His mother’s eyes darted back toward the door of the house, then returned to him, sharp with fear.

"I told you not to come here," she whispered. "I told you, Brian. You know better than this."

Brian only chuckled.

And then, before she could stop him, he stepped forward and pulled her into his arms anyway.

He held her tightly, the way a small boy holds onto something he is terrified will be taken from him. "I missed you, Mama," he murmured into her hair. "That’s all. I just missed you."

For a moment, she stood rigid against him, her whole body locked tight with tension. But slowly, against her own will, she softened.

Her shoulders eased. Her breath shuddered out of her. Tears gathered in her eyes, and one hand crept up to rest against his back, patting it gently, the way mothers do without ever quite deciding to.

Then she caught herself and pulled away, sniffed hard, and wiped quickly at her face. "You have to go," she whispered urgently. "Right now. You know Andy won’t have you here."

"But I’m your son," Brian said.

The woman shook her head, looking more exhausted than angry. "You don’t understand, do you? You have to leave me be. I have a new life now. A good one. I can’t have you turning up and unravelling it."

Brian’s gaze drifted past her shoulder, taking in the tidy little yard, the half-finished skewers, the small ordinary happiness of it all. Then he looked back at her, and something cooler slid into his expression.

"Has this new life of yours dulled your senses so completely that you couldn’t even feel your own blood standing behind you?" He tilted his head. "I was standing here for a long while, watching you hum to yourself. You didn’t sense or even hear me."

She eyed him warily. "I am a human now."

Brian laughed, low and humourless. "Swallowing suppressants doesn’t make you human, Mama. It just makes you good at pretending. Your daughters are not human, and one day they will find out too. You can’t keep supressing their abilities."

She let out a frustrated breath. "Stop this nonsense. Stop it. You need to leave before my husband or the children come out and see you here?"

"Am I not your child too?" Brian’s voice cracked at the edges, though he tried to wrap it in a chuckle. "Come now. At the very least, you could pretend to be glad to see me. Just for a moment. Surely you can manage that much."

The woman’s face twisted with conflict, guilt and fear at war across it. "You know Andy doesn’t like seeing you here," she said weakly.

Brian blinked and looked away from her, up at the bright, indifferent sky. He blinked again, fast, fighting the sting building behind his eyes.

"Right," he said quietly. "Of course. No one wants to see me. Why would they?"

He turned back to her, and now the wound was open and bleeding right there on his face.

"When will you ever love me, Mama?" His voice rose, raw and shaking. "Oh, but wait. I forgot. I’m the child who was forced on you. The one you never wanted in the first place."

"Don’t." Tears spilt down her cheeks. "Don’t say that." 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"What do you want me to say instead?"

Brian dragged his fingers back through his hair, the laugh that escaped him broken and bitter.

"You hated me from the moment I drew breath. You handed me over to him without so much as a backward glance. And then you went off and built yourself a beautiful little life, a husband who adores you, children you actually wanted, and I’m the one left carrying the wreckage of how I came to be."

His chest heaved. "When, Mama? When will you ever fight for me?"

The woman wiped at her streaming eyes, and when she looked at him again, something in her eyes had hardened.

"I did what was best for you," she said, her voice trembling but firm. "Do you hear me? The best thing I could. I gave you a place in one of the most powerful Lycan families in the whole of the shifter world. You grew up wanting for nothing. Nothing, Brian. Wealth. Status. Every door open to you."

She pressed a hand to her own chest. "Don’t you dare stand in my garden and lay your misfortune at my feet. Don’t try to tear my life apart simply because yours has gone wrong. What more could I possibly have done for you?"

Brian stared at her for a long moment. The tears rolled freely down his face now, and he did not bother to wipe a single one of them away. He let them fall openly.

Then he leaned in closer, his voice dropping to something quiet and terribly sad.

"Maybe," he said, "I’d have grown into a better man, if you’d raised me yourself. Maybe I’d have learned to tell good from evil before the evil swallowed me whole." His throat worked. "Maybe I’d have got a happy ending of my own one day. Just like the one you went and built for yourself."

He drew a shaking breath.

"But here I am. Same as always. I’ve come to tell my mother about my life, because there’s no one else in the world to tell."

He looked at her, and a strange, hollow smile touched his lips.

"I’ve found someone, Mama. Someone I like far too much. The trouble is, she doesn’t like me back. I don’t think she ever will."

He shook his head slowly. "But that won’t stop me. It won’t stop me from having her. Finding you out here, alone, with no one to interrupt us, I’ll take that as your blessing." His eyes glittered, wet and wild. "So this time, I’ll have everything I want. Everything, and more. Whatever it takes."

"Brian." His mother’s voice broke clean in half. She reached out toward him, her hand trembling in the space between them. "Brian, please—"

But he stepped back, out of her reach and looked down at the bouquet in his hand, then let them drop. They landed on the grass at her feet.

"Goodbye, Mama," he said.

"Please." She was sobbing now, the word barely making it out of her. "Please, don’t do anything stupid. Brian—"

But her voice was too wrecked with tears to carry, too broken to reach him. She only stood there in her quiet little garden, the flowers wilting at her feet, weeping into her hands as she watched her son turn and walk away from her, out the gate, and out of sight.