pack. No one could stop him at the time. He was waytoo strong. He even beat up some of his closest friends, even the Beta. Even us. His sons were Alphas, so why shouldn’t he fight them, too? We were just kids, but it made no difference. Anything that upset him was a good enough reason to hit us.”
“What about your mother?” I can’t help but ask. “Wasn’t she around to protect you guys?”
“No, she was already at the hospital at that point. We never said a thing, but she knew. That made her worse. She couldn’t endure being powerless, but her sickness was... Anyway, she couldn’t do anything for us. We had to endure it for years, tiptoe around our father or wait for it to pass when he used his fists. I still have so many memories of when he suddenly got crazy and hit anything around him... Even his own children. ‘Werewolves are fighters,’ he always said. He almost killed me several times. He sent Nathaniel to the hospital once. I had to carry my brother on my back all the way there. He broke Liam’s arm when he was just eight. I hated that man so much, Nora, you have no idea. Just the thought of being of the same blood as that asshole made me want to puke. We were too young to fight back, but Nate and I trained. As time went on, we stopped being passive and started hitting back.”
I can’t even imagine what kind of life they had growing up... And they were only children! It’s a miracle the three of them got to where they are today with this kind of story behind them.
“What about Liam?” I ask.
Damian shakes his head. “He was too young. We did what we could to keep him out of it. Nate and I knew how it would end, and we didn’t want Liam to be in the middle of this mess, too. I didn’t even want Nate to be part of it, but of course, he didn’t listen. So we trained, and we waited. We waited for an opportunity to kill our father.”
I can’t act scared or even shocked by Damian’s words. With what the brothers went through, they might have been the ones to die if things had gone differently. Also, I realize that what Damian did was also his way of protecting his brothers. How could he endure seeing his younger siblings hurt for so many years while holding his hatred in? Back when Alec beat me, I had no one to hold dear, no one to protect. Things were different for the Black Brothers. Liam knows his older brothers shielded him from their father’s madness, yet he still couldn’t escape it.
“His Beta knew what we were planning, but he didn’t say a thing to our father. He had come to hate him, too, yet he had to obey. Our father even beat up his son once, to punish him. How could he not despise him? That’s when I understood I had more allies than I thought.”
A faint smirk appears at the corner of his lips for a split second. He helps himself with a glass of wine while I drink some water. The dishes between us are getting cold, but neither of us cares. I’m too immersed in his story to think about my plate.
“So, Nate and I got ready, taking our time. We allied with rogues like the Mura siblings.”
“Bobo’s family?”
“Yes. Our father was so harsh, he never wanted to take in new wolves in the pack, even some desperate families that stood at our borders. It was almost too easy. When they saw how strong Nate and I were getting, and our Alpha potential, many submitted without a fight. They didn’t ask for anything as long as I wasn’t like my father. The pack got so big so quickly, we couldn’t believe it. Until then, we had thought we would have to wait for years until we could take my father head-on!”
“Why? Wasn’t it only about dueling him for the Alpha position? What does it have to do with the size of the Blood Moon pack?”
Damian stays silent for a while, and I wonder what he is so reluctant to say. Eventually, he sighs and looks at me straight in the eye. “We wanted to be sure that, no matter the outcome, my father wouldn’t be able to survive.”
“...What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t sure to win, Nora. If I died during the fight, Nate and I wanted to be sure someone would finish the job. And if someone did, we had to be sure my father’s wolves wouldn’t take him out.”
It takes me a few seconds to realize.
“...It was about Liam. You wanted to be sure that even if you died, Liam could kill your father and take his place.”
Damian nods. “I knew I could hurt him badly enough, but I wasn’t sure I could win. Nate came up with that idea. That even if he and I died, we would make sure Liam killed him. We also had to make sure no one would kill our little brother before he could get to our father and that people would support him afterward.”
“Hence the Blood Moon Clan. It wasn’t just a branch clan; you wanted it to be able to take on your father’s pack.”
Damian chuckles. The waiter comes back to take away our empty plates. My mate grabs my hand once again, intertwining my fingers with his.
“Back then, it was still called the Black Moon Clan, but yes, that was the idea. However, it didn’t even come to a real fight between the two groups. When I turned nineteen, I defied my father while we were alone. He didn’t take me seriously and attacked me. We started fighting in his office. We made so much noise that a lot of people came. Nate, Liam, the Betas, and about twenty people each from the Black Moonand Blood Moon Clans. But it turns out, most people from his pack were actually cheering for me.”
They once again underestimated how despised their father was. Or maybe people felt Damian already had what it took to be a better Alpha. In any case, I’m not even surprised.
“The only people still rooting for my dad were holding onto the fact that he was the one that had chased all the vampires away. I can’t really blame them for that, though. He was an insane and violent man, but as an Alpha, he was still the strongest wolf around.”
