[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 51: In Which I Learn My Mother Was a Badass (And Left Me Homework)

Chapter 51: In Which I Learn My Mother Was a Badass (And Left Me Homework)

The vision hit me three hours after we got back to the safehouse.

I’d been fine, or as fine as you could be after channeling enough power to permanently seal a dimensional tear and accidentally announcing yourself to hell’s upper management. Mara had checked me over, declared me "exhausted but stable," and sent me upstairs to rest.

I’d made it to the bedroom, had even managed to kick off my shoes before collapsing face-first onto the bed.

Then my wrist started burning.

Not the binding sigil, that was its usual warm pulse, this was the other wrist, the one that had never done anything interesting before, suddenly feeling like someone had pressed a branding iron to the skin.

I jerked upright, clutching my arm, and the room disappeared.

***

I was ten years old and sitting in the back seat of a car that smelled like french fries and my mother’s perfume.

It was night, raining, the windshield wipers made their rhythmic squeak-thump that had been lulling me to sleep before—

Before what?

The memory felt wrong, like watching a film with frames missing. One moment we were driving, normal and boring, the next my mother was twisted around in the passenger seat, eyes wide with something that looked like fear and determination mixed together.

"Riven, listen to me." Her voice was urgent, sharp in a way I’d never heard before. "Whatever happens, don’t leave the car, don’t open your door, and don’t let anyone touch you. Promise me."

"Mom, what..."

"Promise me."

I nodded, scared now, not understanding.

She turned back to my father. "They’re gaining, we need to..!"

The car swerved violently, I saw headlights in the rear window, too close and aggressive. Not an accident, it’s a chase.

"Eleanor, the wards won’t hold much longer," my father said, his voice tight with strain I didn’t understand then but recognized now, the voice of someone channeling power while trying to stay calm.

"I know." My mother’s hands were moving, tracing patterns in the air that left glowing trails. Warden magic, she was using warden magic while my father drove and something chased us and I sat in the back seat not understanding anything except that we were in danger.

The pursuing car rammed us from behind.

We spun. My father fought for control, but the road was wet and we were going too fast and..!

The impact, when it came, was inevitable.

Metal screaming, glass shattering, the world turning sideways and then upside down and my ten-year-old self screaming as the car rolled once, twice—

But I didn’t hit anything, didn’t slam into the door or the ceiling or the seat in front of me.

Because my mother had turned in her seat, one hand extended toward me, and a shield of pure golden light had wrapped around me like a cocoon.

"Stay inside the shield," she said, blood running down her face from a cut above her eye, her voice steady despite everything. "Don’t let it drop, don’t let anyone through."

"Mom!"

"I love you, Riven. Remember that your father and I love you so much." Her other hand was moving, drawing symbols in the air, complex, deliberate and purposeful. "You’re special. You’re going to be important, and I’m so sorry we won’t be there to see it."

"What are you—"

The car settled with a final crash, right-side up but crumpled, my father wasn’t moving, my mother was still conscious but barely, her shield around me flickering.

Doors opened outside. Footsteps, voices speaking in a language I didn’t know then but recognized now, infernal dialects, Covenant operatives.

"The child," one of them said. "Is it him?"

"Check the bloodline." 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

My mother’s hand moved one last time, drawing a final symbol on my wrist. It burned when she touched me, bright and fierce, and I cried out.

"Hush, baby. It’s okay, this will protect you until you’re ready." Her voice was fading, growing distant. "Until you find someone you can trust, someone who can help you become what you’re meant to be."

The symbol sank into my skin, disappearing like it had never existed.

"I can’t reach him," one of the Covenant operatives said, frustrated. "There’s an old magic seal of the Kael lineage."

"Kill them, if we can’t take the child, at least we can eliminate two bloodlines."

"Mom!" I tried to move, tried to reach for her, but the shield held me frozen, protected, helpless.

She smiled at me one last time. "Be brave, Riven. Be strong, and when the time comes, trust the binding."

