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He stood up with a smile. “Time for a shower. I’ll meet you in the foyer in an hour?”
I nodded and Mom went up to my dad and kissed him goodbye, their embrace too long for me to tolerate. I glanced toward the roaring fireplace instead of at them, trying not to flinch.
I was an adult now, but still...ew.
“I’ll see you soon, my love. Travel safe.” Dad nodded, and left the room.
Mom turned to me, her eyes rippling with purple smoke, her magic clear for the world to see.
I groaned, this time in annoyance. “What is it, Mom?” She’d lectured me for years about my desire to keep my magic secret, so nothing she was about to say would be new.
“I had a vision last night.”
Oh. Thatwasnew.
I sat up straighter, giving her my undivided attention. I might try and deny my own magic’s existence, but I wasn’t stupid enough to ignore my mother’s visions.
“What did you see?” It had to be about me, or she would have shared this vision with Dad too.
Mom chewed on her lip, worry clear in her eyes, and in her aura.
I dusted off my hands, even though they were clean, but it gave me something to focus on. I did not want to get into a weird push-pull of a discussion. “Mom, if you don’t want to tell me, it’s fine.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up to leave.
“How much of your future have you looked at, Anthony?”
I stepped away from the table and pushed my chair in. “You know I don’t use my magic like you do, Mom.”
I’d never wanted her to teach me how to use my magic. I wanted to be a dragon shifter, like my father, and I was. I didn’t need magic, too.
I was an aberration. The only shifter we knew to have inherited both skills of my parents. No-one knew my secret because a sorcerer and a dragon shifter couldn’t exist in the same body. Mom couldn’t shift because she had magic. My dad had no magic because he was a shifter.
It was wrong that I had both abilities.
“I didn’t ask for the vision,” Mom assured me. “It came to me in a dream, and stayed vivid on waking. I can’t refuse the gift, Anthony. I have to offer it to you.”
She held out her hand and I stared at her, long and hard. “I don’t want it, Mom.”
I didn’t want to know who my mate was. I didn’t want to know the future. Life was complicated enough as it was, and I knew how much my mom had suffered for her gifts. That wasn’t the life I wanted.
“I know,” she whispered. “But do you trust me?”
The words hit me hard. “Of course, I do.” I trusted my mother more than anyone in the world. She’d birthed me, fed me, and kept me safe through my childhood and teen years.
She would move mountains, literally, for me if I asked her to. There was no-one more firmly in my corner than my mother.
“Then take my hand.” She whispered again, her arm shaking with the strain of holding it out.
I didn’t want to. God, I didn’t want to.
I could feel my magic rising up within me, reaching out for her and the power she wielded.
I fell forward involuntarily, and caught the edge of the table. I clutched the wood, not wanting to admit that I was afraid. Afraid of what my mom wanted to show me; afraid of what my magic would do once I opened that door.
I’d never allowed my magic to learn or grow, consciously shoving it down into the black hole I’d created for all the parts of me I didn’t want to admit existed.
But here, now, I could feel it rising, bigger than ever before.
