Vanilla Moon: Awakening

by Airiel Hawkins

  I sat down next to her on the bed and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. She turned into me and buried her face into the crook of my neck. I pulled her legs up over my lap and she started to cry again. I rocked back and forth because it was all I could think of.

  She didn't move for a while, except for the occasional shake of her shoulders. I tried to think back to a time where I might not have known about our world, but I realized that I had grown up knowing all of this. My parents had taught me from almost before I was able to understand what we were and why we existed. I could remember my mother whispering stories to me as she cradled me to sleep as a small child. I had witnessed her do it with my sister, Mira. That was how things worked when you were this high in the pack. There wasn't time for secrecy and knowledge was the only way to survive.

  When I realized that Ceres had fallen asleep, I laid her down on the bed before I stood and left the room. I found Riley in the kitchen frying something on the stove. The smell made my stomach growl and I was grateful when he pulled two bowls out of the dishwasher. He dished out the food and handed a bowl to me before I had a chance to say anything to him.

  I accepted the food and gave him a grateful smile before I followed Riley to the living room. We sat down and started eating without saying anything to each other. After a few minutes of silence, Riley looked at me. "How did he get you?" he asked.

  I tried to think of something sarcastic to say but came up empty. I shook my head. "You know, I have no idea," I replied. "I wanted Ceres to turn back and run away, but it didn't happen. She attacked, so I couldn't leave her. Alan overpowered us and we woke up in his cellar. From there, it was just a matter of escaping."

  "And somewhere in the midst of the chaos, you two decided to mate?" Riley asked. "I'm sorry, but sex is usually the last thing I think of in a life-and-death situation and I'm surrounded by Witches. When did the two of you have time to make the leap from 'let's get out alive' to 'let's mate in the cell of our worst enemy'?"

  I shrugged. "After the full moon, we're weak," I said. He nodded. "Both Ceres and I needed some way to defend ourselves and escape. The only way to recharge ourselves and enable her to be ready in more ways than a couple of hours could provide was to mate. We discussed it and decided that it was the best course of action. We mated and then we escaped."

  "And then you met with your father for an hour and now are home with your brand-new mate who is sleeping in the bedroom. Does she know she's pregnant yet?"

  I cleared my throat and shifted on the sofa. "She knows," I said with a nod. "She decided that having a baby was better than being dead, so we continued on the path toward it. Whether or not she accepts or realizes it yet is another question. I don't think she cares all that much right now."

  "And how do you feel about knowing you're going to be someone's father?"

  I sighed. "It was going to happen at some point," I said. "Hell, the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because I'm smarter than the average wolf. I chose not to let any of the other women get pregnant, but that doesn't mean that I haven't always known that it would happen someday. I'm the Volsunga," I said. "That means that someday I'm going to be the Enkidu and I will have to have a child of my own to carry the line. I don't exactly have any options here."

  "What about the hundreds of sleepless nights and thousands of diapers?" Riley asked. "You're prepared for the thought of having a child, but what about the actual reality of it?"

  I shook my head. "No," I confessed. "But as long as I have time to prepare for it, I think I'll be okay."

  "And Ceres?" Riley asked.

  I shrugged. "We'll find out," I said.

  Riley stopped asking questions he knew I wasn't ready to face, and we finished eating in silence. As I took our bowls into the kitchen, I heard Ceres come out of our room. She shuffled down the hall and before she reached the kitchen, I had a bowl ready for her. She stepped up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist. I turned and held her for a moment while she got her bearings. When she let me go, she looked up at me with the weight in her eyes that only those of us who had killed before could recognize. They darkened her already-dark eyes to an almost black and were so dull that the light wasn't reflecting. It was as if her eyes were two black holes.... I gave her a sympathetic look before I kissed her forehead. I knew what she was going through because I'd gone through it too.

  "What smells good?" she asked.

  "Riley's cooking," I replied before I picked the bowl up from the counter where I'd set it and handed it to her.

