Chapter 14
ACHILLES
“Hey there, handsome!”
I grin at the flame-haired, green-eyed woman beaming at me from my phone.
“Hey, Mom.”
Between the lack of coffins and blood-drinking during my childhood, along with the fact that she does cast a reflection when walking past mirrors, I can safely say that Neve Kildare is not a vampire.
But you wouldn’t necessarily believe it if you were told her actual age.
My mother isn’t just a knockout. She’s an ageless knockout. In fact, the “immortal vampire” comments have become so frequent that she decided to own the joke and hasn't been anything else for Halloween the last ten years running.
Honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to believe Mom is a day over thirty, when the truth is she’ll be turning fifty next year.
Sure, if you look hard, there are a few more lines around the corners of her green eyes when she smiles…which is pretty much all the time…or a touch of blondish-white in a few strands of her gingery-red hair. Still, she’s eerily ageless.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asks in a slightly out-of-breath voice, raking her fingers through her hair. Her face is flushed, and the camera swings wildly across the kitchen as she grabs a bottle of water off the counter.
I shrug. “Just wanted to check in.” My brow creases as I watch her guzzle the water. “Is…everything okay?”
Mom laughs. “I'm fine, just getting back from a run with your dad.”
I smirk. “Who won?”
She snorts. “Oh, honey, please. I smoked his ass.”
I chuckle as I lean against the tree at my back.
“So, how’s school?”
I shrug. “Same old same old. Can’t complain.”
She arches a brow, which is Mom-speak for “you’re not going to get away with just giving me that”.
When I still don’t go on, she clears her throat. “And?”
I laugh. “And nothing. That’s it, Mom. Classes are going well, the Privateers are looking strong for the season, and Para Bellum is running smoothly. Loch and I need to start looking over the potential new pledges for the Initiation Trials later this fall, but that’s about it.”
Her eyebrow quirks up again, and I chuckle.
“Go ahead. Ask.”
Mom grins. “Am I that obvious?”
“You are one hundred percent that obvious.”
She laughs. “Fine, smart-ass. Any girl manage to sweep you off your feet yet?”
My gaze drifts across the quad in front of me to a figure sitting by herself on a bench, a book in her hands.
“I plead the fifth.”
Mom squeals in delight. “Ooh, that is so a yes!”
I chuckle. “It’s an ‘I decline to be compelled to incriminate myself’. Mom, you’re married to a mobster. You should probably know the fifth amendment.”
“Your father is also a pathologically truthful man, which means everything you know about bullshitting, you learned from yours truly.” She cocks a brow. “So… Who’s the girl? Is it serious?”
My eyes leave the screen again, zeroing in on where Yelena is not reading Bastian Pierce’s Fucked Sideways. The red stain creeping up her neck, the eager eyes, and the parted lips suggest she’s reading something a bit spicier than his commentary on modern culture, witty as it is.
I've also hacked all her online accounts, including her various eBook subscriptions. That's how I know that she’s actually reading the latest spicy BookTok romance that was recently reviewed by that Velvet Villainess chick who apparently might be a Knightsblood student.
I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that whoever Velvet Villainess is, she’s not Yelena De Luca.
Ergo, not on my radar.
Lucky her.
So, no. Yelena is not currently reading Bastian Pierce, though I do know she loves his work.
It’s just that it’s nice out, and she wants to read her filthy book about men in masks who ignore the word “no” outside without any judgement.
Hence, her e-reader tucked between the open pages of her much more college-appropriate paperback.
The only reason knowing that Yelena is currently reading a scene involving “hand necklaces” and a guy in a neon stitch mask balls-deep in the heroine’s ass isn’t giving me a massive erection is the fact that my mother is still talking to me.
“What?”
Mom sighs. “I asked if it was serious with this girl.”
Seriously becoming a problem?
Yes.
Seriously monopolizing literally all my attention even more than my previous “fascinations”?
Also yes.
Seriously, rapidly, gobbling up whatever restraint I have left that’s keeping me from putting on a mask and waking Yelena up in the middle night by sliding my dick into her sweet cunt?
Fuck fucking yes.
But beyond that, I’m not sure how to begin to answer my mom’s question.
Luckily, before she presses the issue, I hear the slamming of a door somewhere in the background on her end.
“Oops!” she laughs. “Guess your father finally made it—”
“Wherever the fuck you are,” my dad’s voice booms from another room in the house, “it had better be without a stitch of clothing on, bent over with that sweet ass in the fucking air, so I can devour that pretty pussy.”
