The reason for Dominic standing there with support from his wife was due to him being woken up forcefully by his friend’s magic. This all happened while Lakshman was speaking to the couple before him casually while using his magic to wake up his friend to come confront them.

“Dom. Yoo-hoo! Dom…! This is important! Wake up already!”

“H-Huh?!” Dominic exclaimed, opening his eyes with a start.

For a moment, he was confused about where he was and why he was lying inside his home. Then when he tried getting up, he felt an intense pain from his forehead and clasped it with both of his hands.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” He winced with a pained look on his face. Looking surprised, he asked aloud, “Huh? Why’s my head hurting? In fact, what am I doing here?”

The last he remembered was facing his angry best friend and that was it. As he felt confusion swelling up inside of him, he could hear voices coming from outside. At the same time, he heard the voice of his friend speaking inside his mind.

“Now isn’t the time for small details. Come outside.”

“Come… outside?” Dominic asked uncertainly.

Still feeling confused, he slowly pushed himself to his feet and slowly tried moving towards the exit unsteadily. His feet were wobbly from the heavy injuries he sustained from the smashing attack his friend had landed on him. As such, he slowly walked towards the entrance when he suddenly felt a spasm occur in one of his legs. This caused him to suddenly groan from the pain and start collapsing, but he was rescued when a woman’s arm wrapped around him and held him steadily up again.

“Dom, what are you doing?” Shalany asked worriedly.

“Lucky… told me to come outside. It’s… important,” he said weakly.

Shalany widened her eyes as she was startled that her childhood friend was doing something like this behind her back. She did not feel at all willing to let her husband meet the people that abandoned him as a child at an orphanage as she felt very strong negative emotions towards them trying to get in contact with him now that he was famous.

At that moment, they heard Lakshman’s voice inside their heads say, “Shalany, don’t be foolish. There is no running away from this eventuality.”

“Lucky, you stay out of this!” Shalany burst out angrily, her feeling of fear for what might happen to her husband gripped her emotions very tightly as he looked at her in wonder. “These people hurt my husband! I will never forgive such people, and you’re doing the same thing as them; trying to force him to meet them again!”

“If you do not let him face this now, you are going to hurt him more than he is hurt already,” said Lakshman telepathically inside their heads. “They are his relatives and others will soon follow, but if he keeps running away, he will never be able to live with himself for not facing his past head on! It’ll be your fault for giving him such a guilty consciousness! Don’t you care about your husband’s happiness?”

“I do! I swear I care about it more than you do,” Shalany exclaimed angrily, “but you’re making a grave mistake of letting Dom meet these… these… ruthless betraying scumbags!”

“Shalany…!” Dominic moaned weakly but still trying to put power into his voice that caused his wife to look at him in surprise. “What’s the matter?”

“No! Lucky’s just being an idiot. That’s all! There’s nothing to worry about!” His wife told him firmly with a forced smile on her face.

She was trying to reassure him that it was nothing to worry about, but Dominic could see right through her. As his mind was fully awakened while she and his friend conversed, he quickly understood what was going on. Thus, he easily figured out that his relatives had returned and that Lakshman was in the middle of conversing with them while attempting to get him to come out to face them.

“I see. So, you’re going to hide things from me then, Shana?” He asked his wife in a quiet voice.

Shalany widened her eyes in alarm and said, “No! Dom! I’m not trying to hide anything—!”

“But they came, didn’t they? Didn’t they?” He asked, repeating the question a second time with greater force.

She looked at her with concern before she turned her head away and said, “I don’t want you to meet them.”

He shook his head in rejection and replied, “That can’t do, Shana. I have to meet them. I have to face them.”

“But they hurt you! They betrayed you! They abandoned you!” She insisted, turning to face him with a pleading face. Tears slowly began to appear in her eyes as she pleaded, “Please don’t go.”

Dominic could see the pain in her face from the concern she has for his wellbeing. This made him feel a great amount of love and affection surge within him for his wife like never before.

He raised a hand and placed it gently on her head before saying, “Shana, let me tell you that the only people that could harm me right now… emotionally… are those that I currently cherish. You know this, right?”

She sniffed and nodded in agreement but still asked, “And them?”

“They…?” He began slowly with a thoughtful look on his face. “They… are my past. Those feelings are unnecessary baggage that will constantly weigh me down if I don’t free myself from their restraints. That’s why I'm going to end it today… once… and for all…!”

She blinked in surprise by the firmness in his voice and saw a strong glint in his eyes. Her husband was filled with determination with not a single hesitation to be traced from his expression or mannerism. Seeing this and realising that trying to convince him would be futile, she breathed a sigh and started supporting him towards the veranda outside to meet his relatives.

Thus, he came walking out of the house with the support of his wife just in time to hear the explanation his relatives were giving to his best friend.

“We admit it, sir! We did abandon him,” she finally admitted it with clenched fists, “but what choice did we have? He had foolishly given away his assets to clear his parents’ debt, leaving himself and us with nothing. We were a group family and all income in the family came from his parents. Now that we were broke, we were not sure what to do. I was also pregnant at that time, and I had to make hard decisions about my family such as am I supposed to look after my family and him at the same time when we had no money at all, especially since my family was going to grow? That’s why I thought he would be better off in the orphanage than with us. That was all to it; it wasn’t out of malice at the fact that he no longer held any value! That was not it at all. Please believe us, Phoenix Titan!”

