The Hybrid Legacy (Sequel to the Baile Series)

Prologue

Cullen

This is the story about a teacher who fell in love with his student. Sure it sounds like quite a simple and predictable affair, but in reality it proved to be one of many tragedies that would ultimately end in death.

My father, Riley James O'Sullivan was born in the small country town of Uisneach, Ireland. He was the first child of my grandparents, Edmund and Pippa and he certainly wouldn't be their last child. The beginning of my father's childhood was theatrically lavish and extravagant; he was nurtured with material possessions rather than love and comfort. He was born with the heavy burden of the heir to the O'Sullivan Empire and it was this burden that triggered his fallout and subsequent disinheritance. Any flaw displayed by my father was seen as a deliberate act of defiance against not only his superiors but his entire family. Any grade below an A plus, any prescribed books not read, any chores half finished and any side eye glance were enough to earn corporal punishment. My father became the scapegoat for every issue or shortcoming to befall the O'Sullivans. One summer my father's younger brother's Aaron and Daniel broke into their father's wine cellar, they drunk more than their fare share and weren't very clever in hiding their moment of rebellion. But it was my father who paid the price, verbally abused with his parent's views that he was solely responsible for what his siblings did and that as heir he had to keep people in check. Such knowledge took its toll on my father, thus leading to his epic and tragic transformation into a Werewolf.

The O'Sullivan Werewolf bloodline was conservative and sanitised, the family having long been reformed from the previous barbaric and medieval ways of its ancestors. In the modern world they were the Alphas, the apex predators at the top of the supernatural hierarchy. Rumour had it that a Witch had cast a spell on the O'Sullivan clan, so that the Werewolf gene would skip a generation, leaving the gene dormant every second generation. But every deal came with a price, meaning that if an O'Sullivan was bitten while harbouring the dormant gene that the usually painful and traumatic transformation would be heightened. The dormant gene and new gene transferred from the bite would merge together, creating a stronger, larger and more powerful Werewolf.

My father was bitten when he was fourteen. Carrying the dormant gene his transformation was then the most painful thing had ever experienced, not only for himself but also for one of his classmates. For that night one life was reborn and another was extinguished. The blood of an innocent literally tainted my father's hands, metaphorically threatening to taint the money stuffed hands of the family empire. My father's parents used their professional experience to cover the murder, compensating the victim's family while leaving my father in the dark. The surfacing of my father's supernatural potential and murderous capabilities was seen as a ploy for attention and an unforgivable act of defiance. His parents made the foreseeable decision to disinherit their firstborn, driving him away from his hometown to the city of London. My father indulged in alcohol and women, seeking to forget a troubled past that had wrought nothing but destruction and misery to those that surrounded him. It was in London that he found a new friend, a Witch by the name of Anna Murphy and with her guidance he found himself studying Literature and Biology at Oxford University. He also rekindled love, proposing to his high school sweetheart Eleanor Taylor, a Vampire from an almost as infamous bloodline as his own. The engagement didn't last, with both harbouring their own demons and being pushed into a relationship for the political purposes of a peace treaty between two warring species.

With his heart torn my father sought peace in the only place he had ever previously found it, Uisneach. He returned to his old high school, as a teacher rather than a student. My father didn't find peace; he found love, the tragic kind found between star-crossed lovers, a kind that would never be long term. He had found my mother, Isla Dunn, a student who knew nothing of her destiny. My parents supported one another, finding new hope in a forbidden affair that led in my mother's suspension and my father's arrest. My father's parents reluctantly paid off the police, on the pretence should his name appear in the tabloids. But tragedy continued to trail my parents, bodies were buried and serial hunters ran rampant. Destiny was catching up with my mother, being transported to a foreign Faerie realm where she remained lost for over a year. On earth my father sought to save his love and in turn faced a supernatural creature's worst nightmare...experimentation. I am yet to know the extent to which my father suffered, not being able to write about his troubles as he had in the past. I have vowed to unearth what truly changed my father into the poster man of depression.

Reunited with my mother they built a life on a tiny island close to the Scottish mainland. Time had changed both my parents, my mother becoming the most powerful Shapeshifting Faerie on earth and my father a depressed alcoholic. My mother was unable to put my father first, serving Gwyn Ap Nudd, leader of The Wild Hunt. She was rendered unable to stay on earth more than thirty-six hours, returning on horseback to the stars for another five to seven years each time she left. My own birth occurred between two far away galaxies in some random pocket dimension. Not witnessing his own son's birth took a toll on my father, along with his wife's extended absences and short visits. Drinking helped numb the pain, while also degenerating his ability to document his life in journals. Rough sketches became the last way he was able to express himself, right until he died.

I had been visiting my best friend Fillan Byrne in Ireland when I found my father lying face down in the backyard. He had been chopping wood when the traumas of his past caught up with him. I had been told that mental illness could kill early, but I could never have been prepared to see my own father dead.

I didn't know how my mother knew from wherever she was riding, but she did. The whole earth seemed to teeter on its axis, nature itself seeming to weep and wail with agony over the loss of one mortal Werewolf man. Thunder bellowed overhead, announcing the arrival of a heavy torrent of rain. A harsh wind tore through the air, throwing grains of sand at my skin so hard it felt like shards of glass. The ocean roiled and threw itself unrelentingly at the bluffs, spraying sea salt into the air and joining the cacophony of sound that invaded my senses. When the sun was all but gone by dark clouds my mother descended from the heavens on her shapeshifting black unicorn. She wore an expression that mirrored my own emotions of complete sadness and devastation. My mother held me in her arms while she cried, while we both mourned over the death of a father and a husband. But my mother couldn't stay long; she helped me bury him under an old tree by our house. Before she left she told me to be strong and that I'd be safe and happy with the Byrne family while she was away.

And from that day forward I have been living with the Byrnes and it's kind of sad to say that I am happier with them than I was back with my father. Staying with them has given me time to write this biography, the only pieces missing of the puzzle are the ones from when my father had been a lab rat. I will find out why he didn't record his time there, I will find out everything I can about the place he was experimented in and why they wanted him in the first place.