EPILOGUE II
“Do we really have to do this?” Sin asks me with a roll of his eyes.
“Why not? It’s fun!” I retort as I pull him closer by his tie so I can arrange it properly.
“I would have thought you would never want to wear your school uniform again.”
“Under any other circumstances, no, I would not want to wear it again. But this is fun! Think about it as role-playing.”
“Role-playing as high school students?” He chuckles.
“I mean, we look the part. And it’s not like we can go there as Rren’s parents. No one would believe us.”
“We could still go as his siblings. We don’t have to wear this.”
“We’re going to blend in,” I say. “Come on, Sin. For me?” I bat my lashes at him.
With a loud sigh, he ends up agreeing to my request. We finish putting on our uniforms and head out the door toward the graduation ceremony being held at St. Anselm Hall.
The ceremony is being held on the football field. Upon entering inside, there are rows and rows of parents, relatives, and other students in the bleachers, while on the actual field, all the graduates are seated together in alphabetical order.
With Arnoult as his last name, Rren is among the first ones. He senses us arriving immediately and turns around, looking toward the entrances until he sees us.
A big smile appears on his face as he winks at us.
I send him a flying kiss, and he pretends to catch it before sending one of his own back—our usual routine. He might be an adult now, having turned eighteen just a few weeks ago, but he’ll always be my baby boy.
I note more than a few girls look at the exchange with frowns on their faces. Some start whispering, and it’s worse that I can hear all that—thanks to Sin’s potent blood.
She’s so cringe, one of them says.
Cringe? I’m . . . cringe? What the hell!
Can’t a mother show her affection to her son? What’s with all those disgusted expressions?
I glare at them until they quickly look away, though they continue to whisper about my cringy performance.
Fucking twats! Who raised them?
Sin shakes his head in amusement. “You do realize how this looks, right?”
“Huh?” I frown.
“You’re wearing the school uniform. And you do look young.”
I blink. My mouth parts as I realize why those girls had looked at me like that. They thought . . .
“They are jealous,” he confirms my thoughts. “They’re now whispering about Rren, how hot he looks.”
“Of course he does. He’s my handsome baby, and he does take after his father.” I bat my lashes at Sin.
He pulls me in his arms and gives me a long, rather passionate kiss. As he pulls back, I’m all flushed and flustered, and my brain is mush. It takes me a moment to realize that now the parents are gasping and whispering about teenagers these days and criticizing our PDA.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have worn the uniforms after all,” I mutter.
Sin smirks. I know what he’s thinking: I told you so.
I grab him by the hand and lead him to our section in the bleachers, hoping we will not attract any more attention. Goodness mine, I only wanted a fun little adventure. I did not realize the optics of it.
We take our seats while the school principal comes onto the stage and starts his speech.
“How do you feel being here again?” I ask Sin as I snuggle closer to him.
“Can’t say I missed it much. The only bright side of high school was you.”
I laugh. “Who told you to pretend to be a high school student at your advanced age?”
He glances at me and raises a brow. “And allow you to experience high school without me? No way in hell. I had firsthand experience at how horny and debauched high school students are. I wasn’t about to risk you finding some fucker to experiment with.”
He wrinkles his nose in disgust, and I can already tell he’s remembering that time, quite long ago, when I’d lied to him about other guys.
He’d been beside himself thinking his stalking had failed.
Although I don’t even know how he could ever think that, when I later found out that he was watching me almost all the time.
It would be quite creepy, really, if it weren’t so romantic.
Alas, I happen to like his stalker-ish tendencies since I happen to have some myself. Now, almost two decades later, I’m more than sure I would have done the same—hell, I think he had more restraint than I would have had in some situations.
“You did well,” I praise him gently, laying my head on his shoulder as we watch the rest of the speech.
When the principal is finally done, it’s time for the graduates to receive their diplomas.
I take out my phone while Sin prepares his camera to take pictures of our darling boy.
The names are called. Rren is the third one.
My chest is full of emotion as I watch my boy, all grown up, finishing school and ready to go out into the world. Oh, Lord, I mustn’t tear up.
I snap picture after picture to make sure I capture every single second of the event.
Rren shakes hands with the principal, takes his diploma, and prepares to walk off the stage. I take another picture.
But . . . something is wrong. He’s a bit too pale.
“Sin,” I whisper, my voice full of horror.
He’s noticed the same thing I did. Quickly rising to his feet, he takes my hand and leads me away from the bleachers. He makes eye contact with Rren and signals for him to meet us outside.
We quickly get away from all the commotion, and I’m surprised to see Sin taking me to a very familiar place—the gardener’s shed.
We get there first, with Rren coming inside a couple of minutes later.
He is pale, his lips a little blue.
“You overexerted yourself,” I say in a chiding motherly voice.
“No,” he shakes his head. “It’s something else.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulls up his sleeve and reveals his lower arm—it’s red and full of blisters.
“What—”
Sin is on him, pulling on his graduation gown to look for any other injuries. There are more red spots, some worse than others.
Rren gulps down and looks at us uneasily. “It’s been getting progressively worse since my birthday. I think . . .” He bites his lip. “I think it’s the sun. It’s burning me.”
“But . . . your face?” I frown. But as I get closer to him and touch his cheek, I note a thick layer of sunscreen and foundation.
I rub at it with my sleeve only to reveal the same type of redness.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Sin asks, his expression grave.
“I didn’t want you guys to worry about me.” He shrugs.
“Do you know what this could be?” I ask Sin.
He shakes his head. “My mentor said he would be something different . . . unique.” He sighs. “We need to research more.”
“But how, if there’s no one else like him?”
“Maybe there is, and my mentor doesn’t know. It won’t hurt to look.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just stay out of the sun,” he says blithely.
“You can’t do that forever.” I gasp. “We’ll figure something out, I promise.”
“It’s fine, Mom. I’ve always known I was different, and I’ve adapted to all the challenges that came my way.”
I purse my lips. That is true. From the moment he could talk, we’d started to introduce him to our special but odd world.
He’s always known we are not the same as other people, although he only truly grasped it when he went to kindergarten and realized no one else drank blood like him.
But that wasn’t the only difference between him and other boys.
His strength and speed were astronomically different than his peers.
His sight, hearing, and smell as well. Everything was heightened.
When he’d been in primary school, he’d wished so badly to try different sports, and we didn’t allow him because it would not be fair to other kids.
Yet as he matured, he started to understand why we were so strict with him—after all, we had to make sacrifices to ensure he wasn’t isolated; that he grew up as normal as possible.
“In the meantime, let’s heal those nasty blisters,” Sin added. He manifests a bottle of blood and hands it to Rren, who downs it all at once.
Some of the redness heals. Not all of it.
Sin frowns. He manifests another bottle of blood. After drinking until the last drop, everything heals.
I glance back at Sin. He has the same expression on his face. One way or another, we have to get to the bottom of this. We knew he was going to be different, but I don’t know how to feel about him spending his entire life in the shadows.
After a few moments of heavy silence, Sin clears his throat.
“Now that you have your diploma, perhaps we should go out and celebrate.”
“Yes but—” Rren wrinkles his nose. “Please change out of those uniforms. It’s cringe.”
I blink. “Cringe?” I echo.
“We will definitely change.” Sin laughs.
Although still a little worried about Rren, I tell myself there’s time to explore this more in depth later. Now it’s his moment to shine.
I plaster a smile on my face and hook my arms through Rren’s, then through my husband’s.
“Sin, work your magic,” I whisper. He teleports us back home so we can change, after which we go out to celebrate Rren’s graduation.
Goodness mine, I have an adult son—a high school graduate.
What’s next, I wonder?