“Nuet!” Erik calls—game over.
Walking over to Maurizio, I look down into his stern face and ticking, steel jaw as he struggles to gather himself. “Jesus, big boy, get it together!” I chide as I offer him arms of truce. Niall stomps up too. Maurizio clasps onto our forearms and, together, we pull him up.
“Damn me, wee lass, you sure packin’ a mighty punch these days!” Niall sings in praise as Maurizio just grunts, pissed to be bested again.
“Ah, Maurizio, don’t look at me like that!” I wrap an arm around his trim waist and give him a hug. He softens a bit and finally offers a fist bump. Grouchy ol’ brother bear.
“I am out of the next round; ya fuckin’ took a cheap shot with the kidney.” He groans.
“Ya big pussy! Can’t handle a little girl fight?” Gabriel booms through the barrier from above, drawing our attention up.
“It’s about time, Gabriel!” I yell up before my eyes follow.
Two ghost-white faces stare back in shock. The boys! I motion to Erik to drop the barrier of wind and radiating earth energy we are yelling over. Naveed and Roman quickly comply, and I jump up and out of the ring. “Guys, you okay?” I fret, straining not to get too close into their personal space.
“Well, they got to see you in action.” Gabriel whistles.
“How much did y’all see?” I nonchalantly brush back some errant flyaways.
Vacant, disbelieving looks mirror back.
“Well, just about all of it,” Erik pipes in, quite pleased with himself.
Niall jumps out of the pit, landing next to me with a fascinated expression before extending his hand in introduction. “How’s it goin’ there, lads? I’m Niall, yer grandad,” he jubilantly greets them.
“For fuck’s sake, Niall!” I growl, my fangs lengthening and tremors sneaking out from where we stand; Etienne does nothing but shake his head and step back, ready to let me rip Niall apart.
“Oh, Jaysus. I’m sorry.” Niall’s cheeks deepen as he shoves a hand in his jeans and rocks back on his heels.
“Mom, it’s fine. We were bound to find out.” Ethan’s calm, compassionate voice breaks the silence as he thaws from his shocked state.
Snapping my fangs back, I sneer once more at Niall before inching closer to them, waiting for Aiden to snap out of it. He’s my wild-card child. Who knows what’s going to fly out of his mouth next.
“So, this is the dipshit who cursed us all because he couldn’t wrap it up?” Aiden scoffs.
The room goes quiet and notably chills, the disrespect not lost on these honorable males. Niall’s dejected stance breaks my ever-lovin’ heart. He didn’t deserve that.
“Apologize, now!” My voice blasts and echoes from all around as my disgust for his attitude rings clear.
“Why should I? This is bullshit!” Aiden challenges. The males in the room circle, muscles bunching, chests rumbling, fangs dropping down at the threat to one of their own. Niall is the only one who backs up, his kind soul not wanting to get in the way. That’s the thing about him; he may be a brutal, wide span of solid warrior who’s surprisingly quick and light on his feet, but that’s not all. He has the biggest heart out of all of these males and really does mean well despite his lack of brains sometimes.
“Bullshit? Bullshit, you say? Were you given a choice? No. Does this all suck? Yes! Does that give you the right to treat any of us the way you have been? Abso-fucking-lutely not!” I snarl.
“But he—” Aiden’s mouth continues to flap as I cut him off.
“Enough! You don’t have the right to speak on matters you have no clue on!” My temper is lit, and the elements are beginning to swirl in a disconcerting manner, nipping at my heels, crawling across my skin. If I don’t rise above his childish reaction and view this from a different perspective, it won’t end well. The wind howls around us, carrying away the last remnants of hauntingly spoken syllables. How do I make him see what took me years to understand? He cannot continue on this path or he will end up getting hurt. The tension in the warehouse fluctuates as the viewing eren wait for me to right this level of wrong in their eyes. A child speaking out in this nature is completely unacceptable. “Kneel,” I demand of Aiden, who in turn gives me a look of disgust. This will be unconventional, for sure, I deserve that.