Dominic was shocked upon hearing the true reason behind their actions in leaving him at the orphanage. Finally, with the reveal of that crucial information, everything began to make sense. The reason for their sudden betrayal, the expression of sadness that he saw the woman had at the time of handing him to the orphanage; everything started to make sense.

His wife saw the troubled look on his face and quickly said, “They could be lying.”

Her words unsettled him, and he realised that they could as well be true. These people would be willing to lie their way through anything just to get what they want. Despite this, Dominic felt something odd about the situation and looked towards his friend to see what he would do as he remembered that Lakshman had the ability to tell between truth and lies.

Unexpectedly, it seemed like Lakshman appeared to be confirming the reason as to why they had tried to approach Dominic. After listening to their reasons of financial problem and that being the only reason for their approach, Dominic felt sure that his friend did not detect any lies from them. This made him feel saddened by the sad state that his relatives had gone down to after parting ways with him. So much that not even their children are in any state to help them out in their time of need.

As their conversation drew to an end, he heard his friend say, “I understand your problem, but it’s not me you should be contending with; it’s him,” and Dominic saw his friend step aside to allow his relatives to get a full view of him standing there with support from his wife.

Upon seeing their nephew, both man and woman went still and silent as if an electric shock had paralysed them. Shalany was looking angrily at them while Nara and Valerian were watching with curiosity to see what will happen next. Only Dominic appeared to be somewhat surprised to see how they’ve aged from the time he remembered them during his childhood.

“Stella. Matt,” he called them as he felt a sudden rush of emotions and attempted to go towards them.

“Dom…” said Shalany quietly, but she knew what must be done and helped her husband walk down the veranda stairs and slowly approach them.

They stopped a few meters away and silence stretched between them for a few minutes. It was Dominic who broke it first.

“How are you, Stella? You too, Matt?” He asked them softly.

Stella did not say anything with a troubled look on her face while Matthew replied feebly with, “We’re doing… well.”

Dominic nodded and asked, “I hear that you are facing financial trouble? How much exactly?”

Matthew blinked in surprise and then hesitated as he turned to look at his wife for some kind of guidance. She was not looking at him and instead had her face lowered to stop her from making eye contact with anyone there. Seeing her do nothing, he turned back to face his nephew and after a bit of hesitation, spoke again the amount of debt.

“I see,” said Dominic, nodding in understanding. “I’ll provide the funds. Please don’t be so sad.”

It was these words that triggered the next chain of events. First Matthew looked remarkably amazed by what he just heard and so did Stella, who raised her head to stare at him in surprise. Then, seeing Dominic showing her a soft expression made her burst into tears and rush forward to hug him tightly.

“Dom! Dom! Dom!” She said, repeating his name over and over again continuously while shedding great tears of sadness. “I am sorry! I am so, so sorry! Will you ever forgive me?!”

Shalany was surprised as she had to step aside while Stella had come to hug Dominic tightly. For his part, the Sword Titan blinked in surprise at the person that he really loved as a kid and felt like wanting to cry at seeing her cry like this.

“Please… don’t cry like this, Stella. I don’t… I don’t want to see you crying,” he said softly in a troubled voice.

Heeding to his words, his relative tried her best to stop the flow of tears and sniffed hugely to get her body back under control. Once she was able to control her tears again, she released him and stepped back to look him straight in the face with a sincere apologetic look on her face.

“This is better, but you’re still looking sad. Please cheer up,” he said to her and showed her a brilliant smile.

She was surprised to hear that before she tried to smile a little and asked tentatively, “I-Is this b-better?”

“Better,” he replied happily.

Stella nodded in satisfaction, but she still looked worried as Matthew came forward to ask, “But, Dom, how can you forgive us after… after what we’ve done to you?”

There was a moment of pause in which all eyes turned towards Dominic, who appeared to thinking about it.

“To be honest, I’m not sure that I did forgive you,” he began much to their surprise and alarm, “however, I also realise that I was a kid at that time that I was just too young to understand. I never realised that the whole family was dependent on the income and assets provided by my parents or the fact that each of you had your own circumstances that made you act that way.

Besides, the past is the past. Nothing will change, and nothing can be gained by digging it up. Instead, I find it more valuable to simply let go of the past and look towards the future. I have my own children, and as their parent, it’s my duty to do my best for their sake. That’s what family is all about after all.”

They listened to him speaking silently until he finished before Stella began to shed more tears as she said, “Ah! Dom! You’ve grown into such a fine young man with a great family! I am so… so… happy for you!”

She stepped forward and hugged him again, this time warmly and not as tightly as before.

“I told you I don’t want to see you crying,” complained Dominic.

“These are tears of happiness, silly!” She replied, burying her face into his chest while hugging him really warmly.

He let out a light chuckle and hugged her back just as warmly as she was hugging him as. Stella’s husband, Matthew, was taken by surprise by his wife’s actions and wanted to join in, but was hesitating as he was unsure of what to do. Shalany, who was slightly behind Dominic, watched this warm scene with a troubled look on her face. One part of her felt joy for them, and the other was not fulling trusting of them. As such, she had a difficult time picking what to do. Nara had an amused look on his face while Valerian appeared to be amazed by the turn of events.

Lakshman was also watching this warm scene with a serene smile on his face before he turned his head to face up at the sky.

“Family, huh?” He asked himself quietly with a hint of sadness mixed in it.