  "I'm not hungry," she said as she just stared at the bowl I offered. There was a hunger in her gaze, and I knew that her body wanted it more than her mind did.

  "Eat as much as you can," I said, knowing that when she started to eat, she would end up eating all of it.

  Ceres nodded and took the bowl from me. Unlike Riley and me, she sat down at the small table we had in the dining room and started to eat. She has sat down a table to eat almost all her life. I'd eaten at one for most of my life, but there were days when my parents allowed me to eat in another room. My family was as wealthy as hers was, but we came from more humble surroundings and so most of the standard rules went out of the window.

  I watched her eat for a moment before I sat down with her. "How did you sleep?" I asked.

  "I had weird dreams," she replied. She sighed. "I bet it's just my psyche trying to figure shit out of the weirdness that my life has become...." Her voice trailed off into silence as she sighed again. She stared at her food for a moment before she picked up the spoon and began to eat.

  I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to talk about what went through her mind and what she thought about the baby. I knew that it wasn't a baby yet—just a mass of cells that didn't have form or substance. I also knew that every time two Lycans mated, a baby was born from the union.

  Of course, just because I wanted to talk about it, didn't mean that Ceres was ready to. Watching her eat, seeing the spoon shake in her hand, noticing how pale she was in a way that wasn't normal.... I knew she wasn't even close to being ready to talk about it.

  Chapter 22 ~Ceres~

  I knew that Wolfgang wanted to talk. I wasn't sure what he wanted to talk about first—the killing, the baby, or the mating—but I knew that a conversation was coming soon. I knew that I wasn't going to be ready. Regardless, he let me eat in silence, no matter how much he wanted to speak.

  His anxiety finally got the better of me. I sighed with frustration as I set my spoon down and looked up at him. "What?" I asked, hoping he would leave murder out of the conversation for now.

  Wolfgang cleared his throat and looked away from me. "I was wondering your thoughts about the fact that..." he sighed and held his hands out to me, as if he was holding the subject. "Baby," he whispered. "I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the fact that we have one on the way. Riley and I were talking about it while you were asleep, and he asked me if I was ready to be a father. I don't know the answer. I knew a long time ago that I would have children. It's part of being this high up in the pack. There must be an heir. I just don't know if either one of us are ready for it to happen right now."

  I stared at him for a moment. "Honest answer?" I asked. Wolfgang nodded. I shook my head. "I'm not ready," I said. I saw his eyes widen. "You have to remember something, Wolfie," I said, causing him to twitch a smile. "I was planning on the career track, not the mommy one. I wasn't planning to have children until I established myself in my career. I'm a woman who ran away from home because it got too hard to deal with. Now I’m in a strange town and the only father I've ever known is trying to kill me. I didn't come from a loving family; I came from a cold one. The last thing I want is to pass that on to our children. I don't know how to be with kids," I said. "I don't know if I even like them."

  "We won't treat our kids like that," he promised.

  "How can you be so sure?" I asked him.

  He smiled. "Because I love you so much that I could never ignore a part of you," he sa
id. "Any child we have will be a part of both of us. How could we not love that?"

  I smiled. "I like that answer," I said. I sighed again. "I know that I'm capable of being a parent," I said. "When it comes time for the baby, I know that I'll even be physically ready for it. Right now, it isn't even real to me yet. It won't be real to me until I see that positive pregnancy test. I'm not going to lie to you," I said, "but there's a huge part of me that hopes it doesn't happen yet. I don't know if I can cope with being pregnant and bringing a baby into the world when the world is trying to kill me right now."

  Wolfgang sighed. "I don't know if I can cope with you being so defenseless," he said.

  "How defenseless?" I asked. I remembered that being pregnant was almost the same as being human. "Will I still have my hands?"

  He shrugged. "It depends on how strong your wolf is."

  I groaned and slouched in my chair. "And how strong is that?" I asked.