“Son, I suggest you do as your mother requests,” Etienne warns in his thick accent, hissing each syllable over the ominous symphony of rising elements.
“I am not your son,” Aiden spits, crossing his arms and jutting out his chin, not at all phased by the show of unbelievable happenings concurrently taking place. A normal kid would be shitting his pants. Hell, I would have initially when I first found out this world existed.
“He is your stepfather and has every right to refer to you as such. Aiden, I will not ask again,” I seethe, attempting to maintain some form of calm and rationale but doubting in that ability based on dark clouds collecting above us, and I don’t mean outside.
Aiden’s eyes rise up at the rumbling, cumulous clouds manifesting before our eyes prior to narrowing them at me and complying. Ethan breathes a sigh of relief, and I taste the hint of fear stemming from both boys. Goddess, I wish my own kids weren’t afraid of me and trusted me—haven’t I earned that much? How do I make him see? I know my displays of anger can be a bit overwhelming but geeze! They know I’d never do anything to hurt them.
The kneeling form before me quakes as another gust sweeps through. This path Aiden is headed down scares me to death, for if he turns with this blackness brewing in his heart, I may never get my son back after transition. Internally scrambling for the answers, I stare down at his questioning, now-upturned eyes—ones that have way too much pain, anger, and fear. Seeing me train and throw my clout around just made this real for him, cementing his sour mood and cruel disposition. Closing my own eyes to center my breath, I inhale deeply and call the sweltering power into me. Going on pure instinct because I have no fucking clue what else to do, my hand comes to rest on top of his head as my shoes shuffle across the concrete to get a bit closer. I cannot take him up to see Nannau. That could injure him deeply—if we even made it that far.
As I wait patiently for a sign, energy begins to vibrate from us, causing the circling entourage to take a wary step back, except for my mate, who comes up behind me. I can feel his radiating warmth as he readies for anything—an unmoving force by my side. Aiden clenches down under the radiating sensations. Suddenly, a gut-clenching, ear-splitting, tearing sound rings out, momentarily stopping my heart mid-beat before it flutters back to life, figuring out what to do and hoping too.
When I open my eyes, it takes me a moment to understand what I am looking at. I’m now viewing myself posed over Aiden, linked to him through that hand on his head as our group worriedly looks on to our statue-still figures. Etienne is standing behind me, scrambling internally, with forearms drawn tight across his chest. Stress lights him up. Something tugs my hand. In slow motion, I turn to look at Aiden standing next to me. His eyes are as big as saucers as he registers that we are somehow now separated from our bodies and watching the scene in front of us in a third-party perspective.
“Mom?”
“I pulled your spirit from your body so that I could show you something,” I confidently reply, but really, something else is guiding, as this is all new to me. However, I have to come across as in control or I will lose him.
“Okay, please don’t let go,” the little boy in him begs as his big hand squeezes mine in a sweaty death grip.
“Never.” My words bounce around in the stifled air. This was always a strange place to come, suffocating yet revitalizing all in the same. Here, we are everything and nothing, our own best and worst in one. Here, we exist in pure, elevated form and are only hindered by what limitations we set.
Together, we slowly turn around and are met with blackness, dotted with twinkling stars reminiscent of my time up above.
“What is this?” His shaky voice grows stronger by each syllable.
A woman screams bloody murder, cutting through the air like a knife to startle us. Her chest appears sweaty and red with knees drawn up and blankets sprawled everywhere, telling of a fierce battle of mind and body. We are seeing this through her eyes. Distant background noises pitch and roll, but nothing is clear. Soon, the cries of a newborn reach us, coming from all around like surround sound. A set of hands brings the baby up to rest on her chest. The urgency in her being to instantly clasp the bundle is innate and intense. As the wiggling baby meets her skin, she begins to weep from pure, exhausted, and total joy as her hands move to hold him nearer. Her cries of joy sweetly join the suckling sound of the baby finding his fist as she looks over to a man, Stephan. His young eyes team with dampness as he reaches to coo at the baby before leaning in to kiss the woman’s cheek. “Mi amour, te amo,” he whispers. Making a clicking sound at a now-visible second baby in his arms that he is gently rocking, he stills and brings this infant to rest next to his brother on the woman’s chest.
