21 Years old
Septem

My mouth hung impossibly wide as my body naturally tensed in preparation for this awkward meeting.

"Yavan" he called, frustration ringing in his voice as he chastised the little boy beside me.

His feet crunching angrily through the grass as he headed towards us. He had tunnel vision, his eyes solely focussed on his son. It had to be his son, now that everything was clicking together and we were out from under the shade, I could see little resemblances. Like the golden curly hair on their heads, the matching grey eyes. The straight nose, this little boy called Yavan had hardly any traces of his mother.

"What have I told you about sitting outside in the cold all day?" He was angry, furious even, I could tell by the fire that churned beneath his eyes. The way his jaw clenched, but his tone did not show that he was. His tone was hard but soft at the same time, demanding but gentle. It was that parent tone that told you off but bathed you in reassurance at the same time. It was odd to hear it from him.

"Sorry papa, me and Mr..." he stopped for a minute and then twisted his head to face me. "I never got your name-"

"Vanya" the words were so quiet, so hushed I could almost pretend it was the wind churning around us but when he repeated my name I couldn't pretend any longer.

Clearing my throat thoroughly, I called his name in nothing but the strongest voice I had

"Carson."

I couldn't belie how out of sink I was, how disjointed I was feeling at seeing this mini replica of him and knowing that this was his son. The son that everyone had never met and assumed was long dead.

The son of Nelly. Where was that female now that Niko had left her? I knew she would come crawling back to him and I had no illusions that he would take her back. So why was he out here alone?

"It's- uh- n-n-nice to see you, uh Vanya" he was stammering, his hand gripping at his neck in that gesture that always showed how nervous he was.

"I didn't know you had a son" his throat bobbed as he tried to swallow down his nerves, his eyes wide as he understood exactly what the unsaid meaning was. I was telling him I couldn't believe he had this beautiful little boy from the rest of us! What a selfish, spiteful, little-

"Yes, this is my son Yavan,"

"Yeah, or sometimes papa calls me Yanky when I'm good or Yavan-Kaiser manashhh, when I'm bad."

His chest was puffed out proudly, a large grin spread across his face as his lisp completely dismantled his surname. His smile was adorably endearing but still I struggled to smile back because my mind was still whirling from his middle name.

Kaiser?

He had called him Kaiser.

My soul stricken eyes shot up to him, I was spitting bolts of fire, hurt and betrayal at him all the while he shook his head as if he could explain his way out of this.

"That's a lovely name Yavan, I'm Vanya" I bent down and stuck my hand out to shake his but he wrapped his little arms around me and hugged me tight.

"Papa, can I play with Vanya tomorrow?" He questioned as he ran over to his father's side and pulled at his pant leg.

"Me and Vanya will discuss it later, okay Yanky? Now let's go inside" his eyes implored me to give him a chance, swirling pools of grey trying to convey a message that I didn't want to see or hear.

I waved them a tight lipped goodbye before I marched off towards the compound, the sounds of their voices drowned out.

Of course we would be talking and it wouldn't be about whether his son and I would have play time together, it would be about his name.

Kaiser.

How fucking dare, he?

I didn't care that it was his middle name or that his son was the most adorable little boy ever. I didn't care that in my imagination my son Kaiser had been the image of Yavan with slightly paler hair and darker healthier skin. In fact, that only seemed to make this hurt even more.

How could he take something that he knew meant so much to me and give it to that- that woman's child.

Yavan was adorable, beautiful and pure but he wasn't mine! That name belonged to my son, our son! Not his and that woman's! Kaiser was meant to be ours and he had ruined it, he had bred some attention seeking viper and stolen my name.

He didn't know the story behind that name! He didn't know how my mother used tell me that sorry every night, how she knew it off by heart and so did I. How her father had said it to her and his mother before that and hers before that and so on.

He didn't know how to pronounce the question that the angels asked Kaiser, or how to pronounce his reply. He didn't know! He didn't know anything and he stole it from me.

That's all he did

He took things from me that weren't his to take and rejected everything else I had to give.

I wanted to cry so badly but I couldn't because my tears had long dried up. I wasn't that female anymore, there were people who were suffering more than me and they didn't cry. Yes, tears were the souls pain but my soul wasn't hurting it was angry. I was angry. I was livid.

For the first time in my life I knew that if I saw him right now, I would rip him a new face and it wouldn't be no little love tap. I would stab him, now I knew what drove a female like Manal or Neema towards stabbing their mates. These males were deluded and so goddamn selfish.

I saw Manal standing at the top of the stairs as I entered the compound but I only flipped her my middle finger before trudging further into the compound. Striding down the corridors, I found myself back at the female's rooms but when I pushed the door open it was empty.

