Half-Blooded | The Dark Child Prophecy Series [✔️]

Chapter Three: Closer

"Who's Serenity?"

Jason looked up, startled, as Maria walked across the floor towards him. He took his hands off the desk from where he had been hunched over the open books. He sighed, feeling like a thief caught before escape.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you. I thought you heard the door open," she apologized as she came over to see what he was looking at. She smiled gently. "Oh wow, you're really going far back into the world histories. What's with the sudden fascination?"

He glanced at his cousin's face as she read over the pages out of curiosity. "Just a dream I had," he answered. It wasn't exactly a lie. "I wanted to see just how much fiction was in it."

She raised an eyebrow questioningly. Her dark brown eyes went back to the books and she skimmed over a few of the pages. "The Mezdor family. Not a group I'd want to get involved with. Lots of dark history with that clan..." She paused when she saw the inscription about Connor Mezdor before her eyes flicked back over to Avalon Mezdor's own family tree. "You're wondering about the hybrid gene?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted. "You think there are other hybrids out there that are tied to the Mezdors?"

"Maybe," she guessed, shrugging one shoulder. "I mean, there have always been isolated reports of hybrids popping up here and there all over the world for hundreds of years. Some are vampire-lycan hybrids, others are dhamphirs, and there are reports of demon-crosses. Doesn't the Mezdor family have a demon-hybrid in the mix?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I think. Somehow I wonder if there is more Wolf in the Mezdor family we don't know about."

"Hybrids are dangerous, Jay. They usually can't control their natures and end up needing to be put down. That's the legend of Connor Mezdor, anyways, that he couldn't be controlled. Or that witch-demon hybrid during the Dark Ages that started the Black Plague?" She took a deep breath and sighed. "Honestly, I don't know how they survive through all the bloodlines."

Jason frowned, glancing at her with a puzzled expression. "How so?"

Maria turned and pulled two more books off another shelf and sat them down. She flipped through the pages before turning the tome towards him. Its painting depicted a red-skinned demon with a human woman, her stomach swollen from pregnancy. There was blood coating her legs and dribbling from her mouth. It was an old painting, probably from the Middle Ages. She pointed at the blood and tapped it with her fingers.

"It's dangerous for the mother. She often dies from blood loss, according to what I've read. And here..." She flipped through the second book before she found the chapter she wanted. "Research done by some scholar back during the nineteenth century. The hybrid gene doesn't pass on like a dominant or recessive gene does. Mendel recorded that for a recessive trait to take effect, there have to be two of them. Whereas, a dominant only needs to be one of the pair for it to show."

"Right, I'm aware," he answered her when she glanced up to see if he followed.

"Well, a hybrid gene doesn't do that. It acts more like a mutation. It shows up when it needs to. So, using—" she paused to glance at the Mezdor family tree, "—Avalon as an example, he became a hybrid by being bitten. He had a dormant hybrid gene. It took the saliva of the wolf who bit him to activate it with wolf D-N-A, just like the vampire virus that infects humans when bitten. The gene had to be passed on from Logan to cause the mutation, right? But this scholar thought it might be something that just pops up at a more random type of pattern."

"Sounds more like some twisted sense of fate," Jason said absently.

Maria nodded in agreement. "Maybe. But there has to be some sort of method to how it keeps showing up. It can't be completely random if it's running in a family like the Mezdors. Maybe, once activated, it can be passed on like a recessive gene that shows itself every few generations, or simply by chance. Do you think there's a third hybrid in their family we don't know about?"

His head shook slowly as he glanced at the family lineage again, ending with Serenity and her brothers. "I'm not sure. You said Avalon Mezdor's gene was dormant, right? Which means he never shifted before he was bitten. Does that mean the gene is always dormant and has to be activated?"

"I don't know," she answered truthfully. "I mean, from what I know about dhamphirs, they are born with vampire senses in a human body. They don't actually feed on blood until they've reached maturity through puberty. A vampire didn't bite them to awaken the need for blood. It just develops naturally."

"So it's possible that a lycan-hybrid with an inherited, active gene wouldn't change until they've finished maturing," Jason said softly. Serenity had said she didn't ever remember her runs when she had shifted. Was it possible she was still in the phase young wolves often went through before learning to control their inner animal?

"Very possible," Maria answered him, not realizing he was deep in thought. "And if they grew up without a wolf for a parent, they probably wouldn't have a clue on what they're going through."

Avalon Mezdor died when Serenity was a little girl...

Jason inhaled slowly, feeling a sudden sense of fear for the blonde-haired wolf. She didn't know. No one had been there to teach her. No wonder she called herself a half-blood. It was the demeaning, degrading term for a hybrid. She had probably been called one her whole life.

"Thank you, Maria. You know the books better than I do," he said when he realized she was waiting for him to speak.

She smirked slightly. "Only because you never paid attention when we were being taught. Besides, it's my job to keep up with these things. Did you have a dream about a hybrid or something?"

He bit down on his back teeth, unsure of how to answer that question. He didn't want to admit to her that he'd found the Mezdor hybrid through his dreams, but he also couldn't explain his sudden curiosity without a reason. "Something like that," he said finally. "It just got me wondering if they still existed. The legend about Connor Mezdor was just the first thing I thought of," he added smoothly.

Maria nodded and began to close the books. "Well, I've done my digging before. I'm pretty familiar with some of the research, especially anything related to Wolf-blood crosses. My mother had a fascination with the D'Angelo histories pack and their ties to Italy."

"Romulus and Remus?" he asked knowingly with a grin.

"How'd you know?" she replied, taking the family history book up and climbing the two steps on a stool to put it back.

"It's a classic, that's all. I'm gonna go for a run. Wanna come with?"

Maria shook her head. "Nah, I've got to get some work done. I'll see you at dinner."

Jason smiled and headed for the door. He wondered if he could run as far as the Shadow Stalker coven from the pack house. It would take close to a full night's run. Not exactly a journey he would want to take on foot. But if Serenity was out there, out running...

"She could easily make it thirty miles in a few hours if she didn't stop," he whispered to himself as he hopped down the steps and headed through the downstairs den for the backdoors. He needed a run to work off the energy he had built up in the dream meadow. With any luck, he would sleep somewhere out there and she would be waiting for him when he closed his eyes.