CHAPTER TWELVE. You Defend Him?!

With a deafening snarl, Alan's body exploded into the red beast he had seen earlier. 

The beast was huge, the exact same size as Arud's beast. 

He crouched low, his eyes trained on Jaden and leaped, claws unsheathed. 

Arud's beast took over unbidden, acting on instinct.

He head-butted Jaden out of the way, before moving to snag Alan out of the air and fling him back onto the ground.

Alan's body skidded across the charred forest floor, stopping at the base of a tree. He slowly got back to his feet. 

Arud moved to stand in front of Jaden, keeping his head low, his hackles raised as a silent warning, telling the red beast to stay back.

Alan bared his teeth and hissed, as he bagan circling. 

"You DEFEND him?!", he spat, not with words, however. Gregors communicated with each other while in beast form through mind link. Words are passed along as clear thoughts. A mind link could also be passed along from human to beast, but can't be used among Gregors in human form alone.

Arud made no reply, he still hadn't been able to wrap his head around what was going on. His body was just moving on its own volition.

Alan roared and leaped once again, and Arud moved to meet him halfway.

Flinging himself against Alan's body and throwing him to the ground, sending scarlet embers into the air. 

Alan, maddened, raked his hind legs underneath the Prince's belly and flung him off. Arud's beast landed on its paw pads just fine. He searched the clearing for Jaden, hoping he wasn't anywhere where Alan could reach him.

The boy had vanished.

Alan got to his feet, his blazing red fur seemed to absorb the heat that radiated from the flames, his lips curled over gleaming white teeth.

'After EVERYTHING he's done?!', Alan cried.

The sound of tearing wood rose above the roar of the fire, and they both looked up to see a charred tree bough snap and fall. 

Arud stepped back hastily, closing his eyes as smoke and embers flew into the air the moment the burning branch landed in the clearing, hot wind washing over his face. 

When he opened them, Alan was standing on the other side of the bough, his eyes shooting an unspoken threat at him. 

And Arud knew Jaden wasn't safe.

Alan backed away slowly before disappearing into the wall of fire that surrounded them.

***

Arud's mind was still blank a few minutes later.

He hadn't gone home to his family, because, for some reason he was afraid of what Eva's reaction would be to the situation.

He wasn't sure he had it in him to tell Eva that the boy they had raised had murdered another. Now he stood atop a hill, looking down toward the path his son's scent led. 

He felt stumped, lost.

Wondering if he'd made a mistake. 

There were so many questions swimming through his head at once, questions he had no way of answering.

Was Jaden still the same child he and Eva had raised?

Had all of this, the life he had taken up, the suffering and disgrace he'd subjected his family to, was it all in vain?

Was Jaden worth risking the lives of those he cared for?

Had Elvie been wrong about Jaden?

But the most important question of all, the one that influenced Arud's final decision was this;

By keeping Jaden, was he actually, truly raising the kingdom's destruction?

The scene from before kept replaying itself in his head.

And something, he wasn't sure what, whether it was his gut instinct or intuition, kept telling him that it would happen again and he needed to put a stop to it. 

He was the one who brought Jaden into his family, now he would be the one to finish this, to make sure nothing like this would happen again later in future.

He would get rid of Jaden himself. 

Letting Alan do that for him would only make it more difficult to look away. 

After all, he still considered Jaden as his own. And he believed it would only be right if he finished what he'd started himself.

***

Heart pounding, feet throbbing in pain for having been running for so long, Jaden wasn't sure where he was going, he didn't even know where he was. 

All the seven year old wished to do right now was to get far away from everything.

His guilt. 

Himself.

Tears were constantly pouring down his face, clouding his vision. He wiped them away, as quickly as they came, yet they just wouldn't stop falling.

It was like the floodgates inside him had been thrown open with nothing to hinder them.

He could hear a million voices in his head. All of them speaking at once, reminding him of what he'd done. 

Voices that consigned him to the gallows without a moment's hesitation.

'Its all your fault'.

'You're nothing but a monster!'

'That monster killed my son!'

Some of these were words he'd heard time and again in the past, but he'd never felt the weight of those words as much as he did now.

Not looking where he was going, tears blurring everything he could see, Jaden stumbled upon a stray tree root and fell, landing on the ground with a hard thud.

He pushed himself up slowly, now on his knees. The will to keep running had all but disappeared.

But the voices stayed with him, haunting him.

'This was all your doing!!'

"I'm sorry," he sobbed, letting the tears fall freely, unhindered.

'You were meant to stay away!'

Jaden hugged himself.

"I didn't mean to..."

'You should have never been born.'

'I'm...sorry".

Nonetheless, he knew, nothing he did or said would change anything.

He was a monster, a killer. 

He'd had no control, no way to prevent what had happened. 

He was responsible for Ren's death.

'They're ... right, all of them. I am a monster'.

He hugged himself tighter, he felt colder and more alone than ever before.

With nothing else but trees and earth all around, he was on his own.

Suddenly, like lightening striking in the dark, he heard a snarl, one that promised death.