I didn't care. I was a little curious but the anger I felt was too consuming to worry about something that on a normal day would have me questioning. Anger was like that. It was a poison to the blood stream, it infiltrated your mind and turned you toxic. It controlled you and at this moment I didn't mind.

Pushing open the door to the room I had once shared, I stomped in and headed to the shower. After drying myself off I realised that I had left my bag in the transporter, I had also missed two meals and was way too tired and annoyed to go find anything. Instead I rummaged through some draws, found a loose navy blue jumpsuit that I assumed would swallow me whole but instead clung to my hips and chest. The material was a little softer than I remembered it to be, it was almost like silk, smooth and shiny against my skin.

Flinging that on, I climbed into the relatively small single bed. My feet hung off the ends and I laughed to myself at how small I must have been. I was thankful though because before this moment I had been sleeping on the floor with nothing but a few furs and blankets to keep me warm and comfortable.

My arm dangled off the bed and swiped against the floor, I swung it back and forth until it was in a rhythm. My eyes moved back and forth following my swaying hand until my eyes started to grow heavy and sleep began to blanket over my mind.

//--//

I shot up in bed and rubbed at my bleary eyes, confusion clouding my brain as I tried to figure out what had awoken me. Scratching at my scalp in bafflement, I climbed from the bed and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders before pulling open my bedroom door. The corridor in the female's quarters were dark with no light but as I got closer to the end I saw a small lamp light flickering.

He stood by the glass doors, his back to me as the candle cast his body in a golden glow. The moon shone strongly through the transparent doors bringing light to the whole room. My eyes widened at the sight of this room, I hadn't paid it much attention when I had first come in but I remembered this room well. This was the room where Neema and the children used to visit me often. We would sit along the low sofas that wrapped around the whole room, talking and sharing things with each other.

"I knew you would be here" he murmured, back still to me as he looked into the garden, staring at that tree. The tree where he had first found me.

"I guess I'm a creature of habit" I croaked, voice still groggy from sleep.

"You're not. If you were a creature of habit you would have kept coming back to me knowing I would only ever hurt you... back then"

I completely ignored the last two words of his sentence as I stepped further into the room, clenching the blanket under my chin." If not you then someone else, Carson. It was never about you."

His shoulders tensed and I could tell he didn't like that; no man would like to hear that "their female" would have loved any man that had given them attention back then. Especially not when those very words depreciated the "bond" between us. That dying bond was still writhing, begging for life.

"I'm a creature of habit because all I wanted was love and I would have kept coming back to your warped version of love if I hadn't met Cobalt or Eliza."

Cobalt first because though Eliza gave me love from the start it was the love of a friend whereas with Cobalt I knew what it felt like to be placed at the centre of a mans world. He woke me up to that, though I still went on hungering for love after him, I just knew that I couldn't find it with Carson.

He eyed me dubiously, perhaps not understanding who I actually was.  struggling to reconcile this Vanya with the little, crushed Vanya I had once been.

"You've changed," he finally understood.

"Time does that, Carson, but let's not pretend we are actually here for the pleasantries."

"No we aren't, are we?" He ran his fingers through his hair in nervousness but there was a hard edge to his eyes.

"I guess you want to know why I called him Kaiser."

I felt my teeth grinding at his dismissive attitude, as if giving his son that name was something so inconsequential he couldn't be bothered to explain it.

"I don't care why!" I growled, my feet slapping against the cold floor as I threw the blanket to the floor. Goose pimples rising along my arms as the chilled air gushed over my skin.

"How fucking could you? You took the one thing that meant the world to me, it was more than just a quirky name. It was years of my family's heritage." My hand thumping on my chest as I thought of my mother's blonde hair and the way her tongue twisted to pronounce those German words. She only spoke English but those two sentences, they were always said in German. Always.

"That name, it wasn't yours to take! It was from my parents to me and me to my future child and you took it and gave it to her- her..."

I couldn't finish that sentence because as much as I hated that bitch Nelly, I couldn't call Yavan anything outside of his name. He was a beautiful little boy who deserved more than Nelly for a mother. He deserved the world.

"Bastard? Go ahead and say it Vanya, speak your mind" he spat, bitterness coating every word.

"Don't put words in my mouth, I would never call him that. Never call a child that," I couldn't say the same for Carson or his filthy whore of a mate.

There was a hushed silence between us, neither of us knowing what else to say. I had said all I could about this, all I could without getting nasty and becoming someone that I was never proud of. By the set of his shoulders, I could tell that Carson wasn't finished though, he had a lot more to say.

"Yavan was given to me at a dark point in my life and when I found out about him- when I realised what it meant- I wanted to give him a part of you."

