Chapter 374: Mending the Bridge Between Father and Son_Part 3
Belle didn’t know why, but she didn’t want him looking into anything that concerned Isabelle. Though she longed to be normal again, there was an unknown fear gnawing at the back of her mind at the thought of him digging into the past. She would rather he didn’t, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to talk Rohan out of it, not when he was so determined to come to the end of everything before they left Aragonia.
"Whatever you do, be careful, Rohan. Don’t mess with things her spirit guards again," she voiced her worries, but her husband only nodded and stroked her hair.
Before he could assure her of anything, Angel stirred, opening his eyes and turning to look at them with a sleepy frown.
Belle turned to him with a smile, but her son didn’t smile back like he usually did. Instead, he shifted his eyes to his father, and his frown deepened into a look that came dangerously close to anger. He pushed his little body into a sitting position while still giving his father that hard look, then crawled to his mother and fell into her arms, burying his face against her breast and holding her tightly.
Belle carried him into her arms, hugging his head as she turned to look at Rohan, whose face had also hardened into rigid steel. She arched a questioning brow at the silent hostility she sensed between them. What could have happened to make them both wear that look?
"Why was he looking at you like that?" she asked Rohan curiously, loosening the strings at the front of her nightdress and baring her breast to her son’s hungry, seeking mouth, all while waiting for Rohan’s reply to her question.
Rohan rubbed the space between his brows with his thumb and index finger, parting his lips to say, "His wings came out today, and he wanted to use them, to fly and go out. I stopped him and locked the wings back into his bones. Since then, he has been looking at me like that. I think he hates me now, Isa."
Rohan mused aloud, his gaze fixed on his son, who was feeding yet still glaring at him with a sharp side-eye, as though the child could not forgive him. The bitter taste of believing his own baby despised him already, when all he had done was try to protect him, was something he did not like at all.
Belle was taken aback at the thought that his wings had come out. She had seen the line on Angel’s back and had once thought it was a birth scar, but Rohan had assured her that it was his wing lines and that they would tear open once it was time. He had also told her that it might take a year for that to happen, but Angel was not even a year old yet.
She thought this to herself, but his other words settled on her as well, and she recovered from her surprise to place a hand against Rohan’s arm as she said gently, "Hate is such a strong word, Rohan. He’s too young to feel that. Perhaps he is—"
Rohan shook his head and lifted his gaze to hers. "He hates me. I can read it in his little heart. He might be too young in the eyes of humans, but his feelings and emotions are stronger than his actual age. His brain grows faster than his body. He doesn’t understand the danger I am trying to hide him from because he hasn’t seen it himself. Locking his wings away is something he believes I did because I didn’t want him anymore. And when you were unconscious, I... I sort of neglected him for some minutes to attend to you. That must have played out differently in his mind, making him turn against me."
Belle was at a loss for words, mostly because to her, Angel was still just a little baby, a baby she had only given birth to a few months ago. To her, he shouldn’t be capable of such deep emotions yet. But then, hearing it in the way Rohan said it, she thought deeply on ways to rebuild the fallen bridge between father and son. The last thing she wanted, on top of everything else happening, was for her husband and son not to have a good relationship because of her.
She didn’t want anything to come between this little family of hers, not when they had depended on and loved each other until now. If there was one thing she wanted most, it was for her son to grow up looking up to his father, not thinking him a bad person.
"Don’t you think you should explain to him in a way he can understand why you locked his wings?" Belle suggested, looking at Rohan, who was still staring at Angel. "Since you said he understands most things, letting him understand why he can’t use the wings yet might help."
Rohan thought about her words. He had wanted Angel to be oblivious to many of the things happening because he didn’t want to ruin his childhood, knowing their kind grew up carrying every single childhood memory with them into adulthood without forgetting. He wanted Angel’s childhood to be filled with sunshine and rainbows, unlike his own, which had been gray and black. But then, it seemed that would be impossible with everything happening in their lives.
"Let me see what I can do," Rohan remarked as he got up from the bed and walked out of the room. He returned briefly with a big size parchment paper and a piece of charcoal in his hands. Sitting back on the edge of the bed, he placed the parchment down on the mattress and bent to begin drawing something.
Curious as to what he was drawing, Belle moved closer and peeked. Angel, who was nursing in her arms, moved his mouth away from her to also peek at what was being drawn. He wasn’t peeking because his father was drawing, but because his mother was looking, and he was curious.
His little brows furrowed as he noticed the drawing of a little boy on the paper and how the charcoal, held in his papa’s hand, was making several images, something fascinating to him. One of the drawings showed the baby with wings, and the other without. The one with wings was flying out of the window, soaring high in the sky with a happy smile, which made Angel smile too, because that was what he had wanted until papa had stopped him and taken his wings.
At the thought of how he had been stopped from playing with his new flying wings today, Angel’s smile immediately disappeared, and a scowl replaced the happiness.
Angel was about to move away from the drawings out of anger when he saw that his father continued sketching something else. This time, the baby with wings went out, leaving his father watching him from the window of a room. But something happened next in the sketches that made Angel’s eyes widen in horror.
There was a big shadow man who caught the flying baby by the wings, pulling him down onto a board. The baby was crying, reaching out toward his father in the window, but before his father could come, that big bad shadow used something sharp in his hand to cut off the baby’s wings and stab his little heart.
Angel quickly stopped looking at the drawings on the parchment and turned his fearful eyes to his father, who was now watching him.
"Come here," Rohan said as he reached out and took the stunned boy into his arms from his wife. Placing him on his thigh, he pressed his little backbone and unlocked his wings.
"You see, I didn’t cut them. I hid them because if you let them out and fly through that window"—Rohan spoke as he pointed to the window and then back to the shadow drawing on the parchment—"this person will cut them away and take this." He pointed to Angel’s chest, his heart. "People are cruel, son. They don’t want beings like us out there. We have to hide what sets us apart from them, to blend in and to protect ourselves.
"I didn’t lock this..." He caressed his son’s feathered, smooth black wings as he spoke. "...because I don’t like you, Angel. I did it because I don’t want this to happen to you." He pointed to the drawing again. "You are special to your mama and me, you know. And we love you, son. Don’t ever let anyone tell you we don’t."