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Amoira’s Story: Mother Dearest II

~JEBIDIRAH~

The First Time Around

Mother sweeps past me in her chiffon robes, slamming drawers and packing for another trip, despite having only just returned from the last. Whatever she saw in the future has had her muttering to herself for the past hour.

“Mother!” I try to quell her once more in her candlelit chambers. “What did you see? Tell me.”

Her eyes hold no pupils, and when she speaks, the words are fractured, broken.

This is just like the last time she was driven to madness. She needs to be taken to a healer of the mind, but there is no one to aid me in forcing her there. Arrik has all but abandoned her, and Beckham is off trying to steal Dolly Jones from him while Velis, the suddenly powerful nymph, protects them both!

“Mother!” I take her elbow to slow her down. “If you are planning to time-travel again, you must rest first! You are already unstable as it is!”

I set a palm to her chest in an effort to slow her adrenaline. I am no healer, but it has an impact. Her pupils roll back into view .

“A baby , Jebidirah! A girl. In the future, that human whore carries our seed !”

I feel a wave of nausea.

“Impossible. Even Arrik wouldn’t stoop so low as to impregnate—”

“Oh, I assure you, I saw it all! The half-breed on the Reilhander throne, inheriting all the powers of the lands! Arrik mated to a human bride with an abomination in her belly, And you .” She fixes her fury on me as if I’ve committed some grave betrayal. With a pointed finger and a sharp nail in my face, she marches me against the wall. “You sniveling, soft, weakling boy! You and your brother betray our family, pledging loyalty to protect them! You end our legacy because of a leaky human’s compassion! WEAK!”

“You have it wrong, Mother! It must have been an illusion! There is no future where Velis sits on our family’s rightful throne. No future where Arrik fathers a child with a human mate! Beckham would never allow it. Are you mad?!”

It is the wrong thing to ask a woman who is, indeed, mad.

Slap!

Mother leaves a handprint against her usual cheek, then flusters off to finish packing, tearing her chambers apart in the process.

What she witnessed in the future is impossible.

And yet, I have seen Arrik with his mate, the human Dolly Jones. He treasures her in a way I have seen him treasure nothing else. He has already given up everything for her. Beckham already cares for nothing but her. Revolting though it may be, it is not beyond the realm of imagination that Arrik would conceive with her.

If it is a daughter, Arrik will love no woman greater.

It is why Mother’s reaction is this.

Her skin is pallid. I worry for her health. I come up to her side to steady her. “What will you do about it?”

“You mean what will WE do about it, Jebidirah, my only good son.” So soon she has reverted to stroking my hair. “We will travel to the past and divert the Lover’s Vessel’s course.”

I do not like the way she’s looking at me. “ How ? We can’t interact with anything or anyone in any time but our own. We’ll be like phantoms if we go there.”

“Not so. Not you, my son, who shares a piece of your brother’s soul. If Arrik is her eternal mate, then so too must you be eternally tied to her fate. Together, we shall travel to the past to right this wrong. But first, I need you to retrieve Arrik’s special vessel bequeathed to him by the manor-wrecking whore, Adelle Evangeline.”