He was trying to convey something but all I could hear was Carson taking from me, time and time again.

All he did was take from me.

"I know I have taken a lot from you, Vanya, more than I have ever deserved but giving him that name. Giving him both of his names was a way for me to give you something back and a way to give him a piece of you... One of the best females I know."

My eyes were blurry and I could barely stand, my legs shaking as I made my way over to the couch. My face sinking into my hands as his words rolled over me. Both his names, my world tilted and then his name made sense.

Yavan.

Such a weird name.

Yavan...

It was me, it was mine.

Vanya, Yavan. We were one and the same.

"I know you would have never called your child Kaiser because Kaiser was our child, the child we were supposed to have."

The sharp pain of my teeth sinking into my lip could never take away from the truthful pain of his words. The truth that I knew all too well but had never wanted to believe. You see Kaiser was the name gifted to me by my parents but before Carson I had never thought I would have a child. Children had never been anything I factored into my life but the moment I met him, Kaiser was born in my young and naive mind.

Kaiser was the beacon of my life and for years after Carson I had conned myself into believing there would be a Kaiser with another man, with Veris maybe but there never would be.

"You see Nelly never wanted Yavan, she used to punch her stomach to try and kill him and later on in her pregnancy I caught her taking a knife to her stomach." Thunder struck through my veins, what kind of cruel and evil person could do that to an innocent life.

"So I made a deal with her. If she carried my son full term I would let her go. She could leave him behind with no obligations to him or me. In those 6 months I got to thinking that this was the woman that I had made the mother of my child. Her."

I didn't sympathise with Carson, not the slightest bit but I did sympathise with Yavan, that poor and innocent child who deserved so much more.

"This isn't a sob story, I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me. I just want you to understand that I didn't take that name and give it to Nelly's child I gave it to yours."

My ears rung, the sound ricocheting through my eardrums as his last word reverberated. Repeated and repeated.

Yours.

Mine

"I know biologically he's not yours and maybe this is a lot of pressure but whenever your ready Vanya if you ever are . He's yours and that's without me. You don't have to be my mate to have Yavan."

Mine

He couldn't be saying that, he couldn't. I couldn't believe this; I was lost for words.

"He's not a carrot that I'm dangling in your face to get you back. My son needs a mother and I know you will be the best one. His only one."

Words spewed from me like vomit, I had no control over them "You can't, just unload this shit onto me now! Not when you hid that he was alive all this time. How can I believe that you always intended for me to be his mother? I'm not stupid Carson."

I was hysteric. I could feel my hands shaking, I was jittery with hope, disbelief, anger. I couldn't pinpoint my emotions; they were flittering about erratically. 

"I know. I- no one knows about Yavan because until now he has been sick. I mean he's still sick but we have some of the best healers and we have figured something's out."

This was perhaps the first truth he had spoken tonight, if ever. I had noticed the little boys choppy breathing and his colour had been a slightly unhealthy pallor.

"He has a respiratory disease" I summoned a rough guess, all anger dissipated now that sickness and healing was being mentioned.

"What? No. Nelly had Rh incompatibility when she was pregnant and that's caused a multitude of issues from birth."

"Like jaundice" I murmured relatively quietly but his wolf ears picked up on the sound.

"You can tell?" He seemed shock and so I braced myself to shock him further. Climbing to my feet, my back straightened up.

"I'm a healer, I actually work with Manal and Nobel."

"Healer?" His eyes were wide and his shock only made a smile climb higher across my face.

"Yes, I was actually called here to help out. We usually work well in duos but I guess your son needs all three."

"My methods are a little unconventional but they work. Nobel and Manal have taught me all that I know but I'm developing my own style" I was rambling, I could tell. His silence had me doubting myself and so I kept talking if only to fill the silence.

"Thank you" he whispered earnestly. I felt awkward, this whole conversation was bizarre and way past it's expiry date. It needed to be over with.

"Vanya,"

"What?" I grumbled, I just wanted this male to leave now. He had said his piece I had said mine and now there was nothing left to say. If he wanted to discuss healing tactics and possible diseases we could do that during daylight hours, when my mind was actually functioning at its fullest potential.

Sleep wouldn't be happening tonight but at least I would be able to give my eyes a rest even if my mind was ticking. Carson had outstayed his welcome now and I just wanted to rest, my eyes were gritty and I felt sluggish and lethargic.

"You don't have to be his mother, I just hoped..."

"Look Carson, in the short time that I have met your son he has somehow managed to touch my heart. I'm gonna help heal him, but beyond that... I just don't know. So don't hold your breath"

"Or maybe do" I mumbled, waving my hand dismissively as I made my way back down the corridor.