Chapter 37

Everly

POV

My hands trembled as we pulled up out front of the Hotel. Officer Richards had driven me and had escorted me to Alpha Valen’s penthouse apartment. I wracked my brain trying to figure out how he had Valarian was here. Did he spot him at the school and take him? Did Valarian look for him, or did someone notice the uncanny resemblance between them? I had many questions, but nothing terrified me more than what happened now that Valen knew he fathered a son.

He would have to kill me before I ever let him take my son. My nerves were shot, my eyes burned from spending all afternoon and night balling like a baby. My mind instantly went to he was kidnapped, or one of the Forsaken had killed him. The relief I felt when I found out he was alive and ok was as crushing as the thought of losing him. There was nothing worse than thinking you lost a child; the what-ifs, the sheer panic, and frantic places your mind takes you were a pure nightmare. Your mind instantly goes to the worst- case scenario.

The thing you fear most in the world, losing them for good, your child suffering, and you could do nothing to help them. No sort of fear could compare to thinking you lost the most important person to you. Fear, once your parent changes. You no longer fear the boogie man. You no longer fear the dark, at least not for those same reasons you once did.

Being a parent, you become the boogie manhunter. You don’t fear him anymore. You fear ordinary people taking your child, your neighbor, the person hanging around the children’s parks; you fear people in general. You suddenly become the person checking under the bed, the person entering the shadows first, not because you don’t fear them still but because you fear them for a different reason. You fear them because you know the child behind you relies on you to keep them safe.

No, you don’t fear the dark; you fear what’s lurking in it that could hurt your child. Just the same as you no longer fear death, what you truly fear is leaving them behind, knowing nobody would love them more than you. You fear what would become of them without you.