Chapter 415: My Son

Alpha Liandria;

The room is dark.

Not abandoned, or empty...Just dark.

I stare at the moonlight that’s spilling into the room through the windows in the hut.

For a good long while, I remain standing at the doorway, just staring.

At the empty bed, the arranged furniture, and the space n’t boy would have occupied if he were here tonight.

My hand finds the door frame for support as I stare at the empty space.

It’s empty. Just like Igma’s hut.

Devote Rhydian not bring here, I find myself unable to step inside.

I have entered war rooms before battles. I have negotiated with all kinds of rulers, faced monsters, buried friends and foes alike.

Yet somehow my son’s room feels more intimidating than any battlefield I have ever stood on.

However, I can’t just stand here. It’s not enough. I miss him. I miss him so much it kills me.

I can’t help but be worried about him. I wonder if he’s safe.

I miss him.

I force myself to move, and as I step into the hut, the door closes quietly behind me.

His scent still lingers in the room, and I find myself drawing g a deep breath.

Tears instantly well in my eyes as I recognise my son’s scent.

He only left days ago. Yet it’s never easier when I think about the fact that he’s not here, and where he’s currently headed.

My eyes travel over the empty space, and my heart grows heavier as a year rd does my eyes.

Why do I feel so far from him? Is he in danger?

My heart is heavy. Like something horrible is about to happen, and I’m too far to help.

I should have gone with them. I should have insisted on going with them.

Both of my children are so GST away abd o have no idea how they’re doing. It’s maddening.

Rhydian’s bed is neatly made. The way it was last night...and the night before that.

Maps sit folded on his desk, and there are still several books stacked beside his chair.

Nothing is out of place. With him, nothing ever is.

Rhydian has always been organised.

Even as a child—

The thought trails off as my mind draws a clear distinction croon between Rhydian of then and Rhydian now.

Rhydian is no longer a child. He’s grown so much from that little boy. My little boy.

Somewhere between military lessons, training sessions, political responsibilities, and expectations...my son became a man.

And I somehow missed it.

My footsteps carry me deeper into the room, and on his desk, right beside the maps, lie a collection of reports.

I walk up to them and realise that they are reports on trade routes, military assessments, and border reports.

The responsibilities of an Alpha heir...The responsibilities I taught him. The ones I demanded.

A quiet, bitter laugh escapes me as I see how deeply into his life my claws have sunk.

Even here. Even in a temporary room inside another kingdom, Rhydian surrounded himself with duty.

My fingers drift across the reports as my eyes dart over the cold, empty hut.

Just then, something sticking out of a trunk in the corner catches my eye. I walk over to it cautiously, and when I pull it out, my heart sinks.

It’s a small, broken gauntlet.

My heart starts pounding as recognition sets in.

I take in the worn leather, dented metal, and broken straps, and my blood runs cold.

This gauntlet. I was the one who damaged it—

The memory returns forcefully, and I stay frozen as it plays itself out right before my eyes.

Rhydian was about thirteen at the time.

A young pup. Far too young for the amount of pressure I put on him.

The training ground was covered in snow.

His hands were bleeding, and his breathing was uneven.

The gauntlet—This gauntlet— had split after one of my strikes, and he had finally lost his temper.

One of the few times he ever did.

"I can’t keep going, Mother. I’m tired! It hurts!!"

The memory of his voice echoes through my mind, and I wince as I shut my eye tighter.

There was no rebellion in his voice. Not anger or stubbornness. Just exhaustion.

Pure, raw exhaustion.

His silver eyes were bright with tears. His shoulders and hands were trembling as he looked at me.

Hoping I’d stop our training. Hoping I’d tell him he could leave and that it was okay to rest. That he’d done good enough for one day, and a boy his age.

But instead, what did I say?

I looked at him—at my only cold, who was already far more remarkable than many children his age—and I told him...

"If you grow to be such a wuss, how will your father ever recognise you?! When you’re tired, you push through it! Nobody cares for the tears of a man. You must be strong, or you’ll be eaten alive by the world around you. Now take your stance again!"

Those were my words. Those were a mother’s words to her tired child. I told a thirteen-year-old boy that weakness was unacceptable.

I told him that exhaustion was failure.

My fingers tighten around the broken gauntlet, and the leather creaks.

I remember him quietly lowering his head. I remember him apologising.

Apologising, as though he had disappointed me...Perhaps he had.

Because at that age, all Rhydian ever wanted was my approval.

How sad.

For years, I believed I was making him stronger, but now I wonder if I was simply teaching him how to suffer quietly.

I sit down slowly on the edge of his bed, with the broken gauntlet in my lap.

This should have been a forgotten piece of equipment. Something that should have been thrown away years ago.

Yet Rhydian kept it.

...Because he remembered. Children always remember. The things parents forget, the things parents excuse, the things parents never even notice. Children remember.

I look around the room once more, and I realise that I’m sitting in a stranger’s room. A stranger I gave birth to.

