CHAPTER 76: – A MOTHER’S PROTECTION –

"Protect me?" Nikolas’s stomach twisted. "I’m not a child."

"You are my son! My son, okay! And it’s my job to–"

"She’s off limits, Mom," he said, interrupting her. "And I mean it. This is the one thing I’m asking you for."

He shook his head, adding, "It doesn’t matter to me whether you accept her or not. I would love it if you did. But since you won’t, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need you to."

"Nikolas, don’t talk to me like that." Loredana glared at him.

Lucian stepped into the argument. "Mom, I think it’s enough. There is nothing wrong with being with a human. You’ve never been with one, so you don’t understand what it’s like to love a human."

"Love a human?"

She laughed.

"Have you lost your mind, Lucian?" She looked at Nikolas. "Tell me something. Does she know what you are?"

Nikolas couldn’t answer her.

"Exactly. You don’t even have the courage to tell her you’re not like her," she snapped at him. "What in the world are you doing? We can’t be with humans. To them, we are monsters, and that woman will never love you if she knows what you are!"

"I don’t care!"

Nikolas lost it.

"I do not give a fuck!"

She blinked at him.

He emphasized, "I love her. That human, I love her, Mom. And not even this thing I am can ever make me stop. It can never change what I feel nor my desire to be with her. No one will get in my way, not even you."

"You’ve lost your mind." Loredana flickered her blue eyes. "She’s driven you insane."

"Yes, she has." He admitted, "I’ve lost my mind. I’ve gone crazy for her, and that is exactly why I’m here, acting this way. That human is mine, and I want no one else."

"And your mate? The one you woke up for? What about her?"

"To hell with it." Nikolas turned and began to storm off to the door. "I couldn’t care anymore. Nothing will get in my way, and I MEAN it."

Loredana shook where she stood, lowering her gaze to the floor beneath her feet. "You asked why I hate humans?"

That brought Nikolas to his feet.

Lucian looked at her. "Mom..."

"Fine! I will tell you then!" She lifted her gaze, glaring at the both of them. "A human is the reason why your father is gone," she said. "A human is the reason why the man I loved died. A human is the reason my life has become this gray and miserable. He trusted a human, and they betrayed him. They killed him, they took the man I loved from me. And I was left with you two, alone, all by myself with no one to stand with me. With no one to help me. So if you ask me, I hate humans because they ruined me! They stole everything from me, including my smile and my happiness! So, don’t blame me for hating them! Don’t look at me like that as if I’ve lost my mind, because for almost two hundred years, I haven’t been able to smile. I’ve been left in misery every single day I blinked my eyes open. And you want to know what goes on in my mind..."

"All I could wish for is that I was a human who could die from a bee sting. But this is what I am. I could walk out there into the sun and end this pathetic life of mine, but I couldn’t. I didn’t... And you want to know why?"

The wetness that had built up in her eyes broke, pouring down her face.

"Because I had two sons that I couldn’t abandon. I wasn’t that selfish to choose myself over you two. All I’ve done is to protect because I didn’t want any of you to end up like your father. That is all there is to it. It’s not that I’m a bad mother who can’t just let her sons live their lives how they want to. I already lost one person who meant the world to me. I would break into pieces if I lost my..." She sniffled, trembling where she stood.

Nikolas and Lucian were frozen where they stood.

Never in one hundred and twenty years of their life had they ever seen their mother cry. And now she stood here right in front of them, sobbing like...

"I was scared. I’m afraid." Loredana brushed her fingers through her hair. She turned, leaving the room to walk out.

The two men were quiet, frozen like a statue. "She... she’s crying," Nikolas muttered. Never had he seen his mother cry. Not once. And watching her this way, he felt himself break, a kind of guilt he couldn’t explain crawling up his chest.

What had he done? Why had he spoken like that? No matter what, she was his mother... He never should have...

"I’ve messed up, Lucian." He returned toward his brother.

Lucian shook his head. "Not you, but we. We’ve messed up, Nikolas. We’ve hurt our own mother. She’s been in pain and we... Dammit!" He smacked himself across the face. "What the heck were we thinking?"

Nikolas staggered back on his feet. "I... I should have said something. What is going on with me? I feel like I’m going crazy."

"...Like I’m losing my mind."

———

Viviana glanced at her phone.

It’d been almost three days now since Nikolas left that morning. He hadn’t called, and even when she’d called multiple times, he never... answered.

’I told you. But you were being delusional.’ Her mind laughed at her. ’Now, you’re all alone.’

She looked at her own reflection in the mirror. At the white thigh-length dress she wore, the jacket buttoned all the way up to her neck, where she wore white pearl jewelry.

Was he never coming back? Had he left her, and was that why he wouldn’t even answer her calls? All he’d had to do was say so...