CHAPTER 188: _ FOOLISH SON

It’s Clarissa, Amias’s mother.

She stands framed in the doorway, the light from the corridor casting her in sharp relief against the abundant chaos of his room.

Amias has spent a lifetime viewing his mother with a lens of cynical hatred. She’s the woman who betrayed their Alpha, destroyed their family’s standing, and used her son as a bargaining chip for her own ambition. He remembers the pearl-gray dress suit, the tightly swept bun meant to project unearned prestige, the shiny smile she always wears.

But tonight, the smile is cracked.

For the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time since he was a small boy and the scandal broke, Amias doesn’t see the ambitious schemer. He sees a frail, weak woman.

Her signature suit seems to hang a little looser on her shoulders. The severity of her hairstyle can’t quite disguise the deep, purple shadows beneath her eyes, and her usual porcelain complexion is tinged with an unnatural, sickly pallor, the colour of bone china held up to a weak winter sun. Her hands clutch a small, embroidered handkerchief to her chest.

Amias doesn’t know if it’s the sheer vulnerability he’s currently drowning in, the raw emotional wound Heidi inflicted, or just the harsh, splintered truth reflecting off his broken mirror, but the hatred in his heart suddenly dims at the sight of his mother looking like a shadow of herself.

Clarissa’s wide and startled eyes sweep over the scene and finally, to his prone, weeping figure huddled on the floor.

Her lips part, but for once, no insult or manipulative coo emerges. Only genuine and raw concern.

"Amias," she whispers, the name breaking down with disbelief and panic. She takes a hesitant step into the ruined room. "What—what in the name of the Goddess happened here? Darling, are you hurt? Why... why is there so much glass?"

She forgets the scandal. She forgets her ambition. She forgets the need for control. She only sees her son in pain.

Amias can only stare, the salt on his cheeks mingling with the dust and feathers. He can’t speak. He can only look at her with tears in his eyes, tears that suddenly aren’t just about Heidi, but about the overwhelming, terrible realization that he, Amias Bellamy, has been an arrogant fool his entire life even to his mother.

The sight of his mother’s genuine distress opens a door in his rigid, self-righteous heart.

Why did I hate her?

He hated her because she cheated on the Alpha. She embarrassed him. She tainted his pedigree. She made him a second-class Bellamy.

But now, sitting amidst the ruins of his perfect expectations, seeing his own heartbreak reflected in the wreckage, Amias starts putting himself in his mother’s shoes.

Clarissa Bellamy. Married to Alpha Tobias.

A powerful, dominating Alpha, yes, but a man who fornicates with women who aren’t his mate. A man who, just two years into his marriage to Clarissa, took in a second wife, Ines. If that isn’t a blatant display of disrespect and emotional cruelty and a public statement that the first Luna wasn’t enough, Amias doesn’t know what it can be.

Then, years later, the Alpha marries yet a third wife, Luna Rayne, who happens to be his fated mate and suddenly gives her all the attention and the kind of pure, selfless devotion that Clarissa was never granted.

Clarissa was left in the cold, a figurehead without power, a wife without a husband, a Luna stripped of her mate’s loyalty and love. The understanding hits Amias with the force of a physical blow, worse than any punch Darien ever threw at him.

She wasn’t seeking another man. She was seeking comfort. She was seeking affection.

She was trying to fill a void that her powerful, cheating, dismissive husband had deliberately carved into her soul. She was desperate for the validation, the intimate connection, the human touch that her Alpha denied her in his pursuit of status and other women.

Amias’s previous judgment and principled condemnation of her affair with a mere servant suddenly feel shameful, petty, and monstrous. He had held her to a standard of perfection his own father had never even pretended to uphold.

My father hurt her first. I just kept hurting her.

The revelation of his own hypocrisy is devastating. He had been so obsessed with protecting his own principles and his reputation that he failed to see the broken woman right in front of him, a woman whose fate was agonizingly similar to the one he’s currently living... loving a mate who doesn’t prioritize you.

Yes, that’s it. He doesn’t know when or how it happened, but he loves Heidi. He probably did from the first time he set his eyes upon her, seconds before he felt the pull of the bond. That ordinary Moon Blessed, she found a way to squeeze herself into his impenetrable heart without even trying.

Now, as Amias stares at his mother with the silent apology and newfound empathy in his tear-soaked eyes, Clarissa takes another doubtful step forward.

"Amias, please, let me call the medical wing. We need to check if you need therapy again..."

She stops abruptly as a harsh, wrenching cough tears through her frail body. It’s a deep, wet, terrifying sound that makes Amias’s entire wolf immediately rear up in alarm. It is the sound of something fundamentally wrong.

She brings the embroidered handkerchief quickly to her mouth, trying to muffle the violent spasm. When she pulls the cloth away, the creamy fabric is stained...

... with blood.

Amias sees it. He sees the small, vivid patch of crimson marring the pale fabric. It’s a shocking, impossible sight.

What the hell?!

He forgets the feathers, the glass, the heartbreak, and his own self-pity. He forgets the entire history of their poisoned relationship. The instinct of a son, the need to protect his mother takes over him in a flash of desperate speed.

He scrambles to his feet, ignoring the way the feathers stick to his tear-stained face and sweat-dampened clothes. He covers the distance between them in two panicked, clumsy strides.

"Mother! What is that? What happened to you?" he demands, his voice shaking with overwhelming fear.

He reaches out, grabbing her upper arms, the soft silk of her suit surprisingly thin beneath his fingers. "Why is a wolf coughing out blood?! Wolves don’t bleed internally like this!"