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I swallow, knowing she is right. I stare at the floor, and I can feel the weight of her gaze on me. I may be centuries old but I still feel like a little boy around my mother, especially when it’s clear I’ve disappointed her somehow.
“I am the last person who should be a parent,” I say, my ears picking up the front door opening. Wren is leaving, and I feel her conflicting emotions as if they are my own. “Is she pregnant?”
Joséphine strokes my upper arms, encouraging me to look up at her. The concern is still there, but it’s the concern I’ve seen ever since my father left her.
“You are not incapable of love, my darling. I wish you would allow yourself to see that.” I want to protest but she shakes her head and continues. “Yes, you changed after that horrible incident, and after I turned you. It hurt me to see you try your best to become a monster, and I’ve done my best to support you and keep you in line so as to avoid punishment from our sire. But what I’ve never done is apologize to you for turning you.”
I rear back, stepping away from her and bumping into the door sill. “Why would you apologize for that? Do you wish I were dead, then?”
She shoots me a glare. “Don’t you dare say that ever again.” Her expression softens, and she raises her hand as if to stroke my cheek but pulls back before she can. “You hated what Ambrose was, and you could never understand why I asked to be turned rather than die. You thought that I was choosing him, but I was choosing you, my love. You had so much pain and hatred in your heart. I couldn’t leave you when it was clear you needed someone.”
In the centuries we’ve been vampires, my mother has never broached the reason Ambrose turned her. I had accused her of choosing Ambrose over me, over humanity. I’d turned my back on her for the first two years after she’d become a vampire. She never blamed me, though Ambrose made his displeasure clear. Now I’m confronted with the fact that Ambrose may have known her true motivations and when I left, all I did was confirm his belief that I wasn’t worth Joséphine’s sacrifice.
My mother cups my face, her thumb stroking my cheek.
“You look so much like your father,” she says, before clearing her throat and meeting my gaze. “I never apologized for turning you. When you were dying, I took advantage of you. I knew you’d never have agreed if you were healthy. I’d seen change in you, though. I’d seen glimpses of the boy you were, my sunshine, despite the black clouds that’d consumed you. Ambrose saw it too, saw that you just needed more time to heal. So he agreed to my request to turn you, because he too had faith that you could recover in time.”
I shake my head. “I haven’t, though, Matka,” I protest, using my preferred name for her. “Modern science has proven it. That night, your son died and I was born. Then after being turned, it only made me worse. I cannot feel emotions like you and others.”
I drop my head, my teeth clenching for a moment. “You should have let that damn gut wound kill me.”
“Bullshit.”
The curse in my mother’s slightly accented voice has my brows shooting up with shock. She never curses and now she’s looking at me as if I’m an idiot.
“If you could not feel, then you would not love me as you claim,” Joséphine announces, her hands on her hips. “You would not have grown attached to Ezra, or Malachi, or the rest. You say you do not care for them, yet you are always there to stand at their back or their side. Even Ambrose, as much as you claim to still hate him. You feel so much, my son, you just don’t allow yourself to acknowledge it.”
I scowl, shoving my hands in my pockets, unable to come up with an adequate rebuttal.
“As for your mate and the chance of you being a father, you will be a good father. Wren wouldn’t let you be anything else.”
Faint amusement breaks through the gray emotions clouding me, and my lips twitch but I don’t give in to the smirk.
“You’re right,” I admit. I brush a hand through my hair, letting out a sigh. “I need to report to Ambrose; he’s expecting me and it can’t wait.”
Joséphine makes a noise of disappointment but doesn’t suggest I blow off the king, even if he’s essentially my grandfather.
“I’ll message her,” I compromise with myself and pull out my phone. My mother pats my shoulder before going to clean up the tea I’d interrupted. I head towards Ambrose’s office across the house, tapping out a message before deleting it and calling Wren instead. I scowl when it goes to voicemail after the second ring. After her greeting, I leave a message. “Don’t hide from me, Little Bird. I expect you to answer next time.”
Hanging up, I pull up our messages and hesitate on the threshold of Ambrose’s office.
My reaction was poor, Little Bird. There’s something I must do for work, but I need to see you.
Ambrose is typing, and from the blended scents, Eloise had recently been in here. Good, perhaps the king of the Barrows is relaxed enough to hear the news I have. He doesn’t look up as I finally enter, and I sink into one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. Waiting like this used to irritate me, convinced Ambrose does so specifically to remind me of my place beneath him.
Now I take the opportunity to study the man who took my mother into his house and heart and raised her as his own child. A man who treated me like his grandchild, even when I did my best to thwart his authority.
He looks only a few years older than he did when I was human, thanks to a vampire’s delayed aging. But his eyes reveal the truth of his age, the haunted blank look of a man who had seen and committed great violence over centuries.
He is ruthless and, not for the first time, I consider how alike we are. This time, though, I let myself see our similarities beyond our capabilities of being monsters when required.
At last he looks up and turns his attention towards me. He, like the rest of the male vampires, wears an expensive, custom-tailored suit, preferring black with crisp white shirts. Unlike his usual garb, he’s foregone a tie and his shirt is open enough to give a glimpse of the tattoos he got as a Kievan Rus human soldier. It’s also rumpled enough to confirm Eloise’s presence in here earlier.
“How did you know Eloise was your mate?” I ask, instead of delivering the intel he’d requested. I don’t know who is more surprised, myself or Ambrose.
He studies me, his shrewd eyes seeming to look through my skin and deep within me. I hold myself still even though it’s supremely uncomfortable.
“The moment I tasted her blood, I knew she was different,” he admits at last and props his elbow on the high armrest and gestures at the space before him. “It took you taking her to that damn club for me to admit to myself she was my mate. But even before then, I knew I couldn’t let her leave me. I worried she would be a weakness, but in reality, Eloise is my greatest strength.”