Then the Covenant operative’s hand came down, glowing with hostile magic, and my mother’s eyes went empty and the shield around me flared so bright I couldn’t see anything and—

***

I came back to myself on the floor of the safehouse bedroom, gasping like I’d been drowning.

My left wrist burned.

I looked down and saw it, a new mark, glowing golden-white on my skin, not the binding sigil, which sat on my right wrist in its familiar amber-red. This was different, older and more complex.

A seal.

But wait!

My mother. In the car crash, alive, using warden magic and placing a seal on my wrist.

The archive had said she died giving birth to me, that I’d survived childbirth complications but she hadn’t.

But I’d just *seen* her. *Remembered* her. She’d been there in that car protecting me.

"No," I whispered. "No, that’s not...the records said.."

The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity.

The Covenant had falsified the records, marked her as eliminated when she’d actually escaped with me, hidden us both for ten years, and then they’d found us.

Ten years.

I’d had a mother for ten years, she’d raised me, loved me, protected me, and I didn’t remember any of it because the seal she’d placed had buried those memories along with my power.

To keep me safe and hidden, to make sure the Covenant thought I was nothing worth watching.

The grief washed over me like rain.

I’d grown up thinking I never had a mother, that I was born alone, unwanted and cursed from the beginning, but that wasn’t true. She’d been *there*. She’d loved me, and they’d taken her from me and made me forget she ever existed.

The door burst open.

Azryth stood in the doorway, eyes blazing ember-bright, power crackling around him like he’d been ready to tear through walls to reach me. The binding between us was pulled taut, singing with shared alarm.

"What happened?" he demanded, crossing the room in three strides. "The binding..I felt.."

He stopped, then stared at my wrist.

Then at my face, which I realized was wet. I was crying, when had I started crying?

"That’s a new seal," he said, voice carefully controlled as he knelt beside me. "Where did it come from?"

"My mother." My voice broke on the word. "She was alive, she didn’t die when I was born, she...she raised me for ten years, and I don’t remember any of it."

His expression shifted, understanding, then fury so cold and controlled it made the air around us drop in temperature.

"The archive records," he said quietly.

"They lied, or the Covenant lied to them, she escaped with me, hid us, and when they finally found us.." I gestured at my wrist. "She did this, she locked away my power and my memories, made me forget her so I’d be safe."

"Tell me what you saw."

So I did. The vision, the car chase, my mother’s magic, my father’s desperate driving, the Covenant operatives closing in, the seal she’d placed on me with hands that shook and a voice that stayed steady even as she died.

*Trust the binding*, she’d said.

Eighteen years ago, my mother had known, had seen enough, understood enough, to prepare for this exact situation.

"She told me to trust the binding," I said, staring at the glowing mark on my wrist. "How did she know? How could she possibly know I’d end up bound to someone?"

"Warden bloodline knowledge," Azryth said, his hand hovering near mine but not quite touching, like he was waiting for permission. "Some families pass down more than just power, they pass down understanding, patterns, and probable futures based on what the Covenant does to warden children."

"So she knew they’d keep hunting me, and that I’d need protection I couldn’t give myself."

"And she gave you the tools to survive it." He finally took my hand, examining the seal with careful intensity. "This is ancestral magic, high-level seal work, she didn’t just hide your power, she preserved it and kept it safe until you were in a position to use it properly."

The seal pulsed warmly under his touch, responding to him in a way that made the binding hum with recognition.

"It knows you," I said, watching the way the golden light seemed to reach toward where his fingers pressed against my skin. "The seal, it’s reacting to the binding."

"It seems they’re designed to work together." His thumb traced the edge of one of the symbols. "Your mother made sure of that, this only unlocks when—"

"When I’m bound to someone trustworthy," I finished. "Someone who can help me become what I’m supposed to be."

Our eyes met.

