After spending a second—that felt like an hour—pushing as hard as he could to get the blade of his sword piercing through his father's skin, Caius's vampire red eyes widened when he saw he hadn't made an inch of progress.

His sword, sharp as it was, had failed to pierce Lucian Von Helsing's skin. And had Caius been in his rational senses, he would have known this was to be expected. The weapon in his hands was not made to attack so high above Caius's station and it didn't matter how much of his Third Circle Mana he flooded into it. It was all a waste of time.

Alas, his feral mind couldn't process this. He just grew frustrated and took one hand off the sword handle to make a swipe at his Father's midsection with his claws.

*Rip*

The sound was quick and over in an instant but it was notable as Caius's claws succeeded where his sword had failed, cutting five gashes into Lucian's body, causing the Count's body to flow.

As the blood splashed against his skin, Caius became so much more aware of its scent. He became more aware of how much he yearned to drink it, and it intensified his savagery as he raised his eyes to stare into Lucian's face.

Lucian looked conflicted. Behind the lens of the glasses sitting atop his perfect nose, was a deep sadness rather than anger. The sword and claw strikes were attacks he could have avoided and blocked but he had just watched and let them happen.

It may have had something to do with the fact that he had always believed he deserved some punishment for what had happened to Caius. Or maybe he was just curious what would happen if he let Caius's feral nature run its course.

Caius looked from his father's face to his neck, his sight still tinged with red and his senses in the truly heightened state worthy of a Vampire.

Lucian raised his hand slowly and placed it on Caius's shoulder.

"Son," he said in a low voice, "Be calm."

As he spoke, Lucian flooded his son's body with his mana.

When a Vampire acts, their blood acts with them. Their mana resides within their blood and really every bit of strength they have is within their blood.

The circulation keeps their magic and physical might stable. It keeps them in a constant state of magical focus that humans/humanoids would ordinarily have to meditate to achieve but it's also a channel that can be disturbed. Depending on whether the one attempting the disturbance knows what they're doing or not.

Lucian's mana disrupted the circulation of blood within Caius's body, creating an enemy his insides had to battle against and making it impossible to keep Caius in the Feral state he was in.

His eyes became cloudy with confusion, and then Lucian withdrew his Mana. Invading someone's body with Mana can be dangerous for both parties. Mostly for the one doing the invasion.

"Father, I'm—" Caius started to say and shook his head once to get rid of the woozy feeling that swarmed him, "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Lucian said gently but firmly.

Caius gestured with his head at the claw marks he had made,

"I hurt you."

"Expected in a spar," Lucian said with a light smile, "I did whack you a few times with my staff, didn't I?"

"Those didn't draw blood," Caius said.

'Hurt a lot though,' he added in his head.

"A flesh wound, son," Lucian said and it was clear that he had already stopped bleeding. Caius could have sworn he even saw the skin stitching back together.

"Sit down, son," Lucian said with a wave directing Caius to the ground, "Rest. We can continue in a few minutes."

Caius raised a brow at that.

Lucian laughed.

"You didn't think a little wound would cut this short, did you?" He asked.

Caius shrugged then and managed a little smile himself as he sat down, letting out a sigh and clenching and unclenching his hand. Despite the Blood disturbance that had 'calmed' him, he could still feel that nature rousing within him, ready to rage.

The truth was it had always been there. Every time Caius shifted, every time he fed, his true Vampiric Feral Nature had always surfaced and always been kept in check.

Lucian sat down beside Caius then and handed him a small piece of cloth.

"For your hand," he said when Caius looked at him, confused.

"Oh, right," Caius said as he accepted the cloth.

It was funny. He was aware of the blood. The scent was far too pervading for him not to be very aware of every spot it was at. Even if he closed his eyes, he would be able to point, with absolute accuracy, at where drops of the blood had fallen after his claw strike.

However, despite that awareness, it still slipped his mind to get rid of it.

The blood was tempting like any blood would be tempting. Despite his father's blood being sure to taste better than that of a Beast because his father was a humanoid, Caius considered them to be essentially in the same category. Only really useful to sate his thirst and could not be used for his own Evolution.

He also didn't want to taste the blood because it would just tempt him to have more and he was only barely recovering his self-control and didn't want to willingly do anything to jeopardize that.

All in all, he scrubbed quite hard with the cloth, and in a few seconds, there was not a drop of his father's blood on his hand though the memory of what just happened remained.

Caius remembered all that had happened because it was he who did all that. Just him without the inhibitions and self-control he had imposed on himself for years. 'Years' because the count started before he even took over this body. It started when Caius became a Vampire Spawn five years ago and suppressed it with self-hatred. Caius inherited that when he received the memories of the 'original' Caius.

What happened wasn't at all a case of possession. The best example one can liken it to would be how someone who lost themself in a bout of anger can then claim they hadn't known what they were doing at the time.

"That was the first time, wasn't it?" Lucian said then.

"What?"

"The first time you ever shifted in front of me," Lucian said, "Even since those first days."

Caius remembered the 'First days'. He had just been turned by Athenodora and was undergoing the transformation that caused him to move between a human and shifted form with no control. He had settled with the shifted form more at the time: The shifted form had been that of a Vampire Spawn so his Vampire red eyes were lighter and he didn't have claws.

Lucian couldn't bear to look at Caius during that period and was almost always out of the Estate searching for cures even though he knew there were none. Who else would know but him, the one who had killed the most Vampires in the history of the Acheron Empire?

"I came back one day," Lucian said showing he was reminiscing about the same thing as Caius,

"Coward that I was, I had finally found the courage to look upon your changed face. You were curled up on your bed, faced away, and didn't turn to look at me. I thought you hated me…"

"I didn't," Caius said in a low voice.

"You would have been right to," Lucian said with a sigh, "When you did turn, your face was as it had been before the incident… It was so much like your mother. So… human.

For a second, it seemed like it never happened. Like that bitch never visited and darkened our home. But that was a lie. It happened. She happened.

And any appearance of normalcy merely hides the truth."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.