Chapter 41: Sins of the Shepherd
Noah’s POV
Sixteen years.
Sixteen agonizing, blood-soaked years since those bastards stole everything from me. As I stood in the pitch-black locker room, my palm clamped tightly over Damon’s mouth, listening to the muffled voices of those elite monsters echoing off the frozen rink outside, a sickening wave of rage burned through my veins.
Sixteen years since I watched the man I was forced to call my "father" brutally slaughter my real family.
I was only seven years old when my world turned to ashes.
It was a cold evening, and I was heading home from my evening tutoring session in the back of a luxury sedan with my nanny. I was holding my phone up, staring at the glowing screen during a video call with my mother. She was sitting in the nursery, laughing softly, showing me my newborn baby sibling. I remember watching those soft, rosy cheeks bounce as the baby giggled. A rare, genuine warmth had filled my chest back then. I couldn’t wait to get home, run upstairs, and hold them tightly in my arms.
Then, a bloodcurdling scream shattered the peaceful mood.
My mother dropped the phone in terror. The device tumbled, landing on the hardwood floor and propping itself up against the leg of the crib, giving me a front-row view of hell.
"Maria!" my mother shrieked, frantically calling for the head maid as she scooped the crying baby into her arms and sprinted toward the bedroom door.
Before she could reach it, the door burst open. My biological father rushed inside, slamming it shut behind him and throwing his full weight against the wood.
"Honey, what is happening?!" mother sobbed, her body shaking violently.
"I don’t know, but those bastards have finally made their move!" father shouted back, his face pale with horror.
"Mother?!" I cried out, pressing my small fingers against the hot glass of my phone screen. I desperately wanted to scream for help, but fear choked my throat. I could only watch, paralyzed.
"Is everything alright, Young Master Noah?" my nanny asked from the front seat, but I completely ignored her, my eyes glued to the screen.
Heavy, thunderous pounding rattled the bedroom door. My father held it with everything he had, his knuckles white, while my mother clutched the wailing baby against her chest, tears streaming down her pale face.
"Mother... Father..." I whimpered into the phone.
Suddenly, a repeated burst of deafening gunshots tore straight through the heavy wooden door. Bullets ripped through my father’s chest, throwing his limp body backward onto the carpet. I shrieked in agony. Hearing my scream, the nanny finally leaned over to look at my screen. Seeing the gory nightmare unfolding live, she panicked, screaming at the driver to call the police immediately.
I couldn’t look away. I watched as a tall man stepped over my father’s bleeding body. He was dressed in immaculate priest robes, a massive silver cross dangling over his chest, wire-rimmed glasses resting on his nose, and a heavy tactical rifle resting on his shoulder.
"What a tragic surprise," the man purred, his voice dripping with fake pity. "The Whitneys end here."
"Please..." my father gasped, coughing up blood from the floor. "Leave... my family..."
"I’m sorry, the orders were absolute," the priest replied coldly. "Eliminate every single Whitney."
Without an ounce of hesitation, he pulled the trigger, dumping a volley of lead straight into my father’s head.
My mother let out an agonizing scream. The priest turned his dark eyes toward her.
"You’re a monster!" she wept, trying to shield the baby with her own body. "How could you?!"
"I’ll take that as a compliment," he said flatly. He reloaded the rifle with a methodical click and opened fire.
The screen went black as the phone was crushed under a heavy boot.
I remembered collapsing onto the floorboards of the car, sobbing until my chest felt like it was caving in. By the time we reached our estate, police cruisers were everywhere, their red and blue lights flashing against the roaring flames engulfing our home. My parents were pronounced dead on the scene. My entire world was erased in a single night.
Three days later, at their quiet funeral, I sat on a cold wooden bench. Every emotion inside me had been utterly cauterized. I was a hollow shell... until the man officiating the ceremony stepped up to the pulpit.
My eyes widened in pure, unadulterated horror.
Standing there, wearing his holy robes and shedding crocodile tears for the tragic Whitney family, was Pastor Bernard Miller. The very bastard who had killed my family.
He adopted me that same week, putting on the facade of a saint taking in a grieving orphan. I knew the truth. He didn’t adopt me out of mercy; he took me in so he could quietly eliminate the last surviving Whitney when no one was looking. But the police, suspicious of the sudden house attack, insisted on conducting mandatory weekly welfare checks on me. The fucker was forced to keep me alive.
So, I survived. I grew up in his house, breathing his air, wearing a perfect, compliant smile while nursing a lethal, psycho rage in the dark. I meticulously mapped out my revenge, waiting for the exact right moment to tear his holy empire apart piece by piece.
And then, i met Micah.
Micah... my fragile, beautiful, untainted little secret. In a house filled with blood and deceit, Micah was the only clean thing that belonged to me. The bastard Miller hated him, but I wished for him. I craved him with an obsessive, suffocating intensity that terrified even me. Micah was mine to protect, mine to keep, and mine to hide from the filth of this world.
Outside the locker room, the grey-haired man’s voice cut through the dark: "Sixteen years ago, he would have been a corpse if you had done your job well!"
My grip on Damon’s face tightened so hard my fingers dug into his jaw. A dark, twisted grin spread across my lips in the shadows.
They thought they were the hunters. They had no idea that the monster they created was finally ready to eat them alive.