Upside Down (COMPLETE) Inside Out, Book 2 [BoyxBoy]

The Night When the Wolves Howled

Keith knew his life was hanging by a thread at the moment.

For fourteen years he had only thought of his mother as nothing but a calm, motherly person who'd wake up early in the morning to make breakfast for both of him and his father, and stay up late to make sure everything was safe and sound in their house before bedtime. She had been a woman who cried too often and laughed too loud, the kind of lady who watched television and gossiped about pop culture and nothing more.

Now, she was a few feet away from him, her arms captivated by two strong men that held her down.

Tears streamed down his face rapidly as he watched his father bleed to death in the center of the room. His head dropped down, signs of life extremely bare in his eyes, but Keith could see his chest heaving in and out. Both of his hands and feet were tied to the chair he was forced to sit on; there were streaks of blood glistening across his head under the dim light. Surrounding him was broken pieces of furniture and a group of burly men with fire in their eyes, as fierce as a pack of wolves, ready to attack.

Keith screamed when one of them slammed his fist over his father's head.

"Enough!" his mother screamed. "Please don't hurt him, please—"

Keith shook his hands behind his back, trying to untangle himself from the men locking him from behind.

His hand was pulled sideways, and Keith felt as if his bones were dislocating. He let out a screech.

"Stay put or die," the guy behind him groaned, scent of alcohol reeking in his hot breath.

Mixture of sweat and tears made Keith's mother's smooth skin glitter; her hair plastered all over her face. She was no longer the woman Keith knew—she had not cried like he did when she first witnessed her husband being beaten out to death. She was now a weakening monster he didn't know, the kind of woman who would die to protect her family, the kind of lady you seen in movies who battled to protect her loved ones from danger no matter how powerless she was.

"Andy, please," Keith's mother screamed toward the man in the center of the room. "Let him go, I promise I'll pay—"

The man Keith believed Andy laughed, his laughter booming across the hall.

"I'm tired of your husband, Claire. I told you, I am not a softie. I gave him a chance."

Andy lingered around the center of the room and put a barrel of a gun to Keith's father's head. Keith flinched and shut his eyes close.

"NO!" screamed Claire. "Don't you dare—"

Andy clicked the bullet into place and Keith shivered.

Sometimes Keith secretly agreed that Dad should die; that he deserved whatever that was happening to him. He remembered being beaten up good when his father found out that he liked guys. He remembered uncontrollable drunken nights with stench of booze when bottles and glasses were thrown at his and Mom's way. He remembered it all: but they weren't enough to compensate this. He wanted his father safe.

"He's a coward, anyway, Claire—what kind of a man who lets his wife cleans up after his messes? You don't need a husband like this," Andy said, and Keith knew those words were the last words Dad would hear.

And he was right. Boom, and Andy pulled the trigger.

"No!" my mother screamed, trying to lunge forward when the men took a better grip at her.

Pain was an energy that could change into fire—Keith could feel as flames writhed in his veins, burning around in his system up to his brain. Something changed within him—his body felt strange, his sight went blurry and he saw no color—what is happening?

Gasps erupted the silence of the night, followed out by a painful screech from the men around him. The next thing he knew was the impact he felt when he was thrown backwards by an unknown force. When he looked up again, he saw a gigantic white wolf raging before him.

He stood up as blood splattered on his face. He tried to gain focus when he noticed that the white wolf's eyes belonged to his mother—and strangely enough, nothing felt peculiar to him. Standing before him was neither a raging monster nor an animal, it was a big part of what he really was, something he had never known before.

Her fangs ripped the men's skins, a prey-predator interaction. In the center of the room, three or four dead bodies went sprawling all over the floor.

Keith had never liked seeing the sight of blood like he did now.

One of the men there held Andy's arms—two of them were terrified, trying to find a way to escape. Keith enjoyed the look of trauma in their eyes as they witnessed the monster-sized wolf bewildering in the room. He should have had the same frightened look, but everything that was happening felt natural to his own body; his nose was suddenly functioning differently, his distorted, monochromatic sight sharpened.

Andy and the boy holding him were almost out the door, but they were too frozen to move. The wolf advanced toward Andy, and Keith watched as the wolf lunged toward the man who'd shot his father. The wolf pulled him to the center of the room, tearing his skin off, eating his heart and advanced for his brain.

Keith liked how Andy screamed—the sound of his voice was ecstasy.

If his father was down tonight, nobody should get out breathing—no one, not even the young boy trying to escape at the door.

The boy started on a sprint, struggling to reach the locked front door of the house, and that's when Keith felt as if he had lost control over his own body. In a flash, Keith found himself jumping up in the air, so high he almost felt like he was flying. Keith landed on top of the boy, and his gums suddenly felt a weird stinging sensation; the smell of the boy's skin triggered a peculiar desire in his brain. He found it tempting to tear this boy apart—he wanted to do what his mother did to Andy, exactly the same thing, to this boy without giving him any chance of escape.

Keith reached for any accessible part to yank him over, but before he attempted anything the boy shoved a knee up to his chest.

He couldn't run now; the energy Keith had in his body multiplied. He yanked over the enemy's arm and pushed him to the ground. Too stunned to move, he stayed frozen in his place, only watching as Keith's wolf form approached him. Keith liked the sight of blood all over the boy's figure when he decided to duck down and bite the soft skin on the boy's neck.

A loud, agonizing scream exploded off in the air.

Keith liked how loud he cried, and he loved the metallic taste of the boy's blood. He let his own fangs did the work and attempted to look at how the boy under him was going to die.

When Keith saw his eyes, he knew he was looking into a younger, innocent version of Andy. This must've been his son, he thought. Maybe I should've let him live and we're going to be equally fatherless. Maybe he deserves to feel the pain of losing a father just like me.

Keith's grip on the boy's body loosened. In a speed of light, the boy threw himself out the door and ran out into the dark.

Keith, sprawling on thefloor, was surrounded by dead bodies, engulfed in the air that reeked of bloodand corpses, when he slowly heard the howls from the wolf turned into afamiliar cry that belonged to his mother. This was the night when he found outthe truth about his mother and himself. This was the night where he firstdiscovered that they were werewolves.