Page 26 of Cursed Heirs

“She’s gone,” my dad reported.

I turned back around to face him and he was shaking his head at me. “That was unnecessary. You merely could have asked her for space.”

“And what point would there have been in that? This is what I am now. Not the being she fell for. I’m not handling this change well and I don’t want her around it, don’t want her dragged down with it all.”

“It’s obvious she doesn’t see it that way. She cares about you. Possibly more.”

I smashed my fist through a vase on the shelf to my right. “What does it matter, Dad? Huh? What does it fucking matter? You told me this shit Constantine did to me can only be reversed byhim!Or his death. Neither are gonna happen in my immortal lifetime! So this is what I am now! Okay? Without my magic forevermore! She deserves better than a bitter has-been.”

“You’re focused only on the negative.”

“I can’t control it. I struggled when I was a hybrid and now it’s worse than ever. That’s what it’s gonna be like from now on… fighting every second not to go over the edge, not to allow my bloodlust to take the reins and take over everything. The only person I know I won’t ever hurt is you, and that’s because of our blood connection. There’s a wall up there because you’re my parent, I guess.”

“There is another way.”

“Black magic, right. No. No way. You’re not doing that. It’s why I faked it all these years pretending I was fine in my hybrid state, that I was excelling and loving it.”

“And you weren’t. Not at all,” he spoke, now that I’d made that clear with my outburst.

“I was afraid for you, knowing the lengths you were prepared to go to for me. I mean, trying to reverse the vampiric change… something that has never been done… it was a hell of a thing, Dad. And too much. Way too much. If you immersed yourself in black magic to the extent that it would take to perform a spell of that magnitude, I would never forgive myself.”

“I know you wouldn’t.ButI also can’t allow you to continue to suffer like this.”

“What does that mean?”

The ward shuddered as he pressed his palm to it, and then a hole formed, enough for someone to walk through.

And that was exactly what happened in the next moment as my dad opened the door and Professor Dante Wilhelm strode on in.

He regarded me intently, staring far too invasively for my liking.

Could he see through my façade?

He was much more astute than most.

Merely giving me a chin lift, he turned to my dad and said with clear urgency, “We need to resume our therapy immediately. He needs help.”

“He was acclimating as a hybrid, but he’s not this time. This is different for him,” my dad said.

“You can’t feel what I can.”

My dad gave him a withering look, the lack of love lost between them blatantly obvious.

Wilhelm rolled his eyes, then explained coolly, “You are assessing him as a magic-wielder with their magic bound. That is not the case. It’s gone. You are too close to it, hopeful that it could be returned. That’s not doing him any favors.I’massessing him as a vampire. He’s feeling the shock of the weight of the demon within taking him over wholly for the first time. He is no longer a hybrid being. It’s like being a new creation once again.”

I watched my dad take his words in and after a few moments of somber silence, he slowly nodded. “Do what you must. So long as my son feels better, that is all that matters.”

Wilhelm nodded back. “I will assist him to the best of my ability, rest assured.”

I could see how much my dad wished it could behimwho was able to help me.

But it just wasn’t the case anymore.

Another awful thing about this was that I wasn’t like him at all now. And I just knew that no matter how much we tried to kidourselves, it would weaken our bond. It would push us further from each other.

Yet another thing that I wasn’t prepared to live with.

Regret hung heavy as he teleported out in the next moment.

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