I don’t even know enough about him. I—never did.

A soft sound escapes me.

A mangled mix of grief and dry humour.

I remember his first hunt.

The little man was terrified. Though he tried very hard to hide it.

His grey hair was a mess, and his hands would not stop shaking.

He kept asking questions.

Do wolves feel fear? What if I miss? What if I fail?

...What if you are disappointed?

It always came back to that question.

"What if you are disappointed?"

I answered the other questions, but I never answered that one.

He desperately needed to hear the answer, and I never gave it. I couldn’t.

I never told him how proud I was of him because I wanted him to do more. And in all that mess, I fear I never made him feel enough.

My eyes fall on something resting beside his pillow, and my brows crease.

It’s a dried purple flower.

I carefully pick it up and assess it in the moonlight. The petals have begun to fade, and the stem is brittle.

I take a small whiff of the flower, nd therealisationn rushes at me all at once.

It carries the Omega’s scent.

Elián.

Of course...

A soft breath leaves me, and a bitter smile follows.

Because for months, I saw Elián as a weakness. An inconvenience, and a distraction.

A strange little omega who talked too much and smiled too easily.

I tortured the poor boy; meanwhile, what did the boy do? What was he busy doing?

He loved my son. While I schemed to hurt him, he was busy loving my boy. He was healing the wound I inflicted on him.

The totality of that truth is almost unbearable.

Rhydian smiles now. He laughs, argues, and even hopes.

The darkness that surrounded him for years has finally begun to lift, and I was not the one who fixed those mistakes.

The young omega I treated like a nuisance was the one who managed to heal wounds I spent years creating.

The realisation leaves me feeling worse than I have in many years.

I spent years trying to make Rhydian stronger, and Elián simply made him happy.

Which accomplishment truly mattered more?

The answer is obvious...and painful.

My eyes begin to sting afresh, and I lower my gaze.

Light!

When did I become this woman?

This woman who enters her son’s room only after he has already left. This woman who finally notices things years too late.

...This woman who spent so much time being Alpha that she forgot how to be Mother.

A knock sounds against the door, and I quickly compose myself.

Years of practice and masks easily slipping into place.

"Come in," I call as I look up.

The door opens, and Cassia steps inside.

Her eyes move across the room. The broken gauntlet, the flower, the bed, and then, they return to me.

I see understanding settle in her eyes, and I drag a breath.

Cassia has always possessed an unfortunate talent for seeing people clearly. Even people who wished to remain hidden.

She walks in without questions, pity, or comforting words. She simply sits beside me, and exists in the melancholy silence that engulfs us.

Her scent of honey and rain wraps around me, and somehow, I feel some of my tension roll off my shoulders in waves.

I stare back at the flower in my hands, and I feel Cassia’s gaze on it too.

"He changed him," I mutter, but Cassia doesn’t give me a response.

When I look at her, I find her looking around the room.

Her blonde hair falls over her shoulders, and her gorgeous dark skin glows under the moonlight.

She carries so much ease it’s almost mythical.

Finally, she looks back at me and smiles.

"No." She replies, and I blink at her in confusion.

"He didn’t change Rhydian." She continues as her gaze drops back to the flower’s dried petals.

"He helped him become himself again." She whispers, and the words pierce through my chest like a frozen, sharpened sword.

For years, I believed my son had become stronger. Calmer, and more mature.

I thought the quietness was wisdom. That the distance was discipline, and the coldness was leadership.

But perhaps it was loneliness... Perhaps my son simply became quieter because nobody was listening.

I lower my eyes as the weight of every single thing I’ve ever done wrong presses down on me.

"I hated him," I confess, and Cassia nods.

"I know." She whispers, and my vision blurs again.

"I thought he would distract Rhydian. I thought he would make him weak..." I continue with a bitter laugh as my fingers tighten around the flower.

"And now..." I am unable to finish the sentence as my emotions bleed into my voice.

Elián took my son’s life and filled it with so much colour. I thought anything other than black and white was unacceptable. But my child has been so starved of love that he’s almost emotionally vulnerable. Unable to process or handle emotions right, and it’s all my fault.

Elian made Rhydian smile. He made him argue...made him hopeful.

Light!

He even made him keep starting to keep flowers. How could I undermine such a bond and try to use something as filthy as Bram to tear them apart?

I could never make my son happy, and I worked so diligently to take away the only other thing which did. What kind of mother does that make me??

I can’t even call myself his mother. I’m a failure.

Cassia leans back, and I turn to her.

"He loves your son."

"I know."

"And your son loves him." She adds, and I shut my eyes.

The silence stretches, and eventually I say the thing I have spent years refusing to admit.

"I envied you." I feel Cassia go stiff beside me, but I do not stop.

Attonement for sin is never complete with confession.

"Everyone loves you. They come to you. They laugh with you...They trust you." I go on, and from the corner of my eyes I watch her head tilt as she looks at me.