Noah's POV
"Fucking idiots," I spat as I drifted the car around the bend, my hands clasping the steering wheel tightly. They can't tell me what to do. Not after everything I had endured. Not after our– their fucking father had ruined my life. They have no idea what it's like to grow up a bastard freak, being the object of ridicule amongst your peers. The only hybrid amongst them. A cursed blend of weak human and powerful werewolf.
I could feel my claws digging into the leather that enclosed the steering as the rage built up inside me. My childhood– the way I grew up– what I had endured… No child should have to grow up that way.
I fired up the engines as the memories flooded my brain. Maybe I hoped the roaring of the car would suppress it. Suppress all of it. Suppress all the unpleasant memories. Memories I had tried to bury deep inside me but with little luck.
Was it the time I'd been avoided by children my age because of my eye colour? The time the older kids had held me down, meaning to pluck my eyes out their sockets and sell them to mediums? The times I'd been punched in the guts, my face used to scrape the hard, stone floor? I could still feel their fingers in my mouth—the taste of dirty, rusted iron in my mouth as they tried to pull out my teeth with pincers. I wasn't fit to live, to exist they had said. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't shifted that night. The fucking moon goddess right on timing.
The car hissed to a stop as I took the keys out of the ignition. Uncle Ben was the only one who understood me. My mother's younger brother. He had taken me in when no one else wanted me. He had taught me to fight. He was the only one I trusted that I could talk to right now.
I punched the password into the door lock letting myself in. The light in the house was dim as it always was. Just the way I remembered it.
"Uncle Ben?" I called making my way to the lab. He was always there working on one of his failed projects. Projects that had led to the revokement of his license by the Scientists Association. But he didn't stop. He never did. He had to prove them wrong, he had said. A bunch of "butter-brained idiots" he had called them.
"Uncle Ben," I called again, pushing the door open. I held my hand to my nose as a strong, choking smell hit my nostrils making my eyes water.
The machines hummed quietly, speaking a foreign language that only Uncle Ben understood but he wasn't there.
A sigh escaped my lips as I turned to leave and that was when my eyes caught it.
"What could this crackhead be working on this time?" I muttered as I inched closer to the covered thing.
The light from it seeped through the covering faintly, it's blinking drawing me to itself. The smell of dust irritated my nose causing me to sneeze as I pulled the covering away to reveal what hid underneath. It was an enclosement big enough to size an average man. The type in movies that scientists used to create monsters and superheroes.
"Could Benjamin really be serious right now?" I mumbled to myself as my eyes followed the light trickling round the entrance to the enclosement in quick little flashes, urgently chasing each other round down the metal door. I gripped the lever embedded into the right hand side of the entrance and pulled down.
The machine hummed gently as the door cranked open revealing a lighted up enclosure, a creaking sound filling the dark room. I should have stopped at this point. I know I should have but I didn't get here by giving up when I was unsure about things.
My eyes flicked around the room one last time before I stepped into it. I could hear my blood surge in my ears. My heart hammered heavily against my chest as the door started closing. I felt my chest tightening as the lump formed in my throat threatening to cut off the air supply to my lungs. What's the worst thing that could happen?
Now, you know a werewolf's hearing is as sensitive as it is sharp. High pitched sounds tear at our fucking ears threatening to make them bleed. And that's exactly what happened to me.
A sharp, high pitched sound filled the enclosement suddenly making my body jerk and my head swirl. I groaned in pain as I fell to the ground, my hands clawing tightly against my ears. The sound matched the humming of the machine making my body jerk violently. At that point, I thought I'd die.
I could feel the ground shaking as the metallic parts of the machine clanged against each other making my ears bleed. Literally.
I felt the warm liquid trickling out of my ears into my palm as they held tightly against my ears. I forced myself to open my eyes when I started seeing a white light. The white light rumoured to be seen just moments before a wolf's death. I wasn't planning on dying. Not yet. Not just yet.
The roaring of the machine intensified, threatening to tear my head apart. At that point, my stomach grumbled. Trying to keep yourself from dying while at the same time trying to keep your lunch down was one of the hardest things I'd done in a long while. Fucking hell.
At that point, I saw the boy I had killed. The one who had always bullied me. Who had gathered his friends to hold me down while he tried to pull out my teeth with pincers.
I saw the blood spattered all over the ground. The way the blood spurted out of his neck in their showers as his fingers clawed against his neck trying to stop the bleeding.
I saw the human I had killed for standing up to me. How dare he? A tiny, puny human. How dare he challenge me?
No one had told me that your life flashing before your eyes was all about the people you'd killed.
I heard the door bang open.
"Noah?!" I heard Uncle Ben shout as he stood in front of the enclosement watching me through the thin glass on the door, his eyes widened in fear.
And that was the last thing I remembered.