SLEEPSONG (BoyxBoy)✔️

Chapter 101

Really?

No... no, I... no.  

No.

Just, no.

"Too much, too far, and I won't go there," I muttered, choosing instead to get back into the grind of reading what I could fathom. I shifted my broken wrist in the splint as I read to check the pain level and cringed when I got an intense wash of it. 

According to the book, Lycan bodies were stronger with warped bones made to withstand heavy impacts and the abnormal strength the creatures possessed. However, most of their strength and speed came right from their minds. That part surprised me: most of a werewolf's physical prowess was nothing more than a force of will, limited to the strength of one's desire and emotional state. I furrowed my brows and read more intently, straightening up in confusion.

Their senses, by default, were enhanced nearly a hundred times further than a human's, and their lives had no end because of mutated cells in the blood and body, which would regenerate and replace every one dying bodily cell with trillions of healthy ones every millisecond.

The constant regeneration process typically led to most werewolves feeling constantly hungry, tired, irritable, and caused an insanely high metabolism. Common side effects were elevated body temperatures, stress levels, moodiness, bio-luminescent changes in the eyes depending on the level of stress being accumulated, and uncontrollable shifting in those newly turned. 

They were not, however, immune to death by way of physical injury.

Blood loss could kill a werewolf, but such a thing was admittedly rare because of the rapid cell regeneration. Normal bullets couldn't damage a werewolf permanently, even if they were shot in the brain or the heart, but such injuries could in fact cause problems later on if not dealt with.

Silver, like in the old tales, was poison to wolves.

That part was something I was curious about, to be honest, but unfortunately there wasn't much about it aside from the statement that it burned through them like acid and that it could take actual years for an injury caused by a silver weapon to heal. Even if it was only a scratch.

I swallowed hard and shuddered at the thought of Sebastian being hurt by such a thing.

I can't believe I tried to stab him with a silver knife, I mentally mourned, shaking my head; I focused my eyes on the page, realizing I needed to turn it. I did so very carefully and leaned forward, continuing to read. 

There wasn't much that could actually harm a werewolf aside from that, and all of the ones that could were plants such as wolfs-bane, belladonna,  mandrake, and other things I had only ever read about in botany books. 

I bit my lip and moved on with a sinking feeling in my gut.

I didn't want to read about what could harm werewolves so instead I skipped past and read about more interesting things. 

For example, the overall disease was called lycanthropy because the changes in the body that took place during voluntary and involuntary shifting were reminiscent of wolves, as well as because of the hierarchical structure of their culture, which had tiers of Alpha, Beta, and Omega. 

Someone had scribbled down on a later page that some older werewolves preferred the term "lycan" since "werewolf" had been so defamed by rumors, xenophobia, and plain old racism. The condition had existed for eons, as had the separation of human and Lycan worlds.

The part I found most interesting was the one that I myself had been wondering about: how these creatures had kept themselves undiscovered for so many damn years. As it turned out, werewolves and other supernatural creatures worked together in an underground network of online and offline communications kept completely separate from human society's own version of the internet, and none of them left traces of their existence.