Alessio's POV

I continued watching and listening to Nassir play different kinds of music on his violin until Clara decided to ask him a question.

"How can you do anything with your long hair in the way?" She asked

He put down the violin and started to twist a strand of his hair around his fingers.

"I use my senses to get things done so the length doesn't affect me. Also, it would anger Thayer constantly whenever I covered my eyes and face."

"Then could you pull it back for me? I want to properly see your face. When we found you, I wasn't able to see it. It will help me feel closer to you." She said after coughing a few times

"I will never understand why you so strongly desire to be close to me as well as why I desire to stay by your side. If it pleases you, I will show you my face after I am able to see the same as you."

"That's fine. Thank you." She started coughing again.

Nassir stepped closer to her and placed his face close to hers. When it looked like he was about to kiss her, he sniffed her. His face, that was relaxed up until that point, got darker and angrier. He pulled away from her and stood up straight before changing into a big black wolf.

'Lead me to the one who makes your food.' He ordered

"Why? Are you hungry? Do you want some food?" She asked like a concerned mother while stroking his fur.

When she finished, she got up from where she was and started walking towards the kitchen with mom and Nassir close behind. I was worried about what his sudden mood change meant so I decided to follow them. Another reason is because they already saw me, but anyways.

We arrived at the kitchen where everyone was bustling to make dinner for tonight. I looked towards Nassir and saw him sniffing the air. When it looked like he caught it, he growled and immediately pounced on one of the cooks that I happen to be close with. He then continued by mauling his arm. Poor Joey was screaming so loud and I was really pissed that he would attack someone for no reason.

"Hey!! Get off of him you stupid monster! He hasn't done anything to you."

I tried to get him off of the guy but he was too strong for me so I had to call in for some warriors. When we finally pulled him off of Joey, he took his arm with him.

"Take that mutt down to the cellars and prep him for questioning immediately!"

With a round of "yes alpha" from them, they proceeded to carry the monster off to the dungeons. Once they were out of sight I immediately turned towards my mom and Clara.

"You two are responsible for this. You think that he's just a person who has been through so many things, but he's not as good as you think. What has happened to him has turned him into a murderer who won't blink an eye for the people he's killed. That monstrosity just attacked the person who you have known for years and has served you for even longer. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a mutt to interrogate."

With all of that said, I turned my back to the two and walked down the stairs to get to the cellars. I kept walking until I got to the very last cell with that mutt's legs chained. Looking at him I saw that he still had Joey's arm in his mouth. I grabbed a bag of my throwing knives and walked just outside of his attack range.

"Listen here mutt, I'm going to ask you a few questions and you're going to answer them. If you don't, you get a knife. If you lie, you get a knife. Understand? Good. Here's the first question. Why did you attack that person?" I asked as I got a knife ready in my hand.

He didn't answer. He just stood there on his paws growling at me. So I threw the knife at his abdomen. This cycle kept repeating until he had over twenty knives in his body. My body was getting pretty tired so I decided to stop for today and come back tomorrow. With that in mind, I walked out of the cell and to my nice comfortable bed where I fell asleep peacefully.

Nassir's POV

Once Alessio left I started yanking on the chains until they broke. I put the man's arm on the ground and went to go chew a hole in the bars but then I was shocked and my mouth was burnt. My wounds even started to bleed more. But I kept at it until I opened up a hole. I grabbed his arm in my mouth and ran out of the cell and towards Clara. She doesn't have much time to live.

Clara's POV

I woke up from sleep because of this strange sense of uneasiness. As I sat on my bed pondering about what could possibly make me feel so uneasy, someone grabbed me and pinned me to the bed by holding my throat and choking me. I looked up to see who was trying to kill me and was shocked by what I saw.

"Jo...ey?" I rasped out

"That's right. You didn't expect me did you? I was hoping to kill you slowly and watch you suffer but there were some miscalculations. I have nothing personal against you so don't look at me like that with that face that says "what did I do?" when I am just doing this for the money. With that said, good bye."

As he pulled a dagger out from his cloak and was about to carve out my heart, the door busted open and in came Nassir. He immediately pounced on Joey and started fighting with him. I would've helped him but something was wrong with me. Even though Joey was no longer choking me, it was still hard for me to breathe. All I could do was lay there listening to Joey's agonizing screams while trying to regain my breath.

When it felt like I was on the brink of consciousness, the screams in the room stopped. Then I felt my head being lifted up and I heard a voice.

