Antidote by LC Lehesaho
Prologue
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful, beautiful boy. From the second the boy was born, his mother knew he was a fighter. It was an initiation that the boy was born under the sign of Leo. She decided to name her son after his zodiac sign and hoped that he would grow up to be the natural-born leader the stars foretold he could be. Little did the mother know, the boy would indeed become a leader, just not the kind his mother had in mind.
The years passed by, and the boy grew up in a loving home with his mother, who loved her creative and sometimes a little bit dramatic boy more than anything else in the world.
After his first school day, the boy came home with a question.
Almost every other child in his school had a father, but he didn't, and he wanted to know why. The mother didn't want to lie to her son, but he was too young to hear about the cruel world they lived in, so she told him a story. It was about the powerful king who loved his kingdom more than anything, and as long as there was nothing that could jeopardize his position, everything was fine in the world. What she didn't tell her son was that the kingdom was actually a city called Shangri-la, and she had lived there until the day she realized she was expecting a child from this particular king. Though he wasn't an actual king, he was the ruler of Shangri-la's underworld. A crime boss who had the entire city under his thumb. The mother didn't want her son to grow up in an environment like that, and more so, she wanted her son far away from his cruel and monstrous father.
All she wanted was to give her son a loving home and a normal life.
But she should have known that there was no escape from a man like him. Sixteen. That is the number of years she managed to stay hidden with her son and raise him to be a good boy.
Then came the day when the boy was forced to watch as this vicious man—his father—violated his mother and slit her throat open, painting their living room floor with her blood. The beautiful, beautiful boy had never seen a real gun before, not until one was pointed at his head. He was supposed to die.
He didn't.
The boy lived, and he was still breathtakingly beautiful, but on the inside, he was everything but. Whether from the horrors he witnessed or the bullet in his brain, either way, the boy lost his light. There was only darkness inside him as he sought vengeance.
He decided to take everything from his father, tear his kingdom down, and claim Shangri-la as his own. The boy made a plan. He gathered every sick and twisted soul he could find around him and became the natural-born leader he was meant to be.
But the boy didn't want to be like his father, who hadn't understood the value of family. No. His mother had taught him that the children are the future, and family comes first. So, the boy had an idea, and he decided to plant the seeds for the future, literally.
On his eighteenth birthday, the boy bathed in his father's blood when he took over his city and became the new king of Shangri-la's underworld. At the same time, five different women gave birth to his progeny.
The Beasts of Prey.