Before Damian could answer his mother, the Moonkin's large talons effortlessly pushed through his catalyst, and wrapped themselves around his throat. "No!" Lyra screamed furiously. She threw herself on the arm in an attempt to stop it from pulling her master out.
Unfortunately, it had no effect. Snorting, the moonkin ripped them both out of the car, straight through the broken glass.
"Gaaah!" Damian snarled in pain, several cuts opening up on his skin as heavy pressure cut off his airways. Instinctively, yet useless, his hands clawed at the fury hand around his throat. Meanwhile, Lyra, still clinging to the Moonkin's arm, was stabbing him ferociously but only created shallow wounds.
"Damian?!" his mother's concerned voice echoed in his mind through the open vid-call. "What's going on?!"
But he didn't have the wherewithal to answer. As soon as the Moonkin had his prize, he used his other arm to swat Lyra away indifferently. "Nooo!" she screamed from desperation and pain, unable to stop herself from plunging to the faraway ground. Uncaring, the Moonkin jumped of the car and flew into the air.
The last thing Damian saw was Lyra and Hans looking up at him with horrified expressions before they disappeared in a massive fireball.
The last thing he heard was his mother's voice. "Damian! Stay with me! Nova, what's happening?! Answer me!"
The last thing he did was give Nova an instant command to inform his mother of what happened.
Then, darkness took him.
***
It was an unknown amount of time later, when Damian slowly crawled his way back to consciousness. Softly moaning and still very groggy, he tried to move but immediately noticed his entire body was strapped to a stone slab.Even his head was unable to move, his eyes fixed on the kind of stylish stone ceiling you'd only find in the most luxurious of Eryndor's residences. He tried to talk, but could only moan as his jaws were kept wide apart by a spider gag.
'The fuck…?' he growled in his mind, a little disturbed by the type of gag they used. He'd occasionally used them during his sexual adventures, but he was always putting them on his partners, certainly not wearing them himself.
He tried to summon Nox Aeternum, but it wasn't absorbed into his body, or anywhere nearby. Next, he tried to talk to Nova, but she wasn't responding either, likely knocked out by an electric shock or EMP.
For safety reasons, Nova was the only one who could open communications, never the other way around. This made hacking it nearly impossible when she refused to engage, but knocking the AI out of action for a while wasn't too difficult.
Cursing his own helplessness, even lacking the ability to look around, Damian perked up his ears. Instantly, he heard arguing.
"You cannot do this, Elias! It will start a war!" one man pleaded desperately. "We'll be in the wrong! No one will support us, and we'll be targeted by the entire city!"
Another voice he immediately recognized followed. "Who cares about a war!" Luna roared furiously, despite her kind nature. "You'll kill him if you do this! I won't allow it!"
Damian frowned, but wasn't surprised to hear her voice. Her father's incarnate form was easily recognizable, so from the start, he'd realized his attacker was Elias Lykos, Luna's father.
"Hmpf, and how are either of you going to stop me?" Elias' deep, rumbling voice reverberated in the room.
His tone carried not only deep conviction and anger, but also a hint of madness. A suffocating amount of pressure underscored his words, projecting a level of power that could only be matched by a small dozen others in the city.
When no reply came for a few seconds, he scoffed and continued. "This brat got you pregnant, Luna," he growled, shocking not only Damian, but also the other man trying to oppose Elias. "He'll need to marry you, but no family of mine is going to be a damn bloodkin! Certainly not the son of that traitor and his harlot!"
His last words were said with so much inherent disgust that Damian felt almost as shocked as he did from the revelation before that.
'What the fuck is going on here?!' he cursed in his mind. 'What's he talking about?! And Luna is pregnant?! How?! Blood- and moonkin can't procreate! Does she have another lover?!'
Jealously shortly burned inside him, despite the obvious double standard, but he quickly rejected the thought. 'No, not unless she's a far more skilled liar than even I am. But then, how?! And what is with this disgust I feel from Elias?!'
Apparently, he wasn't the only confused one. "Dammit, Elias, come to your senses!" the male opponent growled. "That boy is a Bloodkin! Even if there was some relationship between them, there's no way it produced a child! Luna, tell him!"
"I— I don't know what's going on either, Uncle Damos," Luna's voice sounded again, uncertain and anxious. "Damian and I have been… intimate… a few times, but— but he's the only one! Perhaps the health monitor was wrong?!"
Most people of any import, including Luna and Damian, had implanted health monitors that alerted both their doctors and close family about any serious health concerns, including pregnancy. It was an invasion of privacy, but such was the prize of privilege.
"Hmpf," Elias snorted dismissively. "The health monitor wasn't wrong. The brat simply isn't a full-blooded Bloodkin. There's nothing you can say to change my mind, Luna. I'm awakening him as a Moonkin, and that's the end of it. If the city wants to rise up against me for it, they can come and break on our walls!"
'I'm not a what now?!' Damian cried out in his mind, full of shock and disbelief. Suddenly, he wasn't sure what shocked him more today. His father may be dead, but both he and Damian's mother were full-blooded Bloodkin, so how could he be anything else?!
"You're insane!" Damos screamed desperately. "Why would you go this far?! We could probably stand up to the Moroi in an open war, but not the whole city! Why don't we just abort the child?!"
"No one's aborting anything!" Luna cried out in horror immediately after. "If I really am pregnant with Damian's child, I'm definitely keeping it!"
"Dammit, Luna, be reasonable!" Damos cursed desperately. "Do you want him to start a war?!"
"Hmpf, it doesn't matter anyway," Elias waved off their concerns, and Damian suddenly heard heavy footsteps coming closer to him. "It's already too late for half measures. I'm doing this, end of discussion."
"No!" Luna screeched before Damian heard rapid footsteps. Suddenly, he noticed Luna's silver-haired scalp floating at the edge of his vision, presumably between him and Elias. He tried to shake his head and moan to grab her attention, but failed. "I don't know about him not being a full-blooded Bloodkin, but even a half-Bloodkin can't awaken as a Moonkin! You'll kill him!"
"Don't get in my way, child," Elias growled angrily. "I'm doing this for your sake. His other half is very versatile; it's not impossible for him to survive."
"Bullshit!" Luna roared emotionally, the tears practically spilling out of her words. "I don't know why you're doing this, but it's not for me!"
But Elias was done listening to anyone else. A loud slap reverberated through the room, and Luna flew off to the side, where she smacked against the wall hard.
Damian's eyes immediately widened. 'Luna!' he instinctively tried to scream, but it just came out as some gargled noises. Fury started filling his entire body, and when Elias' now-human face finally appeared before him, he was burning with the desire to tear it off.
"Good, good," Elias grinned maliciously down at Damian, a hint of madness behind the grey eyes set in his bald head and square face. "That anger will help you. I do actually hope you survive, boy. It will be far more satisfying that way. Now, let's get this started."
Behind him, Damos uttered one last plea. "Elias… please… there has to be another way. This will ruin our family…" But he went entirely ignored, causing him to utter a string of helpless curses.
While Damian continued to struggle and attempt to curse, Elias gathered power in his right hand and used it to create a cut. With no one left to stop him, he started speaking the words of awakening, deliberately dripping blood into Damian's forced-open mouth.