Damian
My gaze was icy as my attention focused solely on the half-blind mutt who had dared hurt my precious daughter. I held my daughter in one hand and stormed towards the boy, feeling the other children cower as they sensed the impending storm.
Without giving him a chance to talk, I barked, “You hurt my daughter! Explain yourself. or I will end your little life in a second!”
The boy, trembling, stuttered, “I… I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
My grip tightened on Anna, protective instincts in full force. “An accident that leaves my daughter in tears? Unacceptable. You must pay,” I sneered.
By this time, I could feel people gathering to watch in fear and curiosity, their whispers creating a backdrop to the escalating tension.
“He wouldn’t let me see his face, Daddy,” Anna explained, her voice shaky. I turned back to the boy.
“Is that true? Did you hurt my daughter because she wanted to see your face?” The boy hesitated before nodding.
“She wanted to see my face and tried to remove my eye patch. I told her no, but she insisted, jumping on me. We both fell to the ground, and that’s when she got hurt.” He nervously explained, and I could see the fear in his eyes and the genuine innocence in his voice.
I sighed, realising it was a childish dispute. I was about to tell my daughter how she can’t force others to show their faces and how everyone has a reason for what they do when Anna, still clinging to my arm, stared at me with the cutest blue eyes, which had me wrapped around her fingers. I couldn’t ignore her pain because it reminded me of the difficulties Ava had to go through just to make sure she had survived.
And now this mutt there hurts her just because she wanted to see his eyes. What’s so special about it? I became curious, taking a deep breath, the initial anger subsiding as I looked at the boy, who was no more than six to seven years old, almost the same age as my daughter, if not older.
“Take off those ugly eye patches. If my daughter wants to see your face, then she must,” I demanded, but he shook his head reluctantly.
“Take it off!” I insisted, my frustration building.
“My mother said I should never take it off,” he said in hesitation, clearly uncomfortable with the idea.
“My daughter is my princess, and anything she wants, I get her, and now she wants to see your pathetic face, so I don’t care what your mother said, so now take off those ugly eye patches.” I said, grabbing the edge of the eye patch with a little force, determined to unveil the boy’s face, but he resisted, clutching onto it tightly. Damn, the boy was strong.
“Please, don’t,” he pleaded, his eyes revealing a mix of fear and vulnerability.
Anna, sensing the tension, reached out to me, her small hand gripping my trousers as she looked up with teary eyes.
“Daddy, he didn’t mean to hurt me. It was an accident,” she whispered softly, which took me by surprise to see her defending him even after he hurt her.
Now that I was caught between the boy’s resistance and my daughter’s plea, a dilemma settled over me. The playground fell silent as onlookers anxiously watched the unfolding drama.
I needed to cement my authority in the werewolf academy to pass the message to every other person not to dare disobey me, and unfortunately, I was going to use the little man in front of me as an example so that anyone who tried to mess with me would know that he or she would face the consequences of my wrath.
“Take it off!” I repeated it with irritation. He was lucky he was just a little boy and not a grown man.
“My mom would be angry with me. She said, I should never take them off.” He begged, and his pleas were filled with desperation. I hesitated for a moment, conflicted between my anger and his genuine fear, but I had to put my daughter first.
The people watching held their breath, and Anna’s grip on my shirt tightened. Despite the boy’s resistance, I firmly removed the eye patch, and in that moment, as the eye patch fell to the ground, a chill ran down my spine. Steel grey eyes stared back at me, a mirror image of the man I currently despised and whose face I had been craving to punch.
The revelation of the boy’s steel grey eyes sent a shockwave through me, and for a moment, I stood frozen, unable to comprehend the uncanny resemblance he had to a certain asshole.
Was this Liam’s son, or Doppelganger?
My heart skipped a beat as I noticed a small, almost imperceptible red mark by the side of the boy’s chin, which was exactly like that of Ruby. Doubt crept into my mind. Could it be a mere coincidence, or was fate playing a cruel trick on me? I shook my head, attempting to dispel the unsettling thoughts, but the resemblance was uncanny.
He looked very much like Liam and had Ruby’s red mark by the side of his chin.
Maybe I was just seeing double.
But it seemed like I wasn’t the only one taken aback as the playground fell silent and everyone seemed to admire the boys beautiful steel grey eyes that shone brighter than the stars’. People gasped, and so did my daughter, clearly taken aback by his beauty.
A mix of surprise and shock swept across the playground as the boy’s vulnerability became exposed.
Anna looked between us, her innocent gaze holding a question. The boy, still teary-eyed, seemed oblivious to the tension in the air. As I met his gaze, a mixture of emotions played on my face-surprise, realisation, and a tinge of regret.
“Who is your father? What’s your name?” I questioned the boy in a mix of disbelief and confusion.
How could he have those annoying eyes, although he was much more handsome than Liam, who seemed to have aged more than he was supposed to.
The boy stammered, picking back the eye patches from the ground to cover his eyes. “My name is Alex, sir, and my father is far away.”
A surge of conflicting emotions washed over me as I processed the fact that his father was far away. So he wasn’t Liam’s son. Good. It was just a coincidence that they looked exactly alike.
“What about your mother?” I questioned him, raising an eyebrow as my heart stopped beating for a second as I awaited his answers.
“She is also far away.” The boy stammered, not meeting my eyes, and I let out a sigh of relief. It felt good to know that I was only mistaken and acting paranoid that this child might be Ruby and Liam’s just because he had some similarities to their features.
I was probably just feeling insecure about the fact that Ruby had asked Liam for help instead of me. Their closeness had been getting on my nerves recently, so I had to do all I could to make her accept my proposal so that I could take her to my pack as soon as possible.