-Adrian-

I looked at the picture that Talia had sent me about a half hour after our conversation. I couldn't help but smile as I studied it. There she was, with her coppery hair completely let down as she held a newborn Scale Child in her arms. He had jet black hair that looked like mine, but had Talia's draconic features. If I didn't know better, I would have thought he was actually my son.

I shook my head. I shouldn't be thinking like that. Even though he wasn't mine biologically, he was still my son; the same way how Kali may have birthed me, but that monster was not my mother. Scarlett was my family more than she was.

I bit my lip. I was only a month away from being nineteen years old and Talia was ten months younger than I. Were the two of us really old enough to be parents? And what would we do with Yuri when we needed to fight Kali? It's not like we could just carry him around while fighting. That wouldn't be safe. And on top of all of that, we didn't have a house or any permanent careers! Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all. We had both just rushed into it without thinking.

"What are you looking at?" A voice addressed me in French.

I jumped and looked behind me to see Luc's grandfather, staring at me with a kind smile on his lips. He laughed at my reaction and placed a hand on my shoulder. "There's no need to be so jumpy."

"I'm not jumpy, I was just surprised. It's not normal for someone to sneak up behind you and not be shocked." I defended myself.

His eyes widened in surprise. "You speak French?"

I nodded. "I'm fluent in fourteen different languages. I learned how to speak French when I was eight years old."

"That's quite impressive." He praised me.

I shrugged. "I guess so." I then stared back at the picture on my phone, looking at the small child and the beautiful woman holding him. How was I going to be at my best for the both of them?

Luc's grandfather gazed at the picture with me. "The child looks quite handsome. He really takes after his mother."

I smiled weakly. "That's my girlfriend. She had our baby not too long ago.'

"You're a father?" He asked incredulously. "That's such great news! Good for you."

I looked at him, a little confused. "But we're only teenagers, and we're not even married! No offense, but most adults your age would look down on this kind of thing. Shouldn't you be waving a cross and telling me to get out of your house?"

"What's so bad about the birth of a new life?" He asked, spreading his arms as if to prove a point. "Even harder is staying with the mother of your children when you know you might not be able to support the both of them. Believe me, I know what I am talking about."

"But what if my kid doesn't like me?" I asked, only just then realizing how pathetic I must have looked and sounded.

He placed his hand once again on my shoulder. "Young man, would you mind telling me what your name is?"

"It's Adrian. Adrian Skalanias." I said quietly.

He chuckled. "Adrian, eh? Let me tell you something. Fathers do not worry about whether their child likes them unless someone has hurt them badly as a child." He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Sorry for being nosy, but that must be true, no?"

I was shocked by how easily he was able to read me, but instead of denying it like my instincts were screaming at me to do, I just hung my head and nodded sadly. "My mother...she hurt me a lot as a small child. She was definitely not a good role model for what a parent should be."

He nodded again. "Would you care to explain how so? It's better to get these things out."

I took a deep breath. My mouth was dry and my words were stuck in my throat, as if only receiving the heimlich maneuver would dislodge them. My body didn't want me to talk about it. My PTSD was acting up. I knew that everytime those memories resurfaced that I would have to live through the awful flashbacks. Everything I heard, saw and felt would come back in an awful wave. The torture of my past never truly ended.

"You seem a bit nervous." He commented. He then took a deep breath and crossed his arms, his gentle brown eyes meeting mine as he gave a pained smile. "Why don't I share my story first, eh? Maybe that will allow you to tell yours."

I gave a small nod, not quite knowing what he was talking about.

He gave a nervous chuckle as he pulled out a chair and sat down. Being polite, I took a seat across from him and folded my hands in my lap. I had no idea what was going to happen, but it was best to pay attention. Luc's grandfather got settled into his chair and gave a deep sigh. "I think you are much like me, yes? Growing up must have been hard. No one must have believed in you. Listen closely, because nobody except for my wife knows what I'm about to tell you.

"When I was a young boy, my father had died in the war and my mother was left to raise me as an only child. Unfortunately, my mother caught an awful sickness that not only took her ability to walk, but eventually her life as well. All I had left of her was our family pendant and my memories.

"After my mother passed on from this world to heaven, I was sent off to live with my uncle Henri and his wife, Marie. As a seven year old boy, I was certain that I had done something awful and had been sent to a living hell on earth. It was everyday that I was verbally and physically abused as Henri drank more than any alcoholic I have known since then. He would smash beer bottles over my head, put out his cigarettes on my back, and lock me in a room for hours on end while I screamed for someone to let me out.

"Sometimes, even still today, I can hear him yelling at me with his rancid breath filling my nostrils. The things he would say to me were so awful. 'Jacques,' He would tell me, 'You're a worthless piece of shit, and you always will be'. This led me to run away from home many times. Of course, I was brought back all those times by the police, which resulted in many more beatings from my guardians, but that didn't kill my spirit.

"Finally, after living there for half of my life at that point, I had run far enough away to where I was sure they would never find me. Of course, that day, my leg had been cut open with a shard of glass, and I bled the entire ten hours that I had been running. It wasn't long before I had collapsed in some alleyway and a passing girl had taken pity on me.

"She had brought me to her home, showing how bad my situation was to her parents, who were both medical doctors. They quickly got to work and started to clean my wounds and stitch the bad one up. I had been allowed to rest in the guest bedroom that night, and in the morning they had asked me how I had ended up so badly hurt in the morning. I had told them the story of my miserable life, and they had called the police.