"-ra!"

"-ara!"

"Clara!"

As my consciousness slowly returned, I could hear Nassir calling my name so I weekly answered by saying his name. When I looked at him, he was covered in so much blood with knives in his body and was really tense.

"Listen to me. In order for you to get better, you need to drink this. Do you hear me? You need to drink this." He said as he held a cup to my lips.

When I listened to his voice, it was the same as always but underneath it, his voice sounded panicked. So I drank form the cup. Once I started drinking from it, I tasted something that was metallic. My mind finally registered that it was blood and I spat it out.

"Don't spit it out. You have to drink it." He said with a stern voice

I just shook my head not wanting to drink blood.

"Then you leave me no choice." He said

At first, nothing happened. Then all of a sudden I felt lips on mine and the metallic taste of blood was in my mouth again. Just like that, he forced me to drink it. When he stopped giving me blood, for some reason, my body felt lighter and I could once again breathe. But then I felt really tired. I looked up at Nassir.

"Your body is tired from fighting the poison that inside of you. You've been feeling bad for a little while now."

"How-"

"Shhh. For now, just sleep. When you wake up, you will feel better."

His voice sounded really soothing so even though I didn't want to, I ended up falling asleep on his lap.
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As I come to my senses, I can smell something that irritates my nose. I open my eyes to try to see what it was, but I was blinded by a bright light. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked around and saw all of the people close to me in the room that I was in.

"What happened? Why am I in the pack hospital?" I asked them

"We were hoping you could tell us that Clara. Noises were heard in your room so we went in and found Joey with his arms and legs ripped off, Nassir holding you while he was covered in blood with knives inside of him, and you in his lap with blood on your face and clothes. So tell us, what happened?" Daniel questioned me

I was about to tell him that I didn't know what happened but it's like something clicked in my mind and I remembered everything from last night. When the images stopped flooding my mind I quickly looked up at Daniel.

"Where's Nassir? Where is my son?" I questioned him.

"I can't believe this! You're in the hospital because of him and all you do is worry about him. Open your eyes Clara! He's not your son. He's a monster." Alessio said

I don't know what happened. My vision turned red and then the next thing I know, Daniel and Antone are trying to get my hands off of Alessio's throat. When they finally get me off I continue to fight in their grip.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW! You've had it out for my son ever since we rescued him. Why? Is it because he's not your ideal mate? 'Cause he has killed more people than any normal wolf would have? Or is it because he killed your precious uncle? Well you know what? He may have killed your uncle but he is my son as well as your beta's brother. Not only that, he is all I have left of my husband. So congratulations. You have finally pushed me over my limit. You're a disgrace of an alpha." I shook off Daniel and Antone's hands and turned towards the door.

"Now lead me to my son so we can get answers for last night. And just so you know, I'll be the one asking him questions."

He didn't say anything. He just nodded his head and walked out the door with the rest of us following behind him. The walk through through hallway was silent as we walked to the room where Alessio first chained him up.

When I walked into the room, I saw Nassir there in a pool of his own blood. The knives were still in him and it looked like he had been recently whipped. His face was also covered in blood.

"Nassir!" I shouted as I ran to him. I know he heard me because I saw his ear twitch and his head lift. I also heard him call my name.

"Hang on. I'll get those chains off of you right now." I told him as I started unchaining him.

Being careful of the knives and the wings on his back, I laid him down on the ground with his head in my lap. I pulled out all of the knives and swept his hair out of the way so that it wouldn't aggravate his wounds. He reached his hand up and touched my face that had tears running down it.

"You're crying again Clara." He said softly.

"Because you do things and don't explain them. I wish you would just tell me things."

"If I had told you what I knew, you would not have believed what I would've said. But I have a feeling that you will believe me now."

"So are you going to tell me now?"

He nodded his head yes. I sighed in relief. When I looked up I saw that everyone had migrated towards us and stood in a half circle around us. I internally growled at them.

"I shall tell you. All of you. In exchange, I will be the one who makes Clara and Aline's meals."

We both nodded our heads in consent and he started telling us the story.

"Clara had not been feeling well for a little while. However, when I played my violin for her just recently, I smelled poison coming from her body."