The binding pulsed between us, warm and certain and absolutely sure that this, us, together, synchronized, was exactly what my mother had hoped for.

"She’d be proud of you," Azryth said quietly.

"You didn’t know her."

"I know you." He said it like it was a simple fact. "I know you’re brave enough to face your parents’ murder and strong enough to keep fighting after, I know you channeled enough power this morning to permanently seal a rift that should have taken eight wardens to close. I know you’re doing exactly what she died to make possible." His hand tightened on mine. "That’s enough."

The binding hummed agreement, his certainty bleeding through until I almost believed it too.

I looked down at the seal, at this gift from a mother I’d forgotten, at the proof that I’d been loved, protected, prepared for.

"I don’t even know what it does," I said. "Just that it’s here and it’s connected to the binding somehow."

"We’ll figure it out." He helped me up off the floor, guiding me to sit on the edge of the bed. "But not tonight, you’ve had enough for one day."

"We don’t have time to rest. Mara said the resonance clusters..."

"Will still be there tomorrow," Azryth interrupted, firm but not unkind. "Pushing yourself past breaking won’t help anyone."

I wanted to insist that we needed to understand the seal immediately, needed to figure out what enhanced techniques my mother had left me, needed to...

The binding pulsed gently, and through it I felt his concern, his absolute conviction that forcing myself to function right now would cause more harm than good.

And honestly, I was so tired. The rift closure this morning, the vision, the grief of rediscovering and re-losing my mother in the span of minutes, it had hollowed me out.

"Okay," I said quietly. "We’ll tell Mara tomorrow and figure out what this thing does."

"Tomorrow," he agreed.

He moved to leave, to give me space, but I caught his wrist before he could.

"Stay?" The word came out smaller than I meant it to. "Just...don’t go. Not yet."

Something shifted in his expression, softened.

"All right."

He settled beside me on the bed, back against the headboard. After a moment’s hesitation, I shifted closer, resting my head against his shoulder, his arm came around me automatically, solid and warm and grounding.

"Tell me something about her," he said after a long silence. "From the vision, something that wasn’t about dying."

I thought about it, pulled up the fragments of memory the seal had unlocked.

"She wore this perfume," I said. "Something floral, jasmine, maybe? The car always smelled like it. And french fries because we’d get takeout on long drives." I closed my eyes, trying to hold onto the details. "She had my eyes, or I have hers, I guess, and she laughed a lot. I remember her laughing at something my father said."

"She sounds lovely."

"She was a badass warden who escaped the Covenant with an infant and stayed hidden for ten years." I felt the seal pulse on my wrist. "Yeah. She was pretty amazing."

The binding hummed softly between us, carrying grief and comfort in equal measure.

We sat like that for a while, me processing the mother I’d rediscovered, him providing a steady presence without demanding I be okay.

Eventually exhaustion started pulling at me, the emotional drain catching up with the physical.

"You should rest," Azryth said quietly, but he didn’t move to leave.

"Don’t want to see it again, the crash, her dying." I pressed closer to him. "Every time I close my eyes I see the Covenant operative’s hand coming down and.."

"Then don’t close your eyes yet." His hand moved in slow, soothing patterns on my shoulder. "Just breathe, I’m right here."

So I did. Focused on breathing, on the steady rhythm of his heartbeat under my ear, on the way the binding carried his calm certainty that we’d get through this.

"My mother told me to trust the binding," I murmured. "She was right. You’re..you’re someone worth trusting."

His hand stilled for just a moment, then resumed its gentle motion.

"Get some rest, Riven." He paused. "I’m here with you."

I let my eyes finally close, wrapped in warmth and the steady certainty that I wasn’t alone.

My mother had given me the tools.

Tomorrow, I’d start learning how to use them.

But tonight, I just needed this. Comfort, safety, the presence of someone who’d proven over and over that he’d stand between me and anything trying to hurt me.

The dual seals on my wrists pulsed in harmony as sleep finally claimed me.