Chapter 405: More than blood.

WHAT!?

Hunter gasped, his entire body going stiff. His mind went completely blank for three whole seconds. Not in a million years would Hunter have ever guessed that! Not even in his wildest dreams!

How could Horas not be his father?! Ever since Hunter was a little boy, Horas had loved him with every single fiber of his being! He had raised him, protected him, taught him how to fight, and showered him with boundless, unconditional fatherly love!

So, how could he not be his father? He remembered an incident once from when he was six years old. He had refused to give Elliot a toy car that Horas had made for him. Elliot had run to their mother in tears, and she had summoned Hunter and hit him with a barbed chain, that tore into his back.

She had been on her third whip when Horas threw himself between Hunter and the chain. His mother had whipped Horas five times before his uncles stepped in, pulling her away from them. Horas’s back was bloody, with raw wounds by then. And yet, his father made sure her got treated first.

How could a man that endured such pain and made such sacrifices not be his father?

Horas saw the shock on Hunter’s pale face and stepped forward, placing both hands firmly on Hunter’s shoulders.

"Listen to me, my son," Horas said fiercely, his eyes shining with deep emotion. "Regardless of whether my blood runs in your veins or not, you are my son! Do you hear me? You are my son, and I love you with all my heart! If you don’t believe in anything, believe in that."

Hunter swallowed hard, nodding slowly. "Is that why mother hated me!"

Horas looked down at the floor, a heavy weight pressing on his chest. "Put all the blame on me... it was all my fault, Hunter. It was my fault that your mother may have hated you. Your mother may not accuse me out rightly but that has to be it." He let out a self-deprecating laugh. "Back then, I was strong and healthy in every way. But for some cruel reason, my body and Sabrina’s body were completely incompatible. We tried for years and years, but we failed to have a child. At the time, we were so much in love, and she was not so cruel. She was so good to me. It broke my heart to see her so sad."

Horas paused, his eyes staring off into the distance as he recalled the distant past. "I couldn’t bear to see her blame herself for our lack of a child," Horas continued softly. "So I suggested that we either use an anonymous sperm donor, or adopt a sweet baby from the orphanage. But Sabrina was so proud... she refused! She screamed at me and rejected the idea completely."

Horas’ voice dropped to a whisper, filled with old guilt. "I let the idea go immediately. Then... one day, out of nowhere, she walked into the house and casually surprised me. She told me she had secretly gone to the fertility center by herself and performed artificial insemination." He covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking slightly. "She went through that entire scary process all by herself in secret... just to give us a child. I felt so much guilt! I felt like a failure of a husband for making her suffer alone! That guilt... that immense guilt is the exact reason why I stayed blindly loyal to her for all these decades, no matter how cruel she became."

Hunter shook his head wildly, slapping his own forehead like a man trying to reboot a broken artifact. His brain felt like it was having a complete information overload! He stared at Horas, his eyes still wide with total, unadulterated shock from everything he had just heard.

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second, Father!" Hunter stammered, rubbing his temples. "If you’re saying you aren’t my birth father... then who the heck is my father? I don’t think there is a Somnivore sperm bank in any hospital. This story does not add up."

Horas immediately closed the gap between them. He reached out and grabbed Hunter’s shoulders with a tight, firm grip, looking him straight in the eyes like a martial arts master delivering an ancient secret. "Listen to me properly, Hunter! Pay attention!" Horas said passionately. "I am your father! I raised you, I fed you, I changed your diapers! I did everything except for providing the sperm that made you. I am your father."

Hunter nodded softly, blinking twice as his brain finally processed the awkward medical reality. "Okay... okay, I got that part. I get it. But Father...how did mother get her hand on Somnivore sperm?"

Horas let out a helpless sigh and shook his head. "I don’t know, my boy! Your mother went through that entire process without telling me! I wasn’t even in the country when it happened. By the time she told me, the pregnancy was months in." He paused, tilting his head back as he dug deep into his old memories. "Though... if I remember correctly, in the months leading up to the pregnancy, she was spending a lot of time with one friend."

Hunter’s eyes narrowed instantly. "Who?"

"Trinity Johnson," Horas revealed.

"Ha!" Hunter scoffed aloud, a bitter smirk playing on his lips. Instantly, all the arrogant, mocking words Trinity had thrown at him came rushing back like annoying flies. That sneaky sly witch! Hunter thought to himself, his jaw tightening. So she was in on it from the very beginning!

Hunter let out a long, heavy sigh. Well, the solution was actually pretty simple. He could just pour a drop of oath sap down Trinity’s throat and get every single answer he needed about his biological origin.

He could have just marched over to his mother’s quarters and demanded the truth from her directly, but... right now, his heart was burning with so much rage that he didn’t trust himself anywhere near her. If he saw Sabrina’s cold face right now, his hands might accidentally slip and strangle her on the spot!

She was the one that chose to give birth to him. So, how dare she blame him for existing? So many years of abuse for something that was not his fault!!

Horas watched his son sitting there deep in thought, his face shifting between anger and contemplation. Seeing this, he felt a sharp stab of pain in his chest. "Hunter..." Horas said softly, his voice trembling with heartbreak. "If... if you really want to know who the biological donor was that badly, you can just go ask your mother. I won’t stop you."

Hunter snapped out of his thoughts and looked at his father standing before him. Horas looked so frail in that moment, his eyes filled with fear that his son would throw him away for a stranger’s bloodline.

Horas’ heart was already smashed into a million tiny pieces because of Sabrina’s imprisonment and Hunter wasn’t about to grab a hammer and smash it any further! But, there were some things they couldn’t run from, no matter how hard they tried.