[Mar's POV - 7 years after hatching the egg = Alex being 7 years old]

"Ouch! Johny! Get off me! That hurts! Daaaaad! AAAAAAAAAAAAA!" I hear Alex yell and follow the sound of his scream into Hussam's room, my assistant Erika is close on my heels, both of us expecting the worst. When I run into the room, I see Alex's legs hang over the edge of the bed, but the rest of him is hidden under Hussam's body, which is slightly larger than my own son's body. I instinctively grab the back of the boy's shirt and lift him off of my son's body, but need to halt mid-motion, because the child is attached to Alex somehow.

On closer inspection, it seems that Hussam is pulling Alex's hair with his right hand and is biting him on the left side of his neck, which would explain Alex's incessant scream.

"Let go. Now!" I say with no small amount of murderous intent in my voice. Luckily, the child does let go, so I am spared from making any instinctual mistakes.

After Hussam lets go, Alex's scream turns into sobs. I quickly put Hussam aside on the bed and gather Alex into my arms. Before I leave, I look at Erika, who immediately understands my message and firmly nods once.

"No! Not the crazy lady," I hear Hussam complain before the door closes behind me, but I'm too caught up in saving my little boy to care about his words.

I hurry towards the operating room and try to put Alex down gently on the table, but he has his arms wrapped around my neck and is not letting go. He is still sobbing his eyes out.

"Alex, let go darling. I need to check if you are hurt," I say kindly, but firmly because I can't wait until he calms down to asses the damage. Honestly, I want to do a rabies check as fast as possible. Alex releases me just enough for me to see his neck, and I'm glad to see that, except for a bruise in the shape of teeth, Alex seems to be unharmed. I sigh a breath of relief and hug Alex tightly.

"Dear God, such a scream. I thought he was slaughtering you," I mumble into the child's hair.

"He attacked me, dad! Without a reason. He was on top of me so fast... I couldn't do anything," Alex says between sobs.

There is something about the words "Without a reason" which catches my attention.

"There, there," I say as I stroke Alex gently over his hair and notice that quite a few strands come loose from the place Hussam had pulled earlier. I suddenly feel the urge to do an experiment on Hussam which involves pulling hairs out, but I shake it off. I'm an adult, I can't harm a child for petty revenge. "What happened? Why did he attack you?"

"I don't know!" Alex says as his brows scrunch into a deep frown.

"But he usually doesn't attack you physically, does he? Can you tell me what happened?"

This time Alex presses his lips into a thin dissatisfied line and frowns as he thinks.

"I had been waiting for the visit with Johny's mom to end. So when I saw her leave, I rushed over to Johny's room to play. But when I entered his room, he was crying," Alex explains. Ah! Well, at least the reason why the child was on edge became clear quickly. Little Hussam's parents are both very busy people. His dad runs an oil conglomerate, they have three more sons of which Hussam is the youngest and the whole family lives in Iran. All those facts resulted in poor little Hussam being here "alone" more often than not. His family visits regularly, but it is not the same as living with your family at home. We've practically been raising him here for the past two and a half years.

Lately, Hussam has grown more restless, particularly since his narcolepsy has gotten better. He has shown severe signals of homesickness, but he has never attacked Alex like this before.

"But when I asked him why he was crying, he said that he wasn't and told me to leave," Alex continues. "But I already knew that he was crying, so I tried to cheer him up. I told him that I'd seen his mom leave, that she's really pretty and that I wish I had a mom like that."

At this point, Alex's voice cracked and a new sob escaped him.

"But Johny got angry instead. Yelling that she is his mom and that I am not allowed to look at her," Alex continues. Now my hackles stand on edge.

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"Tell me what you replied to that," I say urgently. Because if he replied what I think he did, this fight was Alex's fault, not Hussam's. He doesn't reply immediately, he seems to realise that what he answered was a mean thing to say.

"I said; No need to be petty about it. Can't she be my mom too?" Alex mumbles reluctantly and then continues: "That's when he grabbed my hair and told me to apologize. But I didn't want to, because I didn't do anything wrong."

I sigh deeply. Where do I even begin?

"Do you really want her to be your mom too?" I ask.

"No, not really. She has all these strange rules that I don't understand," Alex says as he thinks out loud.

"Then why did you say that?"

"He said I wasn't even allowed to look at her," Alex says as his lips turn down, into a bitter pout.

"So you did it to hurt him?" I ask. Alex glances at me briefly, then looks down at his toes and nods. I sigh again.

"Alex, sweetheart. You can't handle out of spite. Just look at what happened! You're too weak to even defend yourself! You're lucky I was near, otherwise this could have turned into a much more serious disaster!" I scold Alex.

"I hate being weak," Alex says with a glum frown on his face. I look at him in surprise. Alex's rehabilitation therapy is going great. He is almost back to being the energetic child he once was and he hadn't shown any dissatisfaction with the rehabilitation speed. Until now.

I guess he hates losing as much as I do.

"Shall we crank it up a notch then?" I ask with a mischievous smile stretching my face. "Shall I look for a Judo teacher for you? But you have to promise me to train diligently if I do this for you."

"Really? You'll find me a teacher?! Thank you dad! I will train diligently!!" Alex cheers joyfully as he wraps his arms around my neck and squeezes me tightly in a smothering hug.

"All good, all good," I say as I smile and pat Alex on his back. "But before that, you need to apologize to Hussam. You've been very rude."

"What?! Nooooo! Dad please no," Alex complains.

"No complaining. It's only the right thing to do," I say as I help Alex get off the table. Alex frowns unhappily, but follows me obediently to Hussam's room.

When we enter, Hussam is sitting huddled into a corner of his room, his face directed towards the corner. Erika is standing by the door like a guard, her arms crossed, her eyes on Hussam.

"What are you doing?" I ask out of cheer surprise.

"The situation is under control, sir," she says as she acknowledges my presence by looking up at me.

Ah... Now I know why Hussam complained about her being a crazy lady. She simply punished the child without asking questions first. I had thought that letting her handle Hussam would be fine, since she has children of her own, but that seems to have been an error of judgement on my part.

"Ahum, yes. Well, thank you. I'll take it from here," I say stoically. She nods and leaves the room. I sigh a breath of relief, glad that she's gone.

"Hussam, can you come here for a minute please?" I ask.

"I can't, I still have twelve minutes in the time-out zone," the boy says seriously.

"Those have been revoked. Now, can you come here please?"

This time the boy looks up curiously from his corner, and cautiously comes closer once he spots Alex who is avoiding Hussam's eyes by looking at his toes.

"Come on, apologize," I nudge him on.

Alex scoffs but looks up to Hussam and says: "I'm sorry for offending you. I shouldn't have said those things about your mom."

Hussam blinks in confusion a few times as if he didn't expect Alex to apologize.

"That's ok," he says after gathering his thoughts. "I am sorry too for biting you. Did I hurt you?"

"Yeah, ..." Alex says awkwardly as he hides the bitemarks in his neck with his hand, but then seems to recover and says enthusiastically: "My dad is going to find me a Judo instructor, so I'll be able to defend myself in the future."

"Really? Mhe, I'd rather play games," Hussam says with a shrug. "Which reminds me, my mom bought me a new game!"

"Cool! Which one?" Alex replies excitedly.

And just like that their whoes and squables are forgotten.