there was no better place on earth. It made Cia want to bawl her eyes out for having been strong way too long and staying away.
Her mother led her inside, never once letting go of her, and she loved it.
“Bernard! Bernard! Come and see,” her mother called out and her father stepped to the parapet on the top floor.
“Cia!” It wasn’t more than a gasp, but the next second he had pulled her in his arms too, holding her tightly. “We wanted to respect your wish, but we hoped every day that you’d return…”
How had she ever thought she should and could stay away from her parents? It had been a lie she had told herself for too long.
“I was sure that I didn’t belong to the night any longer and nothing has changed about me…” She gave her parents a moment to listen to the silence that sure was filled with her heartbeat for them. Their somber expressions let her know all she needed to know. “Anyways, if we needed any more proof that I wasn’t an Origin, vampires can take my blood.”
“That’s why you are here,” her mother stated while her father furrowed his brows.
“You were attacked?” he asked and blood colored her cheeks. ‘Attacked’ is one way to describe it , she thought.
“Attacked definitely, but not the way you think, Bernard,” her mother grinned, taking her arm. “Come on, I think this calls for a woman-to-woman talk.”
“I … don’t … oh,” her father mumbled and even more blood shot into Cia’s cheeks. Something passed between her mother and her father, then his features softened. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour. You’ll stay, right, Cia?”
She instantly nodded, needing the feeling of being home.
Following her mother, they walked up the stairs and then entered what used to be her room … and still looked the same.
“You didn’t change a thing,” she whispered, touching her comforter-covered bed.
“Well, we did take the dust off everything,” her mother grinned and Cia had to laugh. At home she hadn’t been exactly the cleanest person, especially since she had hated servants going through her stuff, but now she missed having someone that cleaned for her.
She touched the blush-colored comforter, looking at the slightly darker walls. Her whole room had been done up like a little girl’s room, but while it had pissed her off to no end when she had been living there, she now wanted to throw herself on the bed and cry her eyes out.
Her mother hadn’t even taken down the black posters of one human hard-metal-band or the other, and so she took a deep breath, starting forward to take them down while telling her mother, who sat down on the window seat, what had happened.
“I started to work two jobs so I could buy myself a house, always hoping that one day I’d meet a guy who’d just blow me away. I was hoping that by pretending I came from their world, I’d eventually become fully human – with a husband, a house, and kids. I thought I was happy with what I was doing, but then he stepped into my life.”
She paused, turning to her mother before going over to the next poster. “In my defense, I’ve been living among humans for so long that I didn’t realize what he was. Of course, he only came at night, but I have to be honest, I was thinking he had a girlfriend somewhere.”
“You’d sleep with another woman’s man, daughter?” her mother scolded her and she turned to her, a plea for understanding on her face.
“I’ve never met anyone like him, Mom. The way he looked at me, I thought I could have the world. That was, until I started to tell him that I love him and he just kissed me as an answer. Again, I thought there was another girl, until he got extremely mad, telling me that I wouldn’t understand.” She snorted, crunching up another poster into a paper ball.
“But there wasn’t,” her mother offered.
“No,” Cia admitted. “One day a woman walked in at my work place and told me that he can’t give me what I want to have
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