h4Chapter 136: The Shadow Also Have A Voice/h4

strongDean’s POV/strong

I go by many names.

The evil twin.

Kane’s darkness.

Kane’s shadow.

Rejected vampire.

Or, the mostmon one—Dean.

You’ve heard of me. You’ve whispered about me in the dead of night, cursed my name under your breath, and med me for every misfortune that befalls Kane. You think you know who I am. You think you understand the monster lurking in the shadows.

But tell me, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe—just maybe—you’ve been fed lies?

That your perception of me is nothing more than carefully crafted bias?

That just because I am a vampire—a iwolf’s worst enemy/i—it’s easier to me me for the darkness festering inside Kane rather than ept that it was always there, waiting to be unleashed?

I won’t waste my breath trying to convince you I’m a saint. iPlease./i I wouldn’t even make it as a decent gentleman.

But I’m not here to beg for understanding. I don’t care how the world sees me. I don’t care about redemption, forgiveness, or whatever moral nonsense you cling to.

I just want to set the record straight.

This is imy/i story.

Yes, I am a part of Kane.

The vampire part of him.

Just like he has his wolf, Ash.

I wasn’t always a separate entity, lurking in the dark, whispering in his mind like a cursed shadow. No, once upon a time, we were one. Three in one—a tribrid. Kane, the human. Ash, the wolf. And me, the vampire.

A tribrid.

His human side.

His wolf.

And me—the vampire.

I know what they say. The same tired story, repeated like a prayer:

i"His wolf and his vampire side shed, turning him feral, making him deranged, a threat to the pack..."/i

ih, h, h./i

Lies.

That’s nothing but glorified fairytales to make people feel better about their ignorance.

Even Kane and Ash—his own wolf—bought into that nonsense.

Idiots.

Let me tell you the truth.

Vampires aren’t iborn/i—they’re iturned/i. Everyone knows that. Well, unless you’re an iOriginal/i, but that’s another story. The thing is, I don’t know ihow/i I came to be. One moment, I was nothing, and the next—I iwas/i.

A vampire, but trapped inside the body of a child.

I don’t know how I came to be, only that I iwas/i.

Not like Ash, who was a pup. Not like Kane, who was a baby. iMe/i? I was ijust there/i. Fully aware, fully conscious. No growing, no developing, no learning how to walk or talk.

Me? I was ime/i.

There was no growth, no childhood, no foolish dreams of running through fields or learning how to shift under the moonlight.

I simply iwas/i.

Like my soul—no, vampires don’t have souls, do they? Let’s call it my iessence/i—had found refuge in a newborn wolf. It had somehowtched onto the little wolf pup Kane was when he was born. Like something ancient and broken had crawled inside Kane the moment he took his first breath.

I remember the weakness, the exhaustion, the deep slumber I fell into. I was iburied/i inside him, silent, dormant... until I wasn’t.

Until I awoke inside a little boy’s body.

Not just Kane. iMe/i.

Three minds.

A child’s wonder.

A pup’s instincts.

And something else. Something older, darker, lurking beneath the surface. Me.

I think we were two years old when it happened. Maybe younger. Maybe older. Time was meaningless to me.

But I do remember ithis/i:

The moment they realized what he was.

What iwe/i were.

A tribrid.

And that was when everything started to fall apart.

I was always there.

Silent. Watching. Keeping to myself as the ichild’s/i mind interacted with the ipup’s/i mind.

Kane and Ash—two halves of a growing whole,pletely oblivious to the iother/i presence lingering in the shadows of their consciousness. iMe/i.

I didn’t interfere. Not at first.

I just observed. Ensured we didn’t idie/i because of Kane’s ridiculous, reckless childhood curiosity. Do you know how many times I had to stop him from tumbling off ledges or wandering too close to danger? A wolf pup and a toddler together? iDisaster waiting to happen./i

And that’s when I noticed it.

A ifourth/i presence.

Malevolent. Insidious. A creeping idarkness/i that slithered through the cracks of our growing mind. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Kane. It wasn’t Ash.

It was isomething else entirely./i

At first, it was nothing more than stray thoughts. Strange emotions. Fleeting urges that made no sense to a child. iHurt that rabbit. Push that other pup. Watch it suffer./i

I fought it.

iI/i, the only one with any sense of reason, itried/i to keep it at bay.

But Kane was a child. He didn’t understand control. He didn’t understand irestraint/i. And whatever this ithing/i was, it took advantage of that.

Sometimes it took overpletely, twisting Kane into something... iwrong/i. Turning his innocent mischief into isomething darker/i. Something that made the other pups cower, that made the adults whisper.

And because I was the ivampire/i—the unnatural part of him—they assumed iI/i was the cause.

They were idiots.

They thought Kane’s wolf and vampire sides were ishing/i, tearing him apart from the inside. That I was at war with Ash.

As if.

I iadored/i that little pup, especially when he took over to hunt rabbits. Why the ihell/i would I, a millennium-old vampire—something Iter came to understand—waste my time ifighting/i with a cute, furry pup personality?

No, the ireal/i problem was the darkness.

It was a drug.

An addiction neither Kane nor Ash understood, something that dragged them into iferal madness/i. They didn’t iwant/i to be cruel—but sometimes they were. They didn’t iwant/i to hurt others—but sometimes they did.

And all I could do was ifight/i to hold it back.

Until the pack decided iI/i was the enemy.

They sought out a witch. A ipathetic, feeble little thing/i who thought she could just rip me out of Kane like I was nothing more than a parasite.

To kill the ivampire side/i, thinking that would ifix/i their precious heir.

Yeah. Right.

Too bad for them—I wasn’t just iin/i Kane. I iwas/i Kane. I was fused to him, as much a part of him as his own heartbeat. To kill me they would have to kill him too.

But they found another way.

Not to kill me. No, no. That would’ve been itoo tricky./i

They iripped/i me out.

Tore my essence from his body like a butcher carving flesh from bone.

And ihell/i—the pain was iexcruciating./i

For a moment, I thought I would simply icease/i. That I’d be nothing but a ighost/i, lingering in the void.

But no.

I isolidified./i

My own body. My own iform/i.

A mirror image of the boy who had once contained me. Same face. Same essence. Same power.

The connection remained—I iwas/i still him. In every sense.

Just... different.

And for the first time, I was ion my own. Can I call that free?/i