Chapter 1 #4
At the same time, the clicking sound of the remote locking mechanism of the door resounded in front of me.
Flabbergasted, I reached for the handle, finding it indeed locked.
This time, fury surged through me. I turned around to face my father, my teeth bared, and a low, menacing growl vibrating in my throat.
My berserker powers were coming to the fore with a will of their own.
My father rose to his feet, eyes locked with mine, and his expression unreadable. There was something inexplicably intense in the way he was looking at me, both tense and expectant, but not fearful. Anyone else would be intimidated.
Berserker powers were a rare trait among Braxians.
It made me stronger, faster, and insanely dampened the effectiveness of my pain receptors, allowing me to continue battle even after sustaining the type of debilitating injury that would normally incapacitate anyone else.
But it also made me project an aura within a fairly large radius that boosted similar attributes to anyone I deemed an ally or a part of my clan.
While I could deliberately summon that power, it could also trigger on its own whenever my subconscious felt threatened or under attack. In my entire life, never had it triggered in response to the actions of a loved one, least of all my parents, whom I adored.
“Open the fucking door,” I ground through my teeth.
“Or what?” he challenged, his voice factual instead of provocative, despite his words.
“I will break it down into pieces,” I threatened. “Open. The damn. Door!”
My mother rose to her feet with a worried expression. My father gestured for her to stay put, although his gaze remained locked on me.
“I will not,” he said calmly.
With an enraged growl, I spun around and raised my fist. A small voice at the back of my head was shouting for me not to do that.
Beyond the fact that it was a highly ornate door that my father loved and had ordered especially from Dantor, I had never been the type to resort to violence to resolve what should normally be settled with a reasonable discussion.
And above all, I’d never deliberately vandalized anything, least of all my parents’ property.
“STOP!” my father commanded.
I barely managed to stop. Still snarling, I jerked my head towards my father, preparing to shout at him to open the door again.
My brain froze when I found him grinning at me from ear to ear, his dark eyes brimming with approval.
I blinked when my mother also smiled and silently made the clapping gesture.
What the fuck?!
My father moved away from his desk and gestured for me to approach as he went to the minibar next to where my mother had previously been sitting.
“Don’t break my door and come have a drink with your parents,” he said in a conversational tone.
“What?” I asked, baffled, while he casually poured Braxian brandy into three glasses. “I… I don’t want to drink.”
“You don’t have a choice,” my father countered dismissively while giving a glass to my mother, who accepted it with a radiant smile. He picked up the two remaining glasses, extending 1 towards me. “Achieving Ghabrak must always be sealed with a drink.”
My jaw dropped, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head as his words sank in.
“Ghabrak?” I repeated in a stunned whisper. “I achieved Ghabrak?!”
He smiled, nodded, and slightly shook the glass he was extending towards me in a way that said for me to get a move on and come get it.
Feeling numb, I absent-mindedly complied, my mind racing while trying to understand how I had achieved that major milestone in a Braxian’s life.
It was usually reserved for the males. The father would set a secret challenge for his son.
Once he achieved it, he would officially be deemed a full adult.
It was an important rite of passage. While it usually revolved around whatever main profession or trade of a given clan, it could also be something completely different, specific to the child’s personality or shortcomings they needed to overcome.
In my father’s case, Grappa Krygor had wanted him to renounce our clan.
At the time, Magnar Ravik had not yet forbidden the abuse against hybrids or banned the laws that forbade hybrids from reproducing or getting married.
Therefore, in order for him to marry my mother and be allowed to let me live, my father had renounced his clan and thereby his Braxian status.
It freed him to lead the life he wanted without the barbaric constraints of our people.
It had baffled him why that had been Grappa’s secret challenge to him.
But then, Grappa had explained that Braxia had made my father a victim his whole life, beating him into submission and depriving him of any rights and hopes while he continued to bend over backwards trying to get an acceptance that never came.
Severing the bond, piercing the abscess, and acknowledging that he did not need Braxia’s approval to be happy finally freed him and stopped him from being a victim.
But how is my putting my foot down about leaving for the Western Quadrant comparable to this?
I took the glass from him, and he chuckled at the look of total confusion plastered all over my face.
Still smiling, my mom caressed my cheek before rubbing her palm on my upper arm.
The love and pride in her eyes messed with my head.
My father often spoke of my mother’s endless ability to love.
In this instant, it shone brightly. But more than that, it felt almost like a living entity wrapping me in a warm, comforting blanket.
Not for the first time, I wondered if my mother possessed some sort of empathic powers that she never trained or even knew the existence of.
As she had been dropped off at an orphanage as a baby, we knew nothing of her ancestry.
My gut suspected that my sixth sense came from her as no such gift existed on Braxia.
We clinked our glasses and took a sip.
Chuckling, my father squeezed my left shoulder.
“You little shit, you keep outperforming me at every turn. You discovered your berserker power at age ten, when I didn’t figure out mine before being twenty-nine.
You completed Ghabrak eight years faster than I did.
I fought and failed for nearly thirty years to be accepted by Braxia.
But you are so loved by our people that they wanted you as their Magnar when you were eighteen.
You found your true love, and unlike my dumbass, you didn’t wait for a tragedy to make you nearly lose her before you stopped letting people get in the way of that relationship. ”
I frowned. “I got Ghabrak for that?!”
He snorted. “No, silly. You are too obedient of hierarchy, Gavin. You play too much by the rules,” he explained in a gentle voice.
“By our laws, at sixteen, and in light of your personal wealth, you could have emancipated and left five years ago. When we asked you to wait, you complied. Once again at eighteen, after rescuing Keran, you could have left. Again, we asked you to wait, and you complied. You have powerful—not to say infallible—instincts about things. And yet, countless times, you have allowed yourself to suffer a loss because you submitted to the decisions of people who were wrong but in a role of authority over you.”
“Hierarchy exists for a reason!” I exclaimed, taken aback. “Without order, there’s nothing but chaos. I’m about to join the Sentinels. Discipline will be essential. And you’re my father.”
“I’m your father, but not your owner. There’s discipline, there’s order, and then there’s the right thing to do,” my father countered in a calm voice. “When you sensed that Keran was in danger, had Ravik refused to send a rescue party, you wouldn’t have defied his order.”
“I would have hired someone to go instead!” I argued weakly.
“And Keran would have died,” he retorted firmly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I couldn’t. Even though I wasn’t a Seer like the Korletheans, I could sense things. And that instinct told me that without my personal involvement in that rescue, Keran wouldn’t have made it.
“When you wanted to invest in that new holographic extreme sports venture, I told you not to do it because it would be wasted money. You did your research. You knew at a visceral level that it was a sound and beneficial investment. But you caved to my authority when I told you not to do it. And sure enough, you lost an insane amount of credits by not participating in what had in fact been a great venture.”
“You’re a brilliant businessman. Of course I followed your advice,” I said defensively.
“Because you didn’t trust yourself enough. I wanted you to call me out on it, because you were right. It was your first Ghabrak test, Gavin,” he countered gently.
“You deliberately misled me?!” I exclaimed, stunned.