The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 20

POV: Selene

It was a quiet Tuesday evening, the sky outside our apartment window a soft watercolor of purple and pink.

The comforting scent of spaghetti and meatballs, Leo’s favorite, lingered in our small kitchen.

Leo was at the kitchen table, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in intense concentration as he scribbled furiously with his crayons.

He was so beautifully, wonderfully absorbed in his own little world.

These were the moments I collected like precious jewels.

The simple, peaceful, ordinary moments that I had once believed I would never have.

My life was not grand or powerful, but it was real. And it was mine.

I wiped down the counter, the familiar, repetitive motion a comfort to my soul after a long day on my feet.

“Mama,” Leo’s small, serious voice broke the comfortable silence.

“Yes, my little bear?” I asked, turning to him with a smile.

“I’m all done,” he announced, holding up his masterpiece with a proud flourish.

I walked over to him, my heart giving a familiar, painful squeeze.

The drawing was of three stick figures under a giant, smiling sun.

A mother with long, scribbled brown hair.

A small boy in the middle.

And, on the other side of the boy, a tall, broad-shouldered man colored in with a black crayon.

The empty space he always felt, rendered in wax on cheap paper.

The day I had been dreading for five years had finally, inevitably, arrived.

I knelt beside his chair, forcing a bright, steady smile onto my face.

“Oh, Leo, this is so wonderful,” I said, my voice only a little tight. “You’re such a good artist. Who are these people?”

I smoothed the soft brown hair back from his forehead, my hand trembling just slightly.

“Your daddy…” I began, my voice thick with unshed tears. “Your daddy is the bravest man I have ever known.”

I looked into his shining, hopeful face.

“He is very, very strong, Leo,” I said, the words a mix of bitter truth and protective fiction. “Strong enough to fight any monster in the whole wide world.”

“Wow,” he breathed. “Where is he?”

“He’s on a very important, very secret mission,” I said, the story I had practiced in the lonely hours of the night a thousand times finally taking shape. “He’s a protector, a guardian, in a place that’s very far away.”

“But he’s coming back?” The hope in his voice was a fragile, beautiful thing that nearly broke me.

I pulled him into a fierce, desperate hug, burying my face in the clean, boyish scent of his hair to hide the single tear that escaped and traced a hot path down my cheek.

“Yes, my little bear,” I whispered into his hair, my voice cracking under the weight of my love and my lie.

“One day, he’ll come back.”