One year later.
"Are you sure this will work? What if that serum you experimented on doesn't work on her? I haven't even seen how much progress you've made," said a well-built man with gray strands among his jet hair. He looked at the screen where a young man was focused and watching without blinking.
"Dad, take it easy. I tested it on some of our pets, and it had no lethal effects. If it fails, they'll just behave strangely for a few days, and with the antidote, everything will return to normal," the young man replied, briefly turning to his father.
"What did you say? Animals? Alexio, Xeraphine is human. How can you use an animal as a reference for your experiments on her?"
"Calm down, Dad. I can't explain now. Let's see this." He pointed at the image that appeared on the screen. An anatomical drawing of a body is moved around. It stopped on one side when he pressed a key on the keyboard, and then pointed at one of the sections.
"This head-to-toe imaging of Xeraphine shows significant growth, as we expected. And this part is an armament for her. She won't be able to use this device until she gets her wolf."
"You mean, you're implanting weapons in her body? You're turning her into a robot?" asked the middle-aged man, raising his intonation. "This is not how the rules work, son."
"Wait, Dad. You've misunderstood. I didn't make her a robot; I just implanted a few devices that could integrate with her organs. Never mind, you won't understand until you see it in person. Most importantly, there must be a top warrior to train her later. If not–"
"I know that, young man. Do you doubt your father's ability? If I didn't have the ability, there's no way Alpha–" The middle-aged man didn't continue the sentence but seemed to be gazing into the distance. His gaze was blank for a while, then he sighed. "I still can't accept what happened. I wonder what will happen to Xeraphine when she wakes up."
"She'll be fine."
"Don't say that. If she's fine, it's pointless all the effort we put in. She needs to become the warrior she was meant to be. To realize that, she must have a special purpose, and so must we. Revenge must grow in her heart, because if not, then–"
"OK, I understand. I know what I'm doing and what it's all for. It's like Alpha Ronan said. He wants to rebuild the pack, and we must protect our only precious treasure, which is Xeraphine."
The middle-aged man nodded, stroking his sideburns before looking thoughtful. He turned to his son, who was again concentrating on the screen.
"I want to see it in person to make sure you're not deceiving me," he said, which made the young man snort.
"You old man! Do you doubt me? We only need less than an hour to see it. If the alarm goes off–" His sentence was cut short when the alarm that he thought would go off in an hour went off sooner than expected. He quickly grabbed and put on his white coat, and ran to the test room where he kept Xeraphine's body.
Alexio and his father arrived at the room a little late, because when the door opened, Xeraphine, who was in a large tube filled with liquid serum, was trying to escape.
Seeing the girl's behavior in the tube, he didn't want to waste time. If he didn't free her immediately, his efforts over the past year would be in vain.
***
"Try opening your mouth wider and sticking out your tongue," Alexio ordered the girl, who immediately complied and did as directed. There was no physical problem in sight, but he had to test and ensure everything he had done worked.
He still couldn't forget that this girl had woken up an hour earlier than expected. It could have been the fault of the equipment and machines or the serum he had administered.
"Where am I?" the girl asked, scanning the room and finding sophisticated equipment she had never seen before. Her gaze moved from the room to the young man nearby. "Are you Alexio Regan—the son of Beta Frans Regan?" The girl pointed at the middle-aged man beside Alexio. The middle-aged man smiled fondly.
Alexio then nodded. "Do you still remember everything? Can you tell me who you are?"
The girl was silent for a while, glanced briefly at Alexio, then turned to the other man, who was also waiting for an answer from her with a pounding heart.
"I am Xeraphine—Xeraphina Dawns. Daughter of Alpha Ronan Dawns and Luna Gaia. My father and mother–" Xeraphine's sentence was paused for a few moments. However, even though the two men near her waited, Xeraphine didn't continue.
"Is that all?" asked Alexio, who got a weak nod in response from Xeraphine. He was not satisfied with what he had just heard. The girl should still remember everything, just like his father said, and they needed Xeraphine's anger and vengeance to carry out their purpose.
Alexio deftly grabbed the equipment and took Xeraphine's blood sample, then rushed to another room inside the experiment room, where Xeraphine was.
"What happened, Lex?" the middle-aged man asked Alexio. He followed his son to the device in the room, then to the control screen.
"I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out."
"You said that if it doesn't work, she will only show strange symptoms. Is what happened to Xeraphine a sign that your experiment failed?" the man asked again, sounding urgent and demanding an answer. However, his son ignored him and was instead busy with the monitor screen and the serum samples he had, looking at them one by one. Neither realized that the humans they had sampled for a year were looking for a way to escape from that place.
Xeraphine knew something was wrong with all this. Minutes ago, she realized that the most important thing for her was to save herself from whatever she was going to face.
Meanwhile, Alexio found nothing wrong, but quite the opposite. In Xeraphine's blood, new DNA had formed that was different from what he had hoped and expected.
He turned to the other room where Xeraphine was supposed to lie down while waiting for him to finish the job. However, when he and his father returned, she was no longer in bed.