Jesus Christ.
Mom’s face goes crimson, then something sends the phone screen spinning nauseatingly around the kitchen before it lands looking up at the ceiling.
I’m torn between the warmth of knowing my parents continue to have a great love life and the desire to vomit when I hear Mom giggling in the background.
“ARES!” she laughs. “I’m on the phone!!”
“Fuck ‘em,” Dad growls. “They can hang up or listen to me fuck my wife—”
“It’s our son.”
The kitchen goes awkwardly, deathly silent. I hear a throat clearing, then the view swings wildly as a hand grabs the phone off the kitchen floor. Suddenly, I’m face to face with a very sheepish-looking Ares Drakos.
“So…” His dark brows knit. “That’s…my bad.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Do you have any idea how many years of therapy just got added to the tally?”
Dad chuckles and rakes a hand over his chiseled jaw.
My father isn’t quite the immortal vampire my mom is, but he’s definitely “aging like fine wine”.
His dark hair has a few streaks of silver at the temples these days, which just makes him look even more distinguished than when he was younger. Same with the smile lines around his eyes and jaw: they don’t make him look old, they make him look like a fucking stud.
He, like Mom, is in insanely good shape.
Not just “for a guy his age”: he could probably go toe-to-toe with most of the guys on the football or hockey teams here at Knightsblood.
Like my mother, he’s dressed like he just came back from a run, in a sweat-soaked gray t-shirt that clings to his ridiculously defined chest and shoulders.
He grins widely. “Fill me in, man! How’s school?”
The “needing therapy” line was just a joke. Okay, I do see someone from time to time, and I should probably go more often But it’s self-care, not anything at all to do with any childhood trauma or parental issues.
My parents are and always have been amazing. I wanted for nothing growing up materially or emotionally. They were supportive and pushed me to be my best. They were present. They provided an ear to talk to, and a comforting silence if need be.
Whatever that thing is inside me… That’s just part of me, not any sort of baggage that got passed down to me by them.
In fact, my parents are probably the reason that the “more” inside of me is not bigger or worse.
I might be especially driven and wired a little differently, but I’m not a psychopath.
And I think that’s thanks to the two nauseatingly loving people I’m currently talking to.
“School’s fine,” I shrug. “I was just telling Mom that the Privateers are gearing up for a pretty solid season—”
“He’s got a girlfriend.”
I groan as my mom butts back into the frame, smiling widely as she smooshes her face close to my father’s.
“Oh?” Dad grins at me. “When were you planning on telling me?”
This might sound corny as fuck, but my dad really is my best friend and the first guy I’d tell whenever I had a crush on a girl at school growing up.
God, that does sound corny.
“When it becomes reality,” I sigh. “Mom’s reaching again.”
“She just wants grandkids.”
Mom snorts. “Um, not yet I don’t. Jesus.” She elbows my dad. “Speak for yourself, old timer. Some of us are still in our prime.”
“Mmm, you’re telling me,” Dad growls, turning to bury his face in her neck.
“THER-A-PY!” I groan. “Fuck, I’m just going to have them send you the bills.”
“Fine with me,” dad murmurs, making my mother giggle again as he grabs her. “Keep the meter running.”
I sigh loudly. “Where’s Iris while you two are playing grab-ass in the fucking kitchen?”
Mom disentangles herself from my dad with some difficulty. “She’s at Cillian and Una’s for the week, looking after the plants and cat-sitting.”
Cillian Kildare, my mom’s and Lochlan’s dad’s uncle, was the head of the Kildare mafia before Uncle Castle took over.
He and his wife Una, my aunt—I guess great-aunt, but that feels weird because she’s my mom’s age—never had kids, due to them both coming from pretty fucked-up childhoods of their own.
But they do have three cats and about a thousand plants in their incredibly cool clocktower loft penthouse across the river in Brooklyn.
Lochlan and I once threw an insane party there when we were in high school.
Unsurprisingly, that was the last time I got asked to cat-sit.
Luckily, my younger sister Iris who’s a senior in high school doesn’t have the same “fuck around and hope you don’t find out” leanings that Lochie and I had when we were her age.
“And how are the fur babies?”
Mom snorts. “Ghost and Diablo are adorable. Bones is his usual grumpy self.”
Speaking of immortal vampires, my aunt Una’s oldest cat, Bones, has got to be pushing thirty at this point, which I think must be some sort of world record.
“You're still dodging questions about the girl,” dad sighs.
I roll my eyes. “There is no—”
“How’s everything else, then? Tell me all about it.”