  He shrugged again. "It's normal that mates are close in strength. I know that you're strong enough to not only resist my order but also defy it, which means that yesterday you were stronger than I was. It may have been because you're my mate, but I've seen my father give my mother a direct order and she could not act against it. She could ignore it if she wanted to. Now, I haven't paid too much attention today because of the chaos we've gone through, but sitting here, I know that I feel different. I'm not sure what kind of different, but I know things are not the same since we mated."

  "So, this is all a good thing, right?" I asked.

  Wolfgang nodded. "A very good thing," he said. "It does a pack no good to have a Skaapie who is weaker than her Enkidu."

  "And how strong are you compared to your mother?"

  Wolfgang sighed. "About equal," he said. I could tell he was guessing. He'd never come to blows with his mother—what good son would?—so he didn't know. "On average, children become as strong or stronger than their parents are or would have been. There are rare occasions of weak children coming from strong parents."

  "So, when your mom was pregnant with Mira, could she shift her hands?"

  Wolfgang shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "She never needed to. You might want to try talking to your mother again, just to see what she has to say."

  I sighed. "I wish I could," I said. "I've tried emailing her, I've called her, and I've..." I fought to hold back a sob. "Why is she ignoring me?" I whispered, looking at him with tears in my eyes. "I know that our relationship isn't exactly the greatest, but she's my mom, you know?" I asked. "I mean, next to the twins, she's my best friend and the only person who doesn't live in Adamsville that I know I can talk to.... If I could only reach her...."

  Wolfgang nodded. He squeezed my hand on the table. "I know," he said. "I felt that way after everything went down with Abigail and Alan. I couldn't talk to anyone because my father didn't want me to. All I wanted was one person who didn't know what had happened so that I could tell them and sort it all out in my own head."

  I let out a shaky breath. "That's exactly what I need," I said.

  Like with Alan in the library when I mentioned Leon, my phone began to ring in my pocket. I couldn't believe that I was listening to Beethoven's Fur Elise... my mother's ringtone.

  I scrambled to pull my phone out of my pocket and answered the call. "Mom?" I asked, wondering if this was real. I was frantic. My heart was racing. "Mom, is that you?" I asked. I was already crying.

  "Ceres, what's going on?" she asked. "I just came into cell service and you've filled up my voicemail box. Why are you crying?"

  I let out a sob. "Where have you been?" I asked with a tight throat.

  "We've been out of range at another property for a while," she said. "Derek wanted a bit of a vacation before the baby comes and we got a little carried away out there. There's no cell service that far out. We ended up having the baby out there. You have a new healthy baby brother," she said. I could hear the warmth and the smile in her voice. "He was born two days ago."

  "Wow," I whispered, smiling a little. Wolfgang, who I knew could hear my mother, smiled as well. It was sudden but being Lycan didn't seem important anymore. I had a baby brother—one that was with my parents and not somewhere out there, lost in the world. "Are you both okay?" I asked.

  "We're fine," she said. "We just got home, which is why I have service again. You know I’m a fast healer."

  That brought me back to the reason I needed to talk to her in the first place. All roads lead to Lycan.

  "I wish I could meet him," I said. All the sudden, I felt a strong desire to get out of Adamsville for a while.

  "Of course you can!" Mom replied. "We'll get you a ticket when you're not swamped with cases."

  I sighed and met Wolfgang's eyes. "I'm not working any cases right now," I informed her. "I quit the firm about two months ago."

  "You what?" she demanded. "Ceres what the hell were you thinking?" she cried. "I set you up there; it was going to be the only job you would ever need! Why would you throw that away?"

  I sighed again before I stood. I walked to the balcony and stepped outside, closing the door behind me. I launched into it from the beginning, way back when I realized Todd was cheating on me. I told her about how relieved he was when I left him and how he had gotten married and had kid number two on the way, according to Selena. I told her about how his abandonment made me question a lot about myself and I didn't know what I wanted anymore. I told her about the hundreds of lists I have at home about whether I should stay or leave.