“Stephan, if I never have the chance to do anything worthwhile again, I would die happy knowing that we brought these two miracles into this world.” She struggles to hold back more tears as she leans in to kiss each baby and sing to them before the picture fades.
“Was that the day we were born?”
“Yes, one of the most important days of my entire life.” I sniff, the emotions of that day hitting hard.
The sky shifts and ripples before us and another moving picture plays. Viewing from the woman’s eyes once more, she’s running out a door, across a lawn, and up to the base of a tree as fast as she can. Her heartbeat thuds in our ears as she mutters “oh god, oh god” to herself as she travels. Coming up to a moppy-haired, brown-eyed boy of about six, she quickly assess the situation, taking note of his crocodile tears, bloody legs, and how he is holding his arm that looks broken.
“Mommy! I…fell,” the little boy gasps through each syllable, his chest heaving and rattling; verging on pain-driven hysteria as his looks up to the offending tree he must have been climbing.
“Baby, baby, oh my angel. It’s going to be okay,” she soothes as she gathers him up into her arms.
“You will fix me up since you are a doctor nurse?” his vulnerable voice rings.
A pained smile is heard through her heavy sigh as she gazes at him and walks slowly back across the yard, trying not to jostle him around too much. “Baby bear, we are going to go to Mommy’s work and meet some special friends of mine who will fix you up.”
He nervously looks up to her. “You won’t leave me?”
“Oh, never, baby, never ever,” she coos. The scene shifts rapidly into the next and the next. Every game they played, every injury they got, the woman was there to cheer them, save the day, or be goofy with them. It flashes in rapid succession as the two brown-haired boys grow before our eyes. Suddenly, the onslaught of images slows to allow one clear one to come through from one of the boys’ perspective as he sits on the bed next to his twin, their awkward teen bodies shuffling about.
“Something’s not right with Mom and Dad,” the other boy whispers.
“Yeah, Dad’s never home and Mom only seems happy when she’s with us. Have you ever seen her just sitting on the couch, staring at the wall?” Their voices contain more conflicted emotion than one mother can bear to hear stemming from her children.
“A few times. She doesn’t seem to have a life outside of us and seeing Ang.”
“I am worried about her, bro, especially when we leave for college.”
My heart drops as I watch the vision, apparently plucked from Aiden’s head, unfold.
“Do you think we need drop out and stay here? What if she goes suicidal or something?” This grips his throat and he tries to cough it away.
“I thought about that too. But I think we will regret not going. Maybe we should talk to Ang so she can keep an eye on her?”
“Yeah, bro, let’s stop over there soon. I walked in on her staring into the bathroom mirror like a statue yesterday. She wasn’t crying or anything. She wasn’t really anything at all. Almost thought she wasn’t even breathing until she saw me, and then she came back to life or something.”
The last words echo away and fade into the darkness as sadness suffocates me. I thought I had hid those dark times well from them. Most of it was a blur, pure will to survive and do right by them.
“Wow, that was crazy.” Aiden’s body shifts next to me.
“You really thought I’d try to kill myself?” I clear my throat.
Aiden squeezes our interlocking hands tighter. “We didn’t know what to think. Ang told us not to worry and that she’d look after you. I had forgotten how much you were there for; everything you did was for us.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Mom, I’m sorry.”
I turn to look at his beautiful chocolate eyes. “Thank you, son. We all just want to help you two.”
“I’m scared.” And there it is, one thing he’d be hard pressed to admit in front of his brother for fear of appearing weak.
“Me too. But, it seems as if I can no longer protect you from the one thing I tried so desperately to hide.” Now my voice is the unsteady one as the impact of this moment rushes upon us.
