Chapter 28
Time stopped. The world around me, the glittering chandeliers, the murmur of expensive conversations, the clink of crystal glasses, all of it faded to a dull roar as I stared at the woman before me.
Seventeen years. Seventeen years since I'd last seen her face, felt her arms around me, heard her voice.
And now here she was, standing in front of me as if she'd materialised from my dreams and nightmares.
She was older, of course. The face I remembered from faded photographs had new lines around the eyes, a certain hardness to the jaw.
Her hair was different, platinum blonde now instead of the rich brown I remembered, styled in an elegant updo that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
But those eyes, my eyes, that same shade of blue that stared back at me in the mirror every morning, were unmistakable.
"Mum?" I whispered again, the word feeling foreign to my tongue. She looked me up and down, her gaze cold and assessing. There was no warmth in her eyes, no motherly recognition, no joy at our reunion. Just... irritation. As if I were an unexpected bill in the post.
"Hello, Cadence," she repeated, her voice clipped. "What a surprise to see you here." Her tone suggested it wasn't a pleasant one.
I couldn't breathe properly. My chest felt too tight, my throat constricting around words I'd rehearsed a thousand times for this moment, a moment I'd never truly believed would come.
"I... I've been looking for you," I managed, hating how small my voice sounded. "For years." Her lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Have you? How touching." She glanced around the ballroom, as if checking who might be watching this little reunion. "Though I can't imagine why." Cole stepped closer to me, his body tense as a bowstring.
"Cade," he said quietly, "we should go find Logan and Ryder." But I couldn't move. Couldn't tear my eyes away from the woman who had given birth to me, raised me for five years, and then disappeared without a trace. The woman whose absence had shaped my entire life.
"Why?" I asked, the question bursting from me with more force than I intended.
"Why did you leave me? Where did you go?
I just... I need to know." Something flickered across her face, annoyance, perhaps, or inconvenience.
She sighed, the sound heavy with exasperation, as if I were a child asking for one more bedtime story when she was already late for a date.
"This isn't the time or place for family drama, Cadence." She glanced at Cole, her eyes shining with something that if I didn’t know better looked like lust. She licked her lips as she looked him up and down.
"Though I see you've managed to land on your feet. Maybe you are more like me than I thought? A Consort, are you? To the Covenant boys, no less." Her tone dripped with something I couldn't quite identify, jealousy? Disdain? "How... unexpected."
"I didn't know you would be here," I said, still struggling to process her presence. "At The Palace. Are you, are you with someone?"
"My husband," she replied, her hand unconsciously moving to touch the massive diamond on her finger.
“Y-you’re married,” I stuttered. She had a whole life without me.
“Yes, for sixteen years now,” she sneered.
Sixteen years. Just one year after she left me with my grandparents.
“I even have children.” The way she spoke felt like it was an attack, a personal one against me.
“A son at sixteen, and a daughter at thirteen.” A whole new family.
I couldn’t even comprehend it. She had a whole family and had forgotten all about me.
“Alyssa, that’s enough,” Cole snapped. I looked up at his face, it was flushed in anger.
“Alyssa?” He looked at me, something like sympathy in his eyes. He reached for me, but I stepped back away from him. I looked back at the woman in front of me. “You go by Alyssa?”
"Cade," Cole said, more urgently this time, "we really should-"
"No," I cut him off, surprising both of us with my firmness. "I need to talk to her. Please, Cole. Just... give me a minute." Cole hesitated, his eyes darting between my mother and me.
Finally, he stepped back slightly, though he remained close enough to intervene if needed. I turned back to my mother, gathering my courage.
“You changed your name?” She nodded briefly.
“When I got married, yes,” she said. “I removed all connection to the Turner name and my former life.” There was such hatred in the way she spat out the name Turner, my name.
“I've been trying to find you since I came to Regents. I thought... I hoped you might still be connected to the university somehow,” I said.
"Connected?" She laughed, the sound brittle and sharp. "Oh, I suppose you could say that. Though not in the way you might imagine." I didn’t understand what she said, my brain was running a million miles an hour, too many thoughts and too many questions.
She took a sip from her champagne flute, studying me over the rim.
