Chapter 140: Chapter 139: A Mother’s Advise
"Good friends are rare," Margaret continued. "Don’t let this one go," she said to Eve, who nodded wordlessly. "Whatever changes come, whatever new world she’s living in now....don’t let distance or circumstances or different lives pull you apart. Promise me."
"I promise," both women said simultaneously, then looked at each other and managed watery smiles.
Margaret nodded with satisfaction. Then she turned to Damian, who straightened slightly under her gaze. Despite being an alpha werewolf with decades of pack authority, he looked, Eve thought, slightly like a man being assessed by a strict teacher.
"You," Margaret said to him. "I’ve met you before. You came to the hospital with Eve."
"I did," Damian confirmed.
"You love her," Margaret said, and it wasn’t a question.
Damian met her gaze steadily. "More than anything."
"All three of you do," Margaret continued, and only someone who knew her well would have caught the slight wonder in her voice. "She told me it was a contract. A business arrangement. She was lying, of course....I could see it in her face even through the phone calls. But I let her maintain the fiction because she needed to work it out for herself."
"She did," Damian said. "She figured it out entirely on her own terms."
"Good," Margaret said. "She would have resisted anything that felt pushed on her." Her expression became serious. "I’m trusting you with the most important thing in my world. All three of you. I’m trusting you to protect her, support her, love her the way she deserves to be loved."
"You have our word," Damian said, with a formality that matched the gravity of her tone. "All three of us. Always."
Margaret studied him for a long moment, clearly assessing whether she believed him. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied. "She’s going to need that," she said quietly. "What’s coming for her isn’t going to be easy."
Eve’s head snapped up. "You know about that?"
"I know more than you think," Margaret said mildly. "I’ve known Eve was special since she was three years old and accidentally knocked every glass in the kitchen off the counter from across the room during a tantrum." She smiled at Eve’s shocked expression. "I didn’t know what it meant then. I just knew she was extraordinary and needed to be protected."
She looked at Raphael then, and the weight of two decades of parallel protection passed between them in the silence.
"You did your part," she said to him. "Keeping her safe from the threats I couldn’t see, couldn’t understand. I did mine....keeping her grounded, loved, human enough to have empathy and compassion alongside whatever power she was developing."
"You did it beautifully," Raphael said, and his voice was rough with genuine emotion. "My brother and Lilith couldn’t have chosen better."
Margaret accepted this with quiet dignity. Then she turned to Eve....her daughter in every way that mattered.....and held out both hands.
Eve took them and held them and waited.
"I am so proud of you," Margaret said, and the simplicity of the words hit Eve harder than any elaborate declaration could have. "Not of what you’re becoming.....though I am proud of that too. But of who you are. The kindness you’ve held onto through everything hard. The courage. The loyalty. The way you love the people in your life with everything you have."
Eve was crying openly now, making no attempt to stop it.
"I spent years worrying that I hadn’t given you enough," Margaret continued, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. "That you’d grown up with too little security, too much uncertainty. That my limitations had limited you. But look at you."
She squeezed Eve’s hands with strength that hadn’t been there an hour ago. "You are magnificent, my darling girl. Absolutely magnificent. And wherever you go next....whatever throne or destiny or extraordinary life is waiting for you....you carry everything I tried to give you with you always."
"I don’t want to go anywhere without you," Eve whispered.
"I know," Margaret said gently. "But you will. And that’s how it should be. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. Are supposed to grow beyond them, surpass them, build lives bigger than anything their parents could have imagined."
She reached up and touched Eve’s face. "You are going to change the world, Eve. I’ve always known it. Now I understand how."
She glanced at Raphael. "You’ll look after her?"
"Until my last breath," Raphael confirmed.
"And you three...." Her eyes moved to include Damian and the brothers by extension. ".....you’ll stand beside her when it gets hard? When she doubts herself? When the weight of who she is feels like too much?"
"Always," Damian said, and the word carried the permanence of a vow.
Margaret settled back against her pillows, and Eve could see the tiredness returning....even Raphael’s healing couldn’t change the fundamental reality of her condition. But it was a different tiredness now. Not the exhaustion of pain and illness, but the natural tiredness of meaningful effort.
"One last thing," Margaret said, her eyes finding Eve’s. "The Seraphim Court.....I don’t know all the details, but I know there are people who see you as a threat. Who want to use you or destroy you."
She squeezed Eve’s hand one final time. "Don’t let them define you. Don’t let their politics or their fear or their ambition tell you who you are. You know who you are."
"Do I?" Eve asked, her voice small.
"Yes," Margaret said firmly. "You’re my daughter. And no court in any world changes that."
The room was silent except for the soft sounds of Maya crying quietly in the corner, the distant noise of the hospital going about its business, and the sound of something settling....some old grief finding, if not resolution, at least peace.
Eve leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Margaret’s. "I love you," she whispered. "I love you so much."
"I love you too," Margaret said. "Now stop crying and let an old woman rest. Come back tomorrow and tell me about this training your uncle is putting you through. I want details."
Despite everything, Eve laughed.
Some things, mercifully, never changed at all.
