Dean’s POV
I go by many names.
The evil twin.
Kane’s darkness.
Kane’s shadow.
Rejected vampire.
Or, the most common one—Dean.
You’ve heard of me. You’ve whispered about me in the dead of night, cursed my name under your breath, and blamed 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
wolf’s worst enemy
—it’s easier to blame me for the darkness festering inside Kane rather than accept that it was always there, waiting to be unleashed?
I won’t waste my breath trying to convince you I’m a saint.
Please.
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
my
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:
"His wolf and his vampire side clashed, turning him feral, making him deranged, a threat to the pack..."
Blah, blah, blah.
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
born
—they’re
turned
. Everyone knows that. Well, unless you’re an
Original
, but that’s another story. The thing is, I don’t know
how
I came to be. One moment, I was nothing, and the next—I
was
.
A vampire, but trapped inside the body of a child.
I don’t know how I came to be, only that I
was
.
Not like Ash, who was a pup. Not like Kane, who was a baby.
Me
? I was
just there
. Fully aware, fully conscious. No growing, no developing, no learning how to walk or talk.
Me? I was
me
.
There was no growth, no childhood, no foolish dreams of running through fields or learning how to shift under the moonlight.
I simply
was
.
Like my soul—no, vampires don’t have souls, do they? Let’s call it my
essence
—had found refuge in a newborn wolf. It had somehow latched 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
buried
inside him, silent, dormant... until I wasn’t.
Until I awoke inside a little boy’s body.
Not just Kane.
Me
.
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
this
:
The moment they realized what he was.
What
we
were.
A tribrid.
And that was when everything started to fall apart.
I was always there.
Silent. Watching. Keeping to myself as the
child’s
mind interacted with the
pup’s
mind.
Kane and Ash—two halves of a growing whole, completely oblivious to the
other
presence lingering in the shadows of their consciousness.
Me
.
I didn’t interfere. Not at first.
I just observed. Ensured we didn’t
die
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?
Disaster waiting to happen.
And that’s when I noticed it.
A
fourth
presence.
Malevolent. Insidious. A creeping
darkness
that slithered through the cracks of our growing mind. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Kane. It wasn’t Ash.
It was
something else entirely.
At first, it was nothing more than stray thoughts. Strange emotions. Fleeting urges that made no sense to a child.
Hurt that rabbit. Push that other pup. Watch it suffer.
I fought it.
I
, the only one with any sense of reason,
tried
to keep it at bay.
But Kane was a child. He didn’t understand control. He didn’t understand
restraint
. And whatever this
thing
was, it took advantage of that.
Sometimes it took over completely, twisting Kane into something...
wrong
. Turning his innocent mischief into
something darker
. Something that made the other pups cower, that made the adults whisper.
And because I was the
vampire
—the unnatural part of him—they assumed
I
was the cause.
They were idiots.
They thought Kane’s wolf and vampire sides were
clashing
, tearing him apart from the inside. That I was at war with Ash.
As if.
I
adored
that little pup, especially when he took over to hunt rabbits. Why the
hell
would I, a millennium-old vampire—something I later came to understand—waste my time
fighting
with a cute, furry pup personality?
No, the
real
problem was the darkness.
It was a drug.
An addiction neither Kane nor Ash understood, something that dragged them into
feral madness
. They didn’t
want
to be cruel—but sometimes they were. They didn’t
want
to hurt others—but sometimes they did.
And all I could do was
fight
to hold it back.
Until the pack decided
I
was the enemy.
They sought out a witch. A
pathetic, feeble little thing
who thought she could just rip me out of Kane like I was nothing more than a parasite.
To kill the
vampire side
, thinking that would
fix
their precious heir.
Yeah. Right.
Too bad for them—I wasn’t just
in
Kane. I
was
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
too tricky.
They
ripped
me out.
Tore my essence from his body like a butcher carving flesh from bone.
And
hell
—the pain was
excruciating.
For a moment, I thought I would simply
cease
. That I’d be nothing but a
ghost
, lingering in the void.
But no.
I
solidified.
My own body. My own
form
.
A mirror image of the boy who had once contained me. Same face. Same essence. Same power.
The connection remained—I
was
still him. In every sense.
Just... different.
And for the first time, I was
on my own. Can I call that free?