Free Blaze by Kaitlyn Davis Page B

shaking.
    “That’s no way to speak to your mother,”
Aldrich said. Her mother remained silent across the table and
looked at Kira with cold blue eyes.
    “Is she my mother?” Kira stood quickly,
knocking her chair over. The slam of heavy wood against tile
reverberated around the dining room, echoing in the silence of the
accusation.
    “Of course I am, sweetheart,” her mother
said and reached out her hand. Kira stepped back.
    “The mother I remember fought with her life
to protect me. I don’t think she would have been content to wait
eighteen years before seeing me again.”
    “There were reasons,” she spoke softly,
trying to break through Kira’s fury.
    “Like what?” Kira spat.
    “Like I was a newly born vampire with no
control over her senses and you were a child with no idea of her
powers,” she replied, still calm and cajoling. Kira sat back
down.
    Behind her, Tristan pulled Aldrich from the
room to give the two women privacy. The doors to the living room
were sealed shut and in the small space, Kira had nowhere to look
but at her mother, whose soothing voice did nothing but inflate her
anger.
    “I wanted to find you,” her mother
continued, “but I had to wait until the right moment. We both
needed to have control over our bodies. But, you have to know that
for eighteen years this moment is all I’ve dreamed of. I’ve wanted
to be with you for so long, to hug you and never let you go. I just
wanted everything to perfect, can’t you understand that?”
    Her mother stopped talking and stared at
Kira. But Kira wasn’t really listening. She had always believed
that people’s eyes couldn’t lie. They always gave the true emotions
away. And her mother’s eyes were blank and unfeeling. And it wasn’t
just the dark blue color and the fact that Kira had always pictured
them differently. And they weren’t vacant like someone possessed,
just indifferent. And it made Kira retreat back into her
memories.
    One day, months ago after Kira had just
discovered the truth about her aunt, Luke asked her why she wasn’t
angrier. They were laying next to each other on the grass,
breathing heavily and exhausted from training, when he surprised
her with the question. At first, she hadn’t known what to say, but
after taking a minute to think it over, she realized what it was:
her aunt’s eyes.
    Kira had wanted to yell at her aunt. Part of
her wanted to make her cry and make her hate herself for lying to
Kira for so long. She was angry, so angry, that Luke had known more
about her past than she did. After their initial talk, she had
ignored her aunt mercilessly. She refused to speak to her or even
look her in the eye. But after a few days of fuming, Kira was
finally ready to talk again. She had thought about the right words
over and over again, how she would scream at her aunt for lying and
never stop yelling out her anger. So when her uncle and Chloe were
gone, Kira cornered her aunt in the kitchen, ready to explode. But
when her aunt turned around, Kira finally looked into her eyes and
saw all of the pain and self-loathing she was looking for. Her aunt
was killing herself with hurt over keeping this secret. And Kira’s
anger disappeared. Instead she cried and her aunt rocked her back
and forth as though she were a child, and they stayed like that for
ages until they were both cried out.
    But right now, looking into her birth
mother’s face, Kira felt nothing but anger. Unlike her aunt, her
mother had chosen this life. Had chosen to abandon Kira—and for
what? For an evil man? To become an evil thing?
    Despite her mother’s words, there was no
remorse in those eyes. No pain or anguish. She was happy with her
decision. And to Kira, that was unforgivable. Actually, it was
downright suspicious.
    “What’s your name?” Kira asked. She righted
her chair, sat back down and crossed her hands on the table. Across
the room, her mother rolled her eyes and did the same. Kira tried
to ignore the attitude