Chapter1

#Chapter1

Tranquil fields of ever-lasting summer coalesced within the breathless blue of the little boy's eyes. Golden curls, crushed into submission by the hefty gold crown that sloped to the left of his head, formed a halo, and his smile was bright and forceful, as radiant as a star on the brink of going supernova.

It was enough to fool and disarm even the wisest of men, and when it came to Lumen 'Wolfie' Grey, it was safe to say I was the biggest fool of them all.

The little shit had taken over my life; he'd reached deep within my chest, curled his playful fingers around the obnoxious, blood-pumping organ within, claiming it as his own.

Honestly, I'd had no say in the matter. The kid had adopted me as his own. I'd tried to disown him, but the kid just wouldn't let me. I'd even considered taping him up in a weighted box and setting him off down the river, but that wouldn't have been fair on the poor fish, would it?

As though sensing my gaze, those angel-may-weep eyes lifted, zeroing in on me. The grin on his face, silly and absent, doubled in size, and he waved his half-eaten, half- savaged sandwich in the air. /"Daddy wan some?/"

/"Ew./" Pulling a face, adding enough emphasis on the disgust to earn an encore of giggles, I shook my head. /"No, I most certainly do not, you vile little rat./"

In my humble opinion, children were nothing more than putrid little diseases, placed on this earth only to exert a man's patience to the brink of insanity. I didn't discriminate — Lou was absolutely included in that. I found him as vile and annoying as every other brat. The kid was a whole bundle of menace.

Luckily for Lou, and unfortunately for me, I loved the damn brat, so while his daily antics irked me like no other, I tolerated him. I continued to find ways to trick myself into confusing his annoying habits into cute quirks.

What can I say? I was destined for sainthood.

But that tolerance lived and died with Lumen. There was no flexibility that allowed it to extend to other rats, and no incline that made it seem as though I wanted to. I hated children. I hated children of every size and calibre. I hated people. Fuck, I was just a hater all around.

But it begged the question: How in the world had I found myself in this predicament?

The answer was simple: Jonathan.

It was Lumen's birthday. Whoop-fucking-whoop. I was now officially the proud owner of a semi-feral three year old.

And if it wasn't enough that I'd already caved to Lumen's ridiculous desire for rabbits, I'd somehow been conned into hosting a birthday party. Jonathan, the silver-tongued bastard, had somehow managed to convince me it wouldn't be 'that bad'.

Update: It was that bad. In fact, it was worse. Hence why I was hiding away in my office, trying to escape the little beasties that had attended, and their parents.

The only hitch in my plan was simple— my own little beastie was a daddy's boy. He loved his mommy dearly, but I was the ultimate. Where I went, he followed. When Lumen first came into my care, I wouldn't have tolerated it. But the kid was like a fungus and once he was beneath your skin, he just spread until you just learned to live with him— there was no cure. I'd already checked.

That, and understanding was a real bitch. After everything that had happened, everything we'd been through, his need to stay by my side was more than just neediness. It was a trauma response. And maybe it made me a little bitch, but I felt better knowing he was there. The anxiety, the fear of something happening to him as soon as I left the room, it lessened when he was with me.

With that being said, the privacy to take a piss without 'daddy do wee-wee wurta' or the little bastard climbing up by the sink so he could splash me while I took a leak, wouldn't have gone unappreciated.

But hey, welcome to parenthood, right? The price of admission was a blistering head-ache, a constant state of exhaustion, and the next eighteen to forty years of your life postponing your own needs in order to prioritize the little parasites.

/"Daddy?/"

/"What?/"

Lumen made a face. He was sitting on the Persian rug that was set in front of my desk. Toys scattered around them, but mutilating food was obviously much more appealing than Peppa Pig or that Coco-fucking-mellon shit. /"That wude. Say 'scuse me, Lou'./"

/"Most certainly not. What do you want?/"

Lou's pout intensified, but he got over himself real quick. /"Wan some? It so nice, daddy./" He waved the soggy, molested bread at me again. /"Mommy say 'so yummy, sunny-shine. Eat awll ups'./"

Lumen hadn't eaten it so much as decided to wear it. The nutella was like a goatee against his face, and his disgusting little mitts were brown from where he'd been poking his fingers between the slices of bread.

/"Did mommy teach you how to shut up while he was at it?/" I mocked, balling up a sheet of paper off my desk and throwing it off his head. It was probably important, but that was Jonathan's problem now. He thought claiming him as my mate had been an honour— To me, it simply meant he could now do all the official things I was supposed to do as Alpha. The sucker.

/"Daddy!/" With a great big huff, forcing the chunk of bread that had clung to his top lip to fly into his lap, he threw me a mean 'ole look. For a dim second, I was reminded that he was not an average three year-old. Due to an unhealthy combination of magic and a fucked up heratage, the kid had aged overnight, levelling up from a toddler into the malnourished body of a small nine-year old. His mind, however, had remained the same.

The anomaly that was Lumen was migraine inducing, but I'd become numb to it.

/"It's Lou's burfdee,/" the bread-sucker informed me, somewhat appalled. His arms folded across his chest. /"Havesta be nice to your rat, daddy or I tell mommy dat you make your rat cwy./"

His speech had come on quite well. He still babbled, and sometimes people who didn't know him very well struggled to understand him on account of how much he butchered his words, but there was an element of clarity to them, and his vocabulary was expanding with every day.

/"If you tell mommy that, you'll have to tell him why you're not outside playing with all the friends you begged him to invite./"

Lumen didn't have many friends. Clarke was his best friend, but on account of him being a grown-ass man, it didn't really count. Ember was kinda his friend, but they were brothers, so it didn't count. The other kids in the pack were not his friend, but their parents loved the idea of their brats being best friends with the Alpha's son. Figured there was some status or perks in it for them.