HIDDEN (Hide Or Die)

Chapter 36

KYLE'S P.O.V.

I'm not sure when it happened, but I had started crying along with Mom, and I was making a complete mess out of myself by so doing, as was everyone else in the room.

Seriously, I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, but of all the possibilities this story could have taken off, this was totally not it.

I had so many questions, God; it felt as though I was choking in anxiety. I needed answers, I was seriously itching the longer I stayed without them but by the looks of things, Mom wasn't finished with the story yet, and this time, I feared she was going to succeed in completely reaping out my heart.

"After saying goodbye to my best friend..." mom sniffed and wiped her tears angrily, "I sneaked out of the hospital with Kyle in my arms and went in search of James." Mom looked my way, but I couldn't bring myself to look at her; I was a complete mess, and I knew she could tell. "I eventually found him after a while of searching, but to my dismay, he wasn't alone. There were about ten enforcers with him, and it appeared that they were all searching for something, so I hid Kyle behind a bush and stuck a pacifier in his mouth that I had carried in Silver's baby bag that we took to the hospital in preparation for her delivery, and then I went out of hiding to talk to James."

"Once James spotted me, his face immediately contorted in sadness; and when our gazes locked, he sighed and unhurriedly approached me with his shoulders slumped as if he had done something terrible. "What's going on?" I had asked him, and his reply was, "I'm sorry Olivia, but the elders voted against keeping the child. They all voted to put him down in the most humane way possible, but when they were finished voting and ready to put it into action, we noticed the baby was nowhere to be found, and that's what we've been looking for ever since." I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I couldn't believe James either. We sent him after the baby to protect him, but he just stood there and watched as they passed judgment on the innocent child without as much as fighting for him."

"I was beyond furious. "We trusted you!" I yelled in his face. "I'm sorry Oli, but my dad was the one who passed the sentence, and I couldn't undermine his authority," he cried out, his head bowed in shame and sadness. "And I believe, is for the best." He added and tried to move closer to me, but I shifted backwards, not wanting to be near him in any way; I was completely horrified. "Silver won't have to care for a child like that for the rest of her life, and my father promised to keep everything that happened tonight a secret, so she could just tell people she had a stillbirth and we could all go back to our normal lives." He went on, pleading with me to understand him, but I couldn't believe what was coming out of the mouth of my best friend and fiancé. I couldn't believe this was the same boy I grew up with and later gave my heart to; he sounded like a completely different person, and I had heard enough to break my heart for life; so I ran, I ran from him in tears, and I didn't look back."

"I could hear his sadness-laced voice calling after me in the distance, but he didn't think it was necessary to pursue. Grateful for that, I rushed towards the bush where I had hidden Kyle, his pacifier had fallen off and he was already crying, but thank God no one could hear him. I picked him up, cradled him to my chest, pictured a human town my father and I had visited many years ago - undercover, of course - and then teleported." I felt Mom's gaze on me several times, but I couldn't bring myself to look at her, so she tried focusing on the people who were looking at her.

I couldn't bear looking into her eyes. The woman I had lived with my entire life, my best friend and everything, had just sat right in front of me and my friends and openly admitted that she is not my mother, but rather my late mother's best friend. I couldn't look at her. How could I express my shock at this painful new knowledge when she sounded so broken every time she spoke? How could I look up when everything she said reminded me of how badly I had treated her and also knowing that she didn't deserve any of it because the truth was, I wasn't even supposed to be her problem in the first place. I had no right; I had absolutely no right to look at her face ever again.