The beast and the blessed novel by Ashley Breanne novel Chapter 68

Sixty-Eight: Killian

Killian’s P.O.V.

The steady, low beeping of the monitor was still far too loud, just as it always was. I knew the healers were tracking her stats from inside the infirmary, but I couldn't help but look over the numbers on the screen myself, just as I had done a few minutes prior.

She was alive, but I wasn't sure that she would want to be. She had done everything she could to remove herself from this world, and yet we were going against her last request and forcing her to stay on this Earth instead of being with her mate and lost child.

I had killed more than I would even be able to count in my lifetime. I had shown mercy to people I had barely met. But my mother would continue to suffer in the realm of the living because I was too much of a chicken to free her.

The sheen to my mother's hair was even duller than before, and I couldn't help but run my hand over it, hoping that one day she would turn her head and press her cheek into my hand.

Our relationship was awful when she was alive. I was constantly scared of what she would do and how she would react to everything. I wanted to stay as far away from my parents as possible.

But then, after my mother had been locked away, and we thought she had been healed, she became my mom again. She was loving and happy. She seemed to enjoy life and spending time with us.

The day I discovered it was all a ruse to gain her freedom was the day she had finally broken my heart for good. The last nail had been hammered into the coffin, and I knew that love was a trap as my father dove for the gun to save her.

Love was used to manipulate and control the other person.

I didn't want to be like my father, weak and hopeless as he pinned after a woman that didn't want him. She was forced to be with him. After she destroyed him, he destroyed her.

Love was the guarantee of mutual destruction. At least, that was what I had thought until I met Natalie.

I dropped my hand down at the lack of movement and grabbed my mother's cold palm, her fingers remaining limp in my hold.

"You were wrong," I whispered as I listened to the machines pumping and swirling away to keep her alive. "I wasted so much time because of you. My mate deserved better than me, but she stayed. She was patient while I tried to fix the man that you raised me to be. You failed me. You failed Charlie."

A small blip on the electrocardiogram made me look up at the screen, but it was quickly washed away by the normal pattern of her heart beating. Maybe this was it. Maybe she was finally going to let go.

I glance down at the first woman I had ever loved and the first to have ever broken my heart. "I expected more from you. We deserved more."

My eyes closed tight as I tried to push back the emotions that were bubbling to the surface. Emotions that I didn't have until Natalie came into my life. Before her, they were tucked away in the depths of my mind, locked in an impenetrable box. But she broke through it, and now I knew I couldn't put it off anymore. I had to face my past so I could give her the future that she deserved.

The familiar statement that I had grown to loathe finally made sense.

Charlie had told me the same thing time and time again. She needed her brother, but I had only ever been her ruler.

She deserved more, Natalie deserved more... and my mother deserved more, no matter how much I detested her.

She had been kept alive by machines and wires for far too long, and it was time for her to find peace.