“Ethan thinks it’s all kinda cool. He’s worried but not as much as he is excited about it all.”
“You should have seen Ang when I told her. She geeked out and thought I was being stupid for being scared.”
“Ang knows?” His nose scrunches as his eyes become lost to the onslaught of thoughts.
“She has from the day I found out what I was.” He is bound to find out anyway.
“She never—”
“She kept the secret to keep you safe; she loves you like her own too.”
“This is really happening, isn’t it?”
“Yes, baby, it all is out of our control.”
“But if Niall hadn’t met grandma and had you—”
“Stop, son. Don’t go down that path. Niall is a good male who really had no idea. He’s done a lot to try to make up for it in the small amount of time that I have even known, but that all, too, was out of his control. He hates it as much as we do.”
“Okay,” he peacefully replies.
“Okay, really? Just like that?” That was a weird and sudden shift in him.
“For some reason, I feel better now, about it all.” He shrugs his broad shoulders.
“Promise me one thing, son.” My hesitation grows in the moment as I think what could happen if he turns with that chip on his shoulder, one that may have shrunk through this experience, but continues to exist.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t take it out again on these vamps or your brother… or anyone else. If you need to release the anger and work it out another way, talk to me. I might know a thing or two about all that.” I wink at him, trying to lighten the heavy mood and gnawing in the pit of my stomach.
“Yeah, ya do. My mom—the badass.” He chuckles, finally looking his age again.
“You ready to go back?”
“Sure.” He shrugs and takes one last look at the vast darkness spread out before us. Something passes across his face before his youth reclaims it.
“You really loved us that much from the start?”
“From the minute I knew I was carrying you two in my belly.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“Love you too, son.” Wrapping around him in a tight hug, I transfer us back through the seal and into our bodies.
With a gasp, and one last surge of energy, our connection is broken. Collapsing backward into Etienne’s waiting arms, Aiden drops his hands to the cool cement a
nd wretches his guts out. Ah, yes, I remember those days. Shaking off the waves of exhaustion threatening to pull me under on the spot, I drop by his side. Ethan kneels by me. I wrap my arm around his waist as the other circles Aiden’s back in an attempt to comfort him. Taking in my sons, my heart reaches out in prayer. If they go through the transition with demons gnawing at them, they are at a large risk for turning dark and going rogue right away.
“Well, boys, looks like we are done for the night. Erik, can you get the car?”
“Sure thing.”
Guess I am going to have to push breakfast with Ang and her family back a tad and let these boys rest a bit first. I need to keep them healthy and full of positivity.
Chapter 4
“The greatness of a man is not how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.” ~Bob Marley
Sasha
Sitting around the dining table has become a bit awkward all of a sudden. Brunch with Ang should be simple, right? Only it’s not. Christian and the girls even showed up, all too curious about the mysterious man I married. Now that they are all here? No one seems comfortable in the slightest, all seated around this spread Molly so lovingly made in her ecstatic state over having new guests. Christian is emanating walking death as he tries to muffle his groans of discomfort and subtle, dry coughs. Elizabeth and Alissa, or Liz and Lysa as we like to call them, keep anxiously fiddling with their napkins as they sneak glances at Etienne and blush. Ang, my dear friend with her sunken eyes and paled skin, seems like she is about to drop face-first into her plate from the stress of everything. And then there’s Etienne, siting back coolly, critically assessing all the new humans in his house, cool as a cucumber yet conflicted over his internal disgust—something only I can pick up on, thank goddess.
I still don’t get his repugnance over humans. Shit, he married one. Well, a half-breed. But hey, we can deal with that another time. Right now, we need to survive this sullen and inaudible brunch.
“So, girls, how is school going. Did you pick a major yet?” I bravely attempt as my fork scrapes too loudly across my plate when I chase a runaway steamed veggie. Liz and Lysa glance at each other in question as well as surprise that someone had finally spoken before turning their attention back to me.
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