Chapter 220: Fatherhood
It was long past time to have a man-to-man talk with the kid. Magnus saw clearly that his adopted son was cut from a different cloth. He was far too sharp and perceptive for an eight-year-old. And even though no blood shared their veins, Damian had formed a deep, unspoken bond with every member of their family. To avoid troubling anyone, the boy wandered the mansion by night rather than by day.
“Hey, Damian. What are you up to?”
Stepping into the bedroom, Magnus found the boy sitting on the floor by the expansive floor-to-ceiling window, his expression utterly blank. Damian flinched at the sudden intrusion, shifting a dark, guarded gaze toward his adoptive father.
“Nothing,” he muttered, giving a faint shrug of his thin shoulders before returning to his silent vigil at the glass. Out in the yard, Caramel was eagerly chasing a stick thrown by Matthias.
“Don’t want to go play outside?” Settling onto the floor beside him, the Alpha swept back the curtains with a single motion, flooding the room with natural light.
“No,” the boy snapped, his voice flat and unyielding.
“Did you two fight?” Magnus asked calmly.
“No!” the child answered more sharply, his hands clenching into tight fists. “I just don’t want to play those stupid games!”
Magnus tensed in an instant, feeling a surging shadow of the boy’s aura spike dangerously out of control. The Alpha noted with quiet surprise that the kid’s presence was frighteningly potent—raw and fierce—even as Damian maintained a deceptively calm exterior.
“Then what do you want?” Magnus asked directly, turning his body to face the child completely.
“I want to search for Amelie! Not play childish games while she’s out there somewhere!” the boy roared, finally snapping.
Magnus reacted with blinding speed. Leaping to his feet, he yanked the kid away from the window just as the thick glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards that cascaded across the floor. In his grip, the child thrashed furiously like a cornered wild animal.
“Let go of me!”
Looking down at the boy’s flushed face and wildly flashing eyes, Magnus let out a heavy breath and set Damian back down onto his feet.
“I’ve let go. Now what? You know damn well we’re searching for her and doing everything humanly possible…”
“You’re not searching hard enough! I’m wasting time here when I could have found her myself!” the boy spat, angry tears brimming in his eyes.
Another sharp crack shattered the air. The room’s full-length mirror and framed glass prints exploded into a rain of fine splinters.
Magnus looked calmly at the heavily breathing child and the wreckage around them. He had expected something far worse. In truth, this broken little cub desperately needed to vent the poison trapped inside him, rather than hoarding it out of fear of upsetting Jane, to whom he had developed a deep, fiercely protective attachment.
“You think you can do better? Fine. Let’s go.”
𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮
Magnus nodded toward the door, pulling his phone from his pocket in the same breath. He dispatched a brief text to the house manager to clean up the shattered glass and summon a crew to replace the windowpane.
“Where?” the boy asked, his frame tensing as he clenched his fists in guarded disbelief.
“What do you mean ‘where’? To search,” The man grunted, stepping past him into the hallway.
Damian followed closely at his heels. As they descended the grand staircase, Magnus caught sight of Jane out of the corner of his eye, standing frozen near the living room window. Her hands were pressed tightly against her chest, her eyes wide with worry. His anxious little mate.
Yet Magnus saw no other way through this wall. He had once been that exact same fractured, bloodthirsty cub, driven by a single consuming urge: to snap the neck of the bastard who had slaughtered his parents. Had it not been for his uncle’s heavy hand keeping him anchored back then, he would have wrecked his own life and drowned in his own malice. Now it was his turn to guide this boy—to be the light cutting through a cruel and chaotic world.
The moment the SUV rolled beyond the estate gates, Magnus flicked off the GPS unit with a snap of his wrist and turned to face the tense child in the passenger seat.
“Tell me where to drive,” he commanded softly, slowing the vehicle to a crawl.
“Me? I… I don’t know…” Damian muttered, his confidence faltering as he stared blankly through the dark tinted glass.
“Neither do I,” Magnus said with a slight shrug, watching the flare of frustration ignite in the boy’s dark eyes.
“Drive to the ocean, then!” the kid snapped, folding his arms tightly over his chest in defiance.
Magnus silently turned the wheel, maintaining his composure beside his prickly young navigator. Hugo must have suffered endlessly when Magnus was the same age—a bitter, venomous brat.
The thought of Hugo struck a dull, aching nerve behind his ribs. They hadn’t spoken since his uncle had visited his holding cell during the trial. Perhaps it truly was time to bury the hatchet on those ancient grudges—Jane had poked at that raw wound more than a few times.
Ever since she had accidentally spotted her eldest brother working as a delivery courier a month ago and learned that her sister was dead.
Ger had been unable to leash the girl. Julia had stolen money from some local trust-fund playboy, and while fleeing from him, she had tripped and broken her neck on a concrete stairwell. A pathetic, miserable end.
No matter how much Jane tried to act indifferent, claiming she couldn’t care less, she had still insisted on erecting a proper headstone over her sister’s grave. She refused to display weakness, yet her heart harbored a human pity for her sister. Julia had been the scum of the earth not because she ended up homeless, but because she was rotten to her core.
Ger, on the other hand, had secured a job, enrolled in state-sponsored vocational courses, and was attempting to rebuild his shattered life from the ground up.