"So, you're at Regents now. On scholarship, I presume? I doubt your grandfather would let you claim the family heritage." The mention of my grandfather sparked something in her eyes, a flash of old anger, bitter and unresolved.
"Yes," I replied, thrown by the sudden venom in her voice. "Grandad and Nan helped me apply. They... they raised me after you left."
"Of course they did," she said, her tone acidic. "Dear old daddy always was so determined to do the 'right thing.' Even when it destroyed other people's lives." I blinked, confused by her hostility.
"What do you mean?" She glanced around again, seeming to realise we were attracting attention. Several nearby guests were watching our exchange with undisguised curiosity. My mother's expression hardened.
“So he’s hiding from you as well,” she sneered again. “Well, your granddaddy has a darker past than he would like you to know.” I shook my head, I had no idea what she was talking about. My grandfather was one of the kindest men I knew. There was nothing dark about him at all.
"If you want to know why I left, Cadence, why don't you ask your precious grandfather?
" she said, her voice low but intense. "Ask him how he ruined my life from the start.
How his precious morals got in the way of us having a good life.
How even when I fought to rebuild the legacy that he ignored, he came in and ruined it. "
"I-I don't understand-"
"Of course you don't," she cut me off. "You never could. From the moment you were born you were his golden girl, his second chance. I wouldn't have had to do half the things I did if he hadn't interfered. I could have had everything I deserved, everything I wanted."
Her words made no sense to me, fragments of a story I didn't know, accusations against a man who had only ever shown me love and support.
"But what does this have to do with me? Why did you leave me?" I asked, my voice cracking. "I was five years old. I needed you."
Cole shifted closer again, like he was using his body to shield me from the woman I barely knew in front of us. I was grateful for it, for the solid warmth of him as my world tilted on its axis. My mother's gaze flicked to Cole, then back to me, her lip curling slightly.
"And now look at you. Playing whore to these boys, thinking you belong in this world." She shook her head.
"You need to leave this life, Cadence. You don't belong here. You need to leave before you fuck things up more than you already have."
"And you do?" I challenged, a flicker of anger cutting through my confusion. "You're the one who left. You're the one who abandoned your own daughter. What gives you the right to judge me now?" Her eyes widened fractionally, surprise at my defiance quickly replaced by cold fury.
"Judge you? I don’t care enough about you to judge you. You can continue to whore your way through life all you want. Hell, if I had my way, that is exactly what you would be doing now." Cole growled as he stepped forward.
“Back the fuck off Alyssa,” he growled. “Don’t you fucking dare say another word.” I shook my head. It felt like Cole knew something. Something that I was missing. My mother’s lips curled upwards again.
“Oh, Cole sweetheart,” her voice switched to a sickly tone, almost like she was speaking to a child.
“Has the sweet, innocent girl caught you in her trap? Is that it Cole, do you like them innocent now? Come with me and I can give you innocent. We can play our games just like we used to, Dexter might even let you be the daddy.” Cole’s whole body stiffened as she reached out her hand towards him.
He snatched her wrist from the air and bent it back away from his body, causing her to wince in pain.
“Lay one fucking finger on me or my Consort and I will break every bone in your hand,” he hissed. My mother ripped her hand back and snarled at him.
“Who do you think you are? You were nothing without me, boy. I’m the reason that you didn’t rot down there.” Then she turned her hatred on me.
“You think you have it all, do you? You think that being Consort for the year is going to give you the perfect life, that these boys won’t just toss you away like yesterday's trash the second the year ends. You have no idea what you have got into, or how deep it goes, little girl.”
"I know exactly what I've got into," I replied, though that wasn't entirely true. "And at least they didn't abandon me."
The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I'd crossed a line. Her face transformed, all pretence of civility dropping away to reveal something ugly and raw beneath.
"You want to know why I left you?" she hissed, stepping closer. "Why I walked away and never looked back? Because I didn’t look back, not once. You really want to know?" Cole moved to step even more between us, but I placed a hand on his arm, stopping him.
"Yes," I said, my heart hammering against my ribs. "I've wanted to know my entire life." She laughed again, the sound devoid of any warmth or humour.