"Poison?" I asked

"Yes. It is a poison that you cannot taste. It works very slowly to attack the part of your body that keeps you breathing.You started coughing and I knew that you had been given a large amount of it. I tracked down the source of the poison to the guy I had attacked in the kitchen. When we walked in, he was pouring in the poison into the food. I ripped off his arm intending to help you but I was taken away instead. As fast as I could, I broke out of the confinement and rushed to you only to see that same man trying to kill you with a knife.

"I attacked him and rendered him immobile. That's when I heard your irregular breathing. I knew that I needed to do something. Due to being poisoned many times, my body has built an immunity. Also, if you mix my blood with the poison, it will act as an antidote. So that's what I did. But you wouldn't drink my blood so I had to force you to before you were taken away from me by death. When I got you to sleep, Alessio and Antone came in and attacked me leading up to right now."

"So that's why you did all of this?" Daniel asked

"I think we owe you an apology." Aline said

"What is an apology?" Nassir asked

"It means that we feel bad about what we have done and regret our actions."

"Hmmm. I don't need it. As long as Clara and Aline are safe. They make me feel warm when all I have felt is cold. I won't let you leave me alone and cold. I don't want to be that way again." He said as he fell asleep

"Clara-" Antone tried to talk to me but I interrupted him.

"I don't want to hear another word from you or Alessio. I have to take care of my son and tie my family together. Interfere and I will be your worst nightmare." I said as I attempted to carry Nassir's body nut failed. Barin came over and helped carry him to his room.

Once we were in his room, we put Nassir on the bed and cleaned his body off. When we finished, we put some loose clothes on him so he was comfortable. The last thing we cleaned was his face. After I wiped the blood off of it, I saw that there was a gash over his right eye.

"What are we going to do? He knows nothing about this world and yet he keeps getting hurt by it."

"All we can do is slowly introduce him to the world. Don't worry. We'll get through this as a family." Barin comforted me.

We stayed by the bedside until he showed signs of waking up. However, he kept his eyes closed. He brought his hand up to touch the gash on his face that ran diagonally across his eye.

"I'm so sorry. Thanks to them your eye is now seriously damaged." I told him

"What are you talking about? My eye is fine. Any critical damage done to my body gets healed very quickly. Did Antone not tell you? Afterall, he was the person who experimented on me. Whatever that means."

"What? OK, lets talk about this later. First of all, you have been cleared to be able to see. So could you open your eyes for me?"

Ar first, he just sat there. But then he turned his face towards me and opened his eyes. I was in awe of how beautiful his eyes were. His right eye was red but his left eye was blue. They both had gold flecks in them. There was so much said in his eyes that he himself has never said. I just couldn't look away. And as I was looking at him, I noticed that he was looking at me too.

"Is that you Clara?" He asked as he gently touched my face.

"I've never seen a person before. I've never seen anything before." He then turned towards Barin and touched his face as well as if confirming that it was really us.

"You and Clara have given me something that I have never had. You have brought me out of the darkness that I always saw. I have no words for I don't know what to say. At times like this what am I supposed to say?"

"I think the words you are looking for are thank you. They are used to express gratitude to someone who has given or done something for you." I explained to him

" Then I thank you for what you have done. To pay you back, allow me to cook for you. For you, Barin, and anyone who means a great deal to you."

"That's no problem but lets do it after training. It starts soon." Barin said

"Training? Let me come with you. I wish to see how you train."

I was thinking about how it wouldn't be a good idea, but then I thought about how he has to get used to people and I couldn't refuse his request. So me and Barin led him to the training grounds where the eligible wolves were and started training.

Nassir's POV

I sat off to the side as I watched in fascination the training of these people. It was all so new to me to be able to see things. As I continued to watch them, I soon saw a little boy off to the side training by himself. Curious, I went to go ask him what he was doing.

"Little boy, what are you doing training by yourself?" I asked

"My name is Lucas and I was told not to talk to you. The Alpha said that you are a bad person."

"I will not hurt you, I just wish to know why you are training by yourself and not with them."

"They said that because I am ten years old and still a small pup that I'm not allowed to. Besides, They're bigger than me. They would win."

"That is not true."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because in a fight, it is not about size. It is about using your whole self to find advantages and disadvantages in a situation. In your case, you may be small but you are faster than them."

"Really? You think that I could really win?" He looked up at me with eyes filled with some kind of emotion that I just couldn't figure out.

"Do you wish to try?" I asked him

He nodded his head vigorously. I turned away from him and followed the scent of Alessio. When I walked up to him, he was really tense.

"What do you want?"

"I want a fight. Match someone up against Lucas."