Page 40 of Forever My Siren Luna

My mom knew. She had to have known what life would hold for her, but she still chose to suffer in place of losing me.

The last of the icy fortress I had barricaded around my heart melted away with the heat of the love I felt at that moment. My mother knew she was returning to a horrible life that led to her death, and my father knew he was sending her there, but they still chose me above all.

“You chose me?” I whispered brokenly.

His jewel-like eyes shined down on me. “I would always choose you. You’re my daughter. My love for you is everything.”

At that, the damn behind my eyes breaks and I fall into his arms, weeping enough for 3 lifetimes of sorrow from missing the one thing I had always wanted.

My father.

I was so wrong. I owed this man everything.

~

Lachlan

I’m staring at King Brennus as he hugs his daughter. My mind is racing as I tried to piece everything together.

One thing is getting to me, and I just can’t seem to figure it out.

Who did he use as the sacrifice? Why was he vague on that part?

The longer I stared at him and the expression he is making as he hugs Lira tight, I can see the grief mixed with his happiness and I think I know.

You need a sacrifice with the same blood as the one you are trying to save. That is what he told me when he had me kill Wayne. If he used Wayne to bring back his wife, was he somehow able to use Wayne again in the next attempt?

No. I don’t think he did.

King Brennus looked up at me, feeling my stare on him. Is he going to tell her? If he did what I think he did, would he ever let Lira know?

“He didn’t want to hurt her. That’s why he was reluctant to meet her himself. She won’t miss a man she never knew.”

Killian’s words rang in my head.

I needed to talk to him about this. Not now, though. Not while Lira was crying her heart out in his arms, happy to finally have her father.

~

When Lira’s crying ceased, I waited on the log as she and her father took a walk on the beach alone. She seems so much younger than just this morning as she stares up at him with a wondrous gaze. She isn’t fighting anyone right now and there are no signs of her walls being raised. She is just a young woman walking alongside her father on the beach.

“There you are,” Nilo went down from the castle trail, walking through the sand to sit beside me. “The meeting is over. I was wondering if you were ever coming back.”

I nodded towards Lira. “She needed a moment with her father.”

He stared off after them. “I see that the talk went well.”

“Yeah,” I watched as Lira smiled at something her dad said, making me smile in turn.

“Well, you could have come back to the meeting.”

“No,” I shook my head. “You had it covered.”

He chuckled under his breath. “You can’t take your eyes off her. Did your talk go well too?”

“Not exactly,” I remembered this morning. My talk with Lira ended with getting kicked out and Cherum trying to hit me, though I would define it more as a child’s punch.

“Then why do you look so happy?”