She nodded and Jordan reached for some tissues sitting on the side of the table, handing it to her. He was worried, and Jordan was certainly not used to seeing his mom like that. He could not remember ever seeing his mom so distraught. She cleaned up her beautiful face and sat down in the chair beside his bed.
“It started nearly thirty years ago; my sister fell in love with a man she shouldn’t have.”
“You have a sister?” Jordan asked in surprise, he never knew he had an aunt.
“I used to,” she whispered, there was so much sadness on her face. “She looked exactly like our mother, your grandmother. She used to remind me so much of her growing up. She was kind to everyone who met her, she was intelligent. Her only fault was that she was a dreamer. She was so much like you in every regard. We were as different as night and day. But I loved her so much. She was my best friend and encouraged everyone with her kind words. She used to tell me I was too serious and thought that I should try and enjoy life. We were the apple of our father's eye until our mother died. And in the blink of an eye things changed. The man that used to welcome his people to talk to him about their problems became closed off and cruel to his people, and his daughters.”
He was about to ask a question when she stopped him.
“Jordy, I need to finish this.” He nodded his head for her to continue.“You see, in his demented mind, Father had set up arranged marriages with other nyxian nobles without our knowledge. When Marika found out, she was livid, because she was the oldest she would be the first to be married. Marika begged our father not to let her live in a loveless marriage. But our father, Bergstrand, wouldn’t hear of it. He was adamant on the marriages.” She paused for a few seconds to wipe away more tears, Jordan was listening and already decided he didn’t like that Bergstrand guy.
Who the hell names their kid Bergstrand, anyway?
“I knew how she felt, because I too felt for someone below my station. We kept our affair a secret, the only one that knew was my sister. We shared everything. When she told me what our father had planned for her, we came up with a plan to run away with the men that we loved”—she chuckled— “gods, we were so young in our thinking, as you kids would say. No matter how old you become, love has a way to blind you. Our plans took longer than we wanted and during that time my sister became pregnant with her lover’s child. Bergstrand was livid when he found out and hunted down her lover. Once he was caught, our father tortured him.” Her voice cracked as if she was remembering everything like it had happened yesterday. “He tortured him in front of her. He forced him to shift in order to heal, and the torture would begin all over again. Through it all, I remember him telling her how much he loved her and to take care of their child. It only angered Bergstrand even more. We begged and pleaded with him to spare the man’s life. Marika vowed not to see him anymore if our father would set him free. But all of our pleas fell on deaf ears.”
Jordan gasped. “Mom, what are you saying? Why would your father do that?”
“I think he was a good man once. He had to be for my mother to love him the way she did. But after her death something inside of him snapped. Marika and I found out the hard way. After he had killed Marika's sýntrofos in front of her, she went into a state of depression. What’s worse was Bergstrand didn’t show one ounce of remorse or regret for what he did. He even went as far as to threaten to kill her child, but she protected him until she was able to give birth.” His mother’s lips began to tremble and Jordan reached out to pull her into his arms but she stopped him. “I was in the room that night, and she begged me to take care of her child, and not to let Bergstrand get his hands on her son. She named him after his father. If…if I had known what she had planned, I would have told her no. But I loved my sister so much and I wanted to do anything to make her happy.”
“What did she do?”
“S…she killed herself with the same knife that had her sýntrofos’s blood on it. He killed her, Jordy. Not with his own hands, but she died the night her sýntrofos did.”
Jordan gasped and covered his mouth. He stared at his mother as tears ran down her cheeks.
“I didn’t give myself time to mourn her death. That night I took the child along with my sýntrofos, and we ran as fast as we could. Bergstrand caught wind of what was happening and chased after us. We were almost caught, but not without scars that we found out about later. Laxus and I reentered the human world; the world we vowed never to enter again, but we had no other choice. We knew how much Bergstrand hated the human world. We had to keep you safe; I promised her I would keep you safe. We still had friends, or we thought we did, but later found that while we were gone, they were all killed except one that was a witch who was gifted in shield magic. I asked her to shield us from my father, but I knew sooner or later the shield wouldn’t last long. I asked her to block your abilities from you. We didn’t realize that you finding your own sýntrofos would break the block. We had our names changed and adapted to living as humans so that we weren’t found. We didn’t know how to tell you who or what you were without exposing ourselves. If I’d known you would turn out to be the mate to the son of one of my dearest friends, I would have prepared you for everything that’s about to change in your life.”
Jordan didn’t hear the last of her words, his mind was going a thousand miles a minute at what he was thinking. “What are you saying? You said you took her son?!” Jordan demanded. “Are you telling me that…”
“I…I’m not your mother, and Laxus is not your father,” she whispered.
“N…no…no, that can’t be. Tell me you’re lying.” His voice cracked as realization hit him that the woman he’d called Mom his entire life wasn’t.
His mom started to cry again. “I’m so sorry, Jordy, I am so sorry. I wish I could change things and you got to meet your real mother, but I can’t.”
Tears ran down his cheeks, and he had no idea why he was crying. Was it the fact that he had been lied to all his life? Or the loss of parents he had never met? It could also be seeing the woman who had been his mother all his life break down in tears for doing the one thing she had always done, love him, unconditionally. Either way, his heart was breaking and so was hers. She had been living with the pain all that time. Slowly, Jordan got out of bed and kneeled beside her, ignoring the pains in his legs. He pulled her into his arms, comforting her. That time she didn’t try to fight him. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“You have to believe me, Jordy. I planned on telling you, but I honestly didn’t know where to start. When you were twelve and got sick that one time I thought you were coming into your lykosian genes, but when nothing happened, we still were not sure if you were going to be one of us. The block was still in place so we were not worried. Maybe we should have told you then, but you were so young and I wasn’t sure you would understand.”
“Shh…it’s alright, I understand, you were trying to protect me. I wish you had told me sooner. But I think I understand or at least I’m trying to. This is a lot to take in.”
She pulled back and brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “I know. And I wish there could have been another way to tell you all of this…”
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, quieting more of her explanation.
“You are so much like her,” she told him. “You have her eyes, and you inherited both our mother’s hair color and her beautiful smile.”
“I hope you will be able to tell me about her one day.” He went to get up but remembered his mom had said something crazy. “So, I’m not human?” His mother shook her head.
“We are dark nyxian or a dark fae. The gods saw fit to bless us with the ability to walk in the light and the dark. The abilities we use to defend ourselves are seen as dark by the more lighter sects. But you are a hybrid. You are a half nyxian and half lykosian. Your father’s blood still flows through you.”
“Well, shit.” That threw Jordan back a bit, his world was just blown. All his life he thought he was human, now to find out that he was something else; something more.
“Jordan.” He looked up to see his father standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at them.
“I’m sorry—”
Jordan raised his hand and shook his head. “Don’t…don’t apologize, because there is nothing to apologize for. Am I disappointed that you both didn’t tell me about everything? Yeah, I am, but I can understand where you were coming from. You both were trying to protect me. Maybe it’s because I’m tired and whatever drugs Blayze gave me have me feeling loopy, but I get it. Besides, from what little Mom told me, her father was an evil man.”
