Page 171 of Remi's War (Four Dark Horsemen 2)

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

And we are standing in front of each other, just staring at one another as her flowery scent surrounds me, seeming almost familiar. Lightning graces the sky, and the first droplets of rain fall on us.

She slowly lifts her trembling hands, placing them on my cheeks, and her soft touch soothes some of the internal wounds as she glides them down to my neck, noticing the deep scar there. “My baby boy. All grown up,” she says and then laughs happily before big sobs shake her entire body. She traces my face with her fingers, her eyes studying every detail, and more tears flow. “Odysseus.”

“Mom.”

She closes her eyes when I call her that, her lips quivering as she tries to control her sobs, but fails to do so. “You found me?”

“Yes.”

Her hands slide to my shirt, and she grips it. “You won’t disappear again?”

Wiping away her tears with my thumbs, I tell her, “No.”

She looks at me again, more tears filling her eyes. “This time around my baby boy will stay?” She clenches the shirt harder. “I can’t lose you twice.”

My heart, my scarred and aching heart, beats wildly while whimpering at the anguish in her tone and regretting everything that prevented us from being together all this time.

My mother doesn’t care about my past, present, or future.

She doesn’t shy away from touching me, even though she knows what I've done to her father.

She doesn’t ask me any questions beyond the one that matters to her the most.

My mother accepts me without knowing me, just like she accepted me all those years ago when she wanted to keep me.

Her love never went away; she has harbored it in her soul and pours it into me so hard I don’t know what to do with it all.

Yet it gathers the scattered pieces of my dark soul and glues them back together, slipping into every crack and soothing it with the motherly love I never knew.

“No, Mom. You won’t lose me again.” She cries harder, if it’s possible, and I hug her close, pressing her cheek to my chest as I rock us both. “I found a way home.”

The little prince stolen from her in the night finally has his peace.

Reunited with the queen by eliminating the evil king.

I was always worthy of my mother’s love.

And no one will take that right away from me ever again.

Because I was meant to be born.

Epilogue

“Once upon a time, she came to my darkness and wrecked the chaos in my carefully structured world.

Something so precious shouldn’t have been mine, but mine she became.

And as such, she lived happily ever after with the monster.

For even the most vicious villains… have hearts craving love and acceptance.”

Remi

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