Page 58 of Dead Wolf Rising (Bad Moon Academy 3)

“Raven.”

Grinding my teeth, I lift my eyes and stare at her. In this realm, she doesn’t appear in black-and-white. My mother is wearing a sundress, of all things, and her skin is sun kissed, like she just came back from a day at the beach. Her wrists are fully healed.

“Mother.” Animosity is hard to hide. “I’m only here to find my friend.”

Something akin to hurt flashes across her face. “The little one,” she says.

“Of course you’ve been watching me. Why do you do it?” I put my hands on my hips, glowering at her.

“Because you’re my daughter.” She toys with a strap of her sundress, and pulls on her bottom lip with her teeth. “I worry about you.”

A sharp, bitter laugh spills out of me. “You worry about me?” I scoff. “You weren’t worried about me when you were alive.”

The tears in her eyes only serve to make me angry. How dare she have the audacity to be sad? How dare she stand there in a fucking sundress, pretending like she didn’t leave me? How dare she act as though she didn’t say all of those nasty things, and that she didn’t bring my dad back to life even though she knew it was wrong?

“Honey, I—”

“Don’t you honey me, Mom.” I close the distance between us and poke her chest. “You’ve never given a shit about anyone but yourself. Do you have any idea what Aunt Lou has gone through because of you? Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through?”

The questions linger in the air, and a heavy silence falls over the drab landscape. She makes a few strangled noises, the beginnings of an excuse, but they all seem to choke her. Good. This doesn’t get to be easy for her.

Deep down, I’m still that little girl from my childhood who wanted nothing more than to be exactly like her. For my sanity, I’m keeping the naïve version of me tucked away, safely out of reach as I feed my rage.

“I didn’t mean any of it. I’m so sorry, baby. If I had known… I don’t know if anything would’ve changed. Your father was my other half, and when he died, so did I. I knew you were there, I knew you needed me. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be the mother you needed. You deserve so much better than me.”

“Don’t try to guilt trip me.I’m so sorry I couldn’t be the mother you needed? I didn’t need a different mother, I neededyou.” I step away from her and dig my hands into my hair, pulling at my scalp. “You were perfect, up until you decided playing with the dead was more important than me. I wasn’t asking you to stop grieving, Mom. I only wanted for you to let me in. I lost him too.” My words catch, my throat growing thick with emotion as tears burn in my eyes.

Her lower lip trembles. “I’ve never been good. Your father is the only reason I was okay. When I met him, I was a disaster, and he saved me. I didn’t know what to do without him.”

I’d heard stories, I knew she had some trouble in her past. Aunt Lou’s reminiscing was enough to tell me that mom had been wild. Maybe what she says is true. Perhaps my dad was the only thing that grounded her, the only thing that kept her sane. For some reason, that only makes everything worse. Because if that’s true, it means I wasn’t good enough, just like I thought all along.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Releasing a hard breath, she closes her eyes. “I don’t know what to do here, Raven. Tell me how to make it better. We were good once, right?”

“I loved you, if that’s what you’re asking. As far as what you can do to make it better,” I say, pausing for a moment. “I need you to move on.”

“Move on?” She reels back. “You want me to leave?” There is a vulnerability about her, but I won’t be fooled.

“Yes. Ineedyou to leave. You keep haunting me, I can’t live my life waiting, wondering when you’re going to show up and slap me in the face with a reminder of what you did. Or what you said to me. I want you to go, so I can try to remember the mother you were.”

My cheeks are damp with tears, but I don’t wipe them away, I wear them like warpaint. Let her see them tracking down my skin, let her witness her destruction. Let her grimace in regret as every bit of sadness pours out of me.

Her mouth hangs open, and we stare at one another. Me crying, and her watching. Me, determined to send her away, and her, begging to stay.

“Why do you even want to check on me? You got what you wanted, now go!”

With a shaky breath she places her hand over her heart. “You’re so angry. I can never tell you how sorry I am for that. I wish it were different, but you’re better off without me.”

What a lie. Something she’s telling herself to lessen her guilt, still, I don’t correct her.

“Every day I’ve watched over you, I tried to take some of that sadness away from you. It never worked, but I had to keep trying. I wanted to fix what I broke.”

I bite my cheek to keep from screaming at her. A foolish part of me hoped this reunion would be filled with hugs and kisses, with motherly murmurs.

“You’re not helping anything. You need to move on,” I say, voice trembling.

Though I realize this is exactly what she needs to do, my chest aches knowing I’ll truly never see her again. Itwillbe better with her gone for good, But in spite of everything she’s put me through, seeing her somehow made it seem like she wasn’t really dead.

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