  Then I told her about Alan needing help and my jumping on a flight to Adamsville with almost no notice to anyone. I told her that I never planned to go back to New York. I told her about Alan's secret family, who had known about us from the beginning.

  When I got to Wolfgang, I wasn't sure how to go on. Saying 'Hey, Mom, I met a guy, moved into his apartment, and I might be pregnant because we took part in a sacred ritualistic version of sex that entwined our lives and souls forever,' didn't seem like a good way to break the news to her.

  "So, are you still in Utah or are you back in New York?" she asked.

  "Still in Utah," I said as I sat down.

  "Why?" Mom asked. "You can't still be helping Alan after everything you've found out," she said.

  "No," I replied. "No, I'm not helping him anymore. I met someone out here. Someone who makes it worth getting up in the morning, no matter how bad the day is," I said. "He's opened my eyes to a world I didn't think could exist."

  "What are you saying?" she asked me.

  "Did you ever plan on telling me that we aren't human or were you just going to let me live my life without knowing the truth?" I asked her.

  "Ceres—"

  "Don't bullshit me mom," I said with more exhaustion in my voice than anything else. "I'm tired of people lying to me."

  She sighed. "It was too risky to tell you with Alan there," she confessed. "I wanted you to know. When it came down to the divorce, you were so set in your life that I didn't want to ruin it for you by introducing you to a world torn apart by war. You were so innocent, Ceres... I couldn't destroy that in you."

  "I don't think that knowing has destroyed anything in my life," I said. "My eyes are open, and I'm pretty beat up and broken, but not destroyed...."

  "Wait until you have to kill someone," she said. "This world is in the middle of a war and it won't be long until—"

  "You're too late for that warning," I whispered. "That was today."

  "What?" she whispered. "What happened? Start from the beginning."

  So, I did. I started at the beginning—meeting Wolfgang. I told her about meeting him at the diner and about the snowstorm that kept us together at the motel for days. I told her about Alan and Abigail, and that they threatened Wolfgang with telling me the truth. I told her about Alan kidnapping me from the grocery store, and almost dying of silver poisoning. I told her about Abigail attacking Wolfgang on the side of the road, and that the damage had left him scarred. I told her about joining t
he pack, the hunt, mating in a dingy basement, causing memory loss to Abigail... and killing my first Witch.

  Mom wasn't quite silent as I spoke. She gasped, muttered, and even tried to interrupt me more than once. When I finally managed to finish telling her what had happened, she was silent with her shock. She was so quiet that I wondered if I'd lost the call.

  "Mom?" I asked.

  She cleared her throat. "I missed everything," she whispered. "I missed telling you, your first full moon, watching you fall in love and settle down...." She sighed and I could hear her breath shudder with tears. "I missed protecting you from the dangers of our world and everything else that happened..." She let out a sob and I knew that she hated being so far away more than ever at this exact moment.

  "Well, you were having a baby," I said.

  "It wasn't just that," she whispered. "We were in the middle of a territory dispute and Derrek sent me out of the territory with the Scythia and Rusalki for my protection. Derek is the Enkidu out here. That's why he disappeared all those years ago. He'd gotten a call the night before, telling him that a Vargulf killed his father and took the pack. He won his pack back but when he came back for me, I was already married to Alan, so he stayed away. He spent the next twenty years fixing things out here. You know the rest from there."

  "Were you out of range or are you just feeding me a spoonful of bullshit to make yourself feel better?" I demanded.

  "Ceres!" my mother cried.

  "You know what, forget it," I said. I couldn't shake the feeling that she was still lying to me. "You didn't have time for me; you still don't have time for me. I hope you're a better mother to your new son than you were to me and I pray that I'm a better mother than you will ever be."

  "That is not fair, Ceres!" she shouted at me. "You know that I was working hard to provide the kind of life for you that you deserved!"