The bad days were over. No more running and hiding. Daniel had survived torture, taken revenge on his enemies, and had become something more than human or maybe more non-human. He had his best friends, Samson and Samantha, brother and sister mountain lions who Daniel considered to be his brother and sister. He talks to them telepathically, hunts with them slaughtering prey for food, and many nights found refuge from the world in their den.

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His mom had been his rock. She saved him from those who would have killed him, and literally had pulled him back from the dead. Daniel got his ferocity from her. She had trained him from age nine to be a predator, a killer.

But, the ugly dreams still came, black voices oozed from their dark crevasses, the faces of people he'd killed crept into his mind's eye, ugly reminders of the monster that lurked just below his consciousness.

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Yet Daniel had a hope, a light that shined in his darkness, a promise that the days ahead would be better, and her name was Amber.

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The last seven years of isolation and misery were in his past and his seventeenth birthday had him happy and in love. Life was good.

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Until...............