"Over the span of six months, my uncle had been arrested and custody had been passed from him to the family that had taken care of me. Eventually, I fell in love with their daughter, Marianne, and took her as my wife. We had three daughters and one son. The girls all grew up and moved far away from us, but the boy had come back to us as a seventeen year old boy and told us that he had given birth to a son. That boy was our dear Lucian.

"Normally, finding out your son is a teenage father is worrisome enough, but it wasn't long before we also figured out that the mother was a dragon. We didn't know what that meant and if our grandson would even be human. It worried us even more when we heard how shortly after Mireille and Ciel had been born. But then we met Haizea, and we were happily surprised.

"She was so kind and beautiful, and she could calm Mattieu's impulses with a single, gentle word. Never before had we met someone better suited to be a mother in our lives. That being said, we accepted her into the family without a second thought after that. However, when Mattieu died and Haizea was captured after scattering the royal heirs around the world,  we were left to take care of all three of the children. I raised them with all of the love that I had never received, and I do believe that I have never met such heavenly children in my life."

He looked at me and smiled. "My point is that you should not worry about the way in which you were raised. As long as you love your child with your entire being, you will succeed in raising them to be beautiful people."

I stared at him in disbelief. Someone knew what I had gone through. Sure, Talia had been hurt with words, but she had not been put through the anguish that my mother had caused me daily. This man knew what it was like to be degraded until you no longer even considered yourself nothing less than an object; a human punching bag. He had been broken and bruised just like I had. It was at that moment that I had decided it was time.

I rolled up the sleeves of the dress shirt I wore and flinched as I looked at my forearms. Various scars criss-crossed up the entire length of my arm. Some had healed completely, just leaving white marks, while others made deep dents in my skin. Halfway down was a scar that ran around the circumference of my arm where it had been ripped off a total of five times and sewn back on, repairing the damage with healing magic.

I held my arm out to him and began to self-consciously trace over the marks in my skin. "My mother wanted me to be something I wasn't. She wanted me to be...her. Whenever I didn't meet her expectations, she took her frustrations out on me. If she couldn't even look at me, she'd just set her pets out on me and let them rip me apart. I often had to heal my own wounds or find a healer nearby that would take pity on me. Otherwise, I had to stitch my own cuts and had to find a way to fuse more blood into my body just to stay alive.

"My mother is the embodiment of evil itself, which means I must have some kind of evil inside of me, too. She murdered people for fun. She laughed at me every time I cried, like she was watching some kind of comedy show. She found suffering absolutely hilarious. She even took pleasure in skinning her previous victims and using their skin and bones to decorate her lair."

I looked him in the eyes, trying to keep the tears from falling down my cheeks. "So, now that you know what hides within me, what I might be capable of, can you really look me in the eyes and tell me that I'll be a great father? Can you tell me that I won't end up hurting my kid like my mother hurt me?"

He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. There was a melancholic smile spread upon his lips, and his eyes were filled with a mix of compassion, empathy and sadness. He looked down at his feet before he looked me in the eyes.

"Oh, young boy, you have truly had a miserable upbringing, haven't you? My experiences do not quite compare to those that have afflicted you, but I give you my deepest condolences nonetheless." He gave a saddening sigh and shook his head. "Adrian, you are a very strong young man to have survived something like that.

"However, hear me when I say this: your lineage does not determine who you will be as a person. You are the creator of your own destiny, not me, or your mother or anybody else for that matter. If there is something that you do not want to be, then you will not become it. Do not let what someone else has told you get in the way of what you want to do. Will you make a good father? I don't know. I can't answer that. Why don't you tell me?"

I looked down at my arms. They were so messed up that I barely had any idea how they still worked. In fact, I had no idea how I was still alive.

I stopped for a moment. Would Yuri have been like me if Talia hadn't saved him from her captors? Would he have been abused and tortured like I had? Would he have wanted to end the pain as much as I had? Would he have looked for a way out?

I clenched my fists. No. I was going to make sure that would never happen to him. I would protect him like the kind of father I wanted to be. I would take care of him. I would make sure he would never have to go through the things I went through. He'd get the love and affection that I had never received as a child. He would know both of his parents and he would know what it felt like to be wanted.

Even though he wasn't biologically my child, I wouldn't treat him any different that if he was my own flesh and blood. I was going to be a father, a real father, to that little boy.

I gave a smile to Luc's grandfather, then dropped to my hands and knees in the customary pose of thanks from Sciana. "Thank you, Mr. D'Ange."

He chuckled. "Drop the formalities. You may call me Jacques."

"Jacques D'Ange, I want to thank you for helping me to realize what I want to do and for giving me insight as to how I should view the world." I said nervously, fumbling along some of my words. "I now realize that I choose who I will be and am the commander of my own fate. This knowledge is greatly appreciated."

He chuckled and helped me to stand up. "You are quite welcome, young man. And if you ask me, I think that you will make a wonderful father. You have a big heart and a gentle soul. You'll do just fine."

I chuckled. Maybe he was right. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad after all.

Again, this one took forever. I blame it on nothing except me being lazy, getting into new video games, wanting to spend time with my boyfriend, and overall my best friend procrastination. Thanks man! I hate you too!

But anyways! Adrian and Talia are a thing now. So is Kazu. Y'all are welcome. No I am not doing another lesbian pairing, and definitely not Bailey and Zora. I'm just saying this now because I know I will get this question from one of my friends. Also, school ends next Friday. Kill me. I don't wanna do finals...but such is the tragic life of a sophomore. Including moving back with my control freak of a mother, which will probably cut off my writing time significantly. EEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I hate life sometimes, but hey, at least I got you guys that appreciate my writing!

Signing Off, Kiera Savage