Wild Melnikov Schweinsteiger is me and I am 24 years old, born in the Russian capital, Moscow. I come from a famous family, well, only my big brother is famous: Bastian Schweinsteiger player of the German football team. My whole family broke up after a complicated divorce where, after years, my father decided to tell the truth about the magical world to my mother, and she did not react well when she discovered that her husband was a werewolf. In her culture, he was a monster and there was no chance of them being together and she said she would have her father hunt him. That's when he killed her to keep the secret of the portals. My father was arrested in the mortal world and could not tell the real reason to anyone, me and Bastian were 8 and 11 years old. My mother's grandparents raised us, but soon more severe changes than puberty began to appear in me. My brother was lucky, not born as a freak, and followed his life as an athlete. I started writing secretly to Dad telling me what was going on and one night later I was taken away from home. I was 15 when I was taken to live with my paternal grandparents and find out the truth about my mother's murder and find out what my father and I were.

The truth was hard, I tried to escape from that reality for years but I never found any portal and soon gave up. I became a squalid teenager who wandered all over the city seeing all sorts of oddities and feeling dislocated. That's when I decided that I should try to kill myself and end that strange nightmare where werewolves exist and kill their mother if she screams being married to a beast. I was the son of a beast.

I decided that I was going to drown, having no idea how it would keep me from swimming to the surface and breathing. I just swam a few feet in the icy waters of an inhospitable beach and began to dive, giving strokes to the bottom. As much as I gave up on the hour and tried to rise again, I would never give time. And he did not.

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But I was alive on the sand and I cried with anger for not being able to. Now I was a failed suicide and I was hungry, cold. Maybe if I was lucky, I would die of hypothermia, but when I tried to open my eyes more, there was a huge creature up high looking at me. I got scared like a little girl and screamed thin. I completely broke the mood of suicide gothic emo boy and took a good look. I noticed that it had wings, but it was wet:

"Who are you, big boy?" And I tried to get close. The giant lizard made no objection and I could even touch it, as if it had captivated the monster for days like the little prince. I felt Daenerys herself and watched his red color turn gray because of the clouds above us.

That's when I came home after 8 months of starvation, and now I was coming back with a flying dinosaur. My grandmother became frightened and left the garden stool, where her husband's girlfriend for 60 years. Grandpa stood still as I sat down beside him:

"Something happened." I put my hands to my eyes, my elbows propped on my knee, imagining a way to say, "I hate being a werewolf."

"Pretty good, do not you think?" He smiled at me, and at the animal, his sweater smelling of a wet dog. "You do not have to explain, Wild. No need.

I sighed hesitantly, deep down, did not want my moment of drama and tell me that I had tried to kill myself.

"He's a Draco Ignis, young man. You know what that means?

-No. I looked into his deep blue eyes like mine.

"You mean you were spitting fire before diving to protect you, dear Melnikov."

-Do you know? You know what happened on the beach?

"Your father tried to do the same thing not to do what he did to his mother. But it also failed, turned into water and was saved. He did not come back with a dragon. She said that as if it were routine.

"So he can not spit fire anymore?" Because of me?

"Do you know what Draco Ignis means, Wild?" It means "fire dragon" in Latin. Fire is his tool of survival. It's how you defend yourself, take care of the puppies and hunt. What will he do if he can not spit fire anymore?

"I do not know, I did not ask him to save me!"

"Is he asking you anything, Wild?"

And he got up, shouting to his wife to make cakes of all flavors, for a Melnikov had brought an "illustrious guest." I did not even know if dragons ate cake. And how dragons would be fat if they ate cake.

On the other side of the fence, he would stare at me as if he were pressing me with the same grandpa's question, "Am I asking you for something?"

Years later, I had accepted my life the way it is, with a friend who was not quite a dog. I would go to school, transform myself as little as possible and do everything with Rex, which was how I dubbed him. My grandmother gave me a tabefe by that name, but that's what got it. I have discovered that dragons are wild and it is against the law to have them, so he stays in the cottage away together with my grandparents, but is free to go wherever he wants.

It was at school, without my partner, that I found another friend. Well, it was a girl:

-Melnikov! - she was the only girl who insisted on playing lacrosse with the boys and I always passed the ball to her because she was unable to score a goal.

And after the goal, she would pat her helmet and smile at me. It was so the entire Middle School, doing jobs together, studying together, going out together, until she told me she was a werewolf. When I confessed I was one too, we kissed and lost our virginity. I know, it was fast, but it was the closest thing to my old world that I got. I do not feel trapped when she's around. Sasha was like me, wanted to be normal. He said it was worse to be a female werewolf. The menstrual cycle shuffles all over, the skin changes, the hairs grow faster and thicker, and they become more furious. That is, werewolf women were not good wives. I see it as machismo to this day, I would quietly marry her. But the truth is that I felt like an old friend of mine who was gay. Always trying to hide, getting confused, stressed.

-Wild? She had yellow eyes even when she was not in wolf form.

-Yes. I closed my eyes while she had her head on my shoulder and we looked at the waning light.

"When are you going to tell me about your pet dragon?"

I choked and I've never been in such an embarrassing situation like that. He said it was not fair and I already felt too strange.

When I proposed to go to the garden to talk, Rex lay down at her feet as if they already knew each other. The record fell when Grandpa and she were always talking when I had detention to meet and she and I met at my house. Obviously the old man had not been able to hide it from her.

"I was going to tell you." I looked at the floor.

"You would not." Your grandfather told me there are things he can not tell. I do not want to make you feel obligated to tell me, Wild, but I do not want to sleep with you. You're my best friend. He's my playmate, he's my partner in science projects. You and I sleep together every night. And yet you never said I was your girlfriend. I want to be your girlfriend, Wild, you want to date me?

I looked at her in amazement and said yes. I was embarrassed:

- It's a complicated story.

I told her everything. From my mortal world, from my father, from suicide, everything. I told him why Rex could not survive alone anymore.

At that time, I only had two things: my work in a workshop that makes safety accessories for creatures, and Sasha.

After that conversation, I was left alone with my work.