Chapter 371: Wings_Part 2
When he went into the room, Rohan’s brows shot up in astonishment at what he saw. Angel wasn’t sitting on the sofa; he was in the air, flying around the room and giggling, little wings flapping behind him.
Rohan’s eyes zeroed in on the open window where his son was heading, and he moved swiftly to grab him before he could fly outside. He shut the window with narrowed eyes as he sensed a faint, disappearing presence lingering in the room, like someone had been there before his return, leaving behind only the barest trace, almost undetectable if not for his sharp senses.
But it was impossible for anyone to have come in during the few minutes he was gone, for he had locked the door with a key when he carried Belle away.
"Your wings have sprouted," Rohan remarked in surprise, looking at his happy son, who was flapping the black wings and struggling to break free. But Rohan held him tightly to prevent it. "You can’t use them, son, at least not here. Put them back where they’re safe."
Immediately Angel’s happy face fell into sadness. "No..." he muttered, shaking his head in protest.
"Max, I am not in the best of moods with your mama in that condition. Put the wings back like this." Rohan gently pressed his middle and index fingers into the midpoint of the feathered wings, causing them to reflexively sink back into his backbone, disappearing from sight.
Angel’s sad eyes shifted into anger as his wings vanished, and he turned those furious eyes on his father, dark veins standing out sharply on his forehead.
Angel’s wings were not supposed to sprout yet. The last time Rohan had checked his backbone, the lines were still closed, with no sign of tearing. Their sudden sprouting now was not a good thing, not when Rohan was trying so hard to keep the boy’s identity hidden.
What made it less suspicious, though still not right, for Rohan about the sudden appearance of the wings was the fact that his son had a different kind of growth. Just as it was said that every demon grew differently, some were born with wings, teeth, and even the ability to speak immediately after birth, while for others, it happened gradually in different ways, like it was happening with his son.
If he wasn’t trying so hard to hide the boy and protect him, Rohan would never have forced his growth back or tried to press the wings into hiding. He would have allowed his son to develop freely as nature willed. However, Angel did not know that. To him, it only looked as though his father no longer liked him and had taken away the one thing he wanted to keep so much now.
"Don’t look at me like that, son. It’s for your own good," Rohan said, reaching up to pat his head. But Angel swatted his hand away with a strength that would have broken a human’s bones.
"Mama!" he demanded, his small voice clear with anger, his accusing eyes still glaring at Rohan as if his father had stolen something from him.
This was the first time Angel had ever looked at him like that, and Rohan felt a prick in his heart; he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t let him use those wings yet, not until he was old enough to understand how to cautiously use them without giving himself away to danger.
Rohan began to part his lips to speak, but Angel turned his eyes away as if he wasn’t interested in hearing whatever his father had to say for taking his wings. Flying had become something Angel cherished after the day Rohan had carried him up into the sky, that very day when they were leaving the mountains.
Rohan gave up trying to explain to the boy and moved to the bed that was covered with blood and used his free hand to yank the bloody sheets, carrying them with him to Belle’s room. He used them to start a fire in the fireplace, and the moment he turned back to the bed and set his son there to have a word with him and cheer him up, the boy moved away from him like an enemy and lay down in front of his mother, still looking at his father as a big bad villain.
Rohan’s eyes hardened as he replayed everything that had happened in the moment he had returned to the room for his son. Angel’s sudden appearance of wings and his sudden change in attitude couldn’t have happened just like that, and immediately, realization dawned on him that someone had manipulated things, and only one person could have stepped into the room without using the door.
Rohan opened his other demon link and spoke. "Stay away from my son. If you think you will use him to sway me to your side, you are mistaken."
The demon king let out a laugh. "I don’t have to use him, the boy already thinks you a bad person for taking his wings. He likes the idea of flying in the sky and you took it away from him just like that by locking his wings away. You are not a very good father yourself, son. If you were, you would make sacrifices and bring that boy to a world he would feel more at home and belong.
"You love that wife of yours more than you love your son. I don’t have to do anything, I tell you; you will come to me yourself when you finally accept the fact that we are one and the same, two terrible fathers who didn’t know how to give their sons what they wanted."
The words hit Rohan because they touched the one place he could not defend, the truth buried in his own heart. He had loved Belle first. Not that he didn’t love his son, but his wife always came first for him. He would always choose Belle first.
And the demon knew it and was using it against him, to make him feel like he was becoming the terrible father he had feared he would become when he first discovered Belle was pregnant with his child.
Of course, the Demon King had shown Angel what one could do with wings and had quickened the process of the boy’s wings to sprout, which made the boy see him as a hero. And then Rohan had gone and taken those wings away.
"I am nothing like you," Rohan said calmly. At least whatever he was doing was because he wanted to protect his son, not because he wanted to push him into the dangers he himself had endured while growing up. His own father had watched him suffer without interfering, but he would never let his son go through that. He would never stand aside and watch.
"Ah," the Demon King said with a knowing laugh, "children always see the mistakes of their parents and swear they will never be like them. But in that very struggle, in trying so hard to make a difference, you push yourself into new mistakes, mistakes that will make your child feel the very same resentment you once carried toward your own parent. It is a circle that never ends. Protect him as you may, you cannot deny the truth: he will never be free. He will grow up a prisoner, just as you had been, bound not by chains, but by your fears and the will to protect."
Rohan’s fist clenched, his fingers digging into his palm, but his expression did not change as he replied,
"You are wasting your time trying to sway me, demon, when you should be using that time to look through your own deeds, deeds that caused you to lose everything. Your selfishness is the reason you have nothing now, and I am not sorry to know that you will live your entire life never, ever getting back what you so foolishly lost. Loneliness will be your only company because you let go of the chance to make a difference in the past when you abandoned your own offspring. Stay away from mine, because the next time you show yourself to him again, I will make sure the rest of your world crumbles to dust."
The demon king was rarely beaten when it came to exchanging words and making a person feel guilty and swayed, but Rohan’s words had hit the mark in a place he himself had never been touched. Being taunted about losing his world, about his endless years of loneliness, and about his desperate desire to bring back his kind was something he was sensitive to, and he did not like it when the possibility of never achieving that goal was spoken out to him.
Everyone had a spot they didn’t like to be poked, and the demon’s sensitive spot was the loss of his world.
"I have told you once and I will say it again, I am not the enemy you want," the demon king continued smoothly, as though he hadn’t been stung by mere words. "You might believe you have everything now, that you have saved your wife from death, but you are gravely mistaken, young one. She carries death the way one carries blood in the body, it flows through her. She may have cheated death this time, but it will soon catch up to her. And just so you know, you cannot give a permanent mark to someone whose life was already meant to be over. Until the day you taste the bitter feeling of loss, I will be waiting for you."