It had been six hours since they left the bustling city behind, and now they are flying in private jet.
Kael, utterly drained and exhausted due to fighting is now sleeping.
He lay reclined in his seat, his head tilted slightly to the side.
Amelia sat across from him, her eyes lingering on his face. She crossed her legs, a glass of wine cradled in one hand.
Kael expression, so often hardened by determination, was now relaxed, giving him an almost innocent appearance.
"What a handsome guy," she murmured to herself.
"You'll break too many hearts in the future, Kael."
Yet, as she continued to study him, her smile faded.
"You've been through so much, haven't you?" she whispered.
Her chest tightened as the memories of kael sufferings rushed in her mind, painting a picture of a boy who had been dealt an unfair hand from the very start.
Kael's story was not one of a normal childhood, not even close.
From the moment of his birth, the world had turned its back on him.
His mother, Sephina, the majestic Dragon Queen, had abandoned him—not because of cruelty but because of his bloodline.
A child born half-dragon was considered a stain, an anomaly.
Sephina, powerful and unyielding to all, had faltered in the face of that stigma. She had chosen to send Kael away, severing the bond between them before it could even begin.
Amelia's fists clenched on her lap as she recalled.
The first time Sephina had deigned to meet her son was when Kael was six years old.
By then, the damage had already been done. He had grown up without the warmth of a mother's embrace, without her guidance or love.
To him, Sephina was not a mother but a distant figure—a queen.
Even after that meeting, Sephina had barely tried. She would call him once a year, a perfunctory gesture rather than an act of affection.
She had kept him at arm's length, her pride as a Dragon Queen too tangled in her hatred for her husband.
Amelia's jaw tightened at the thought of Kael's father, the man who had left Sephina without a word.
In her grief and anger, Sephina had turned her resentment toward Kael, the child who bore his father's likeness.
His eyes, his expressions—everything about Kael reminded her of the man who had broken her heart. And so, instead of loving him, she had pushed him away.
"He was just a child," Amelia thought bitterly, her heart aching for the boy who had grown up alone, unloved by the one person who should have cherished him most.
She glanced at him again, the way his hand occasionally twitched even in sleep.
It was clear that Kael had learned to survive without anyone to lean on.
Amelia let out a slow breath, her fingers trembling slightly.
"Sephina, you fool," she muttered ,her voice laced with anger and pity.
"You threw away your own child because you couldn't face your pain. You abandoned him when he needed you the most."
As her thoughts drifted to Kael's harrowing past.
For three months, he had been trapped in a nightmare, tortured relentlessly by a powerful NAOT organisation feared across the land.
Day after day, they had broken his body and tested his will, treating him as nothing more than a tool.
But that organization was gone now—wiped out in a single night by a mysterious figure.
No one knew who had done it.
The entire organisation had been annihilated, leaving behind nothing.
Kael was the only survivor.
Kael never spoke of what truly happened during that massacre.
Amelia clenched her fists as she thought of how much he had suffered, how he had faced so much pain alone.
When Sephina discovered the truth—that her only child, her precious Kael, had been tortured daily for three relentless months—her world shattered.
The weight of it crushed her, a suffocating guilt that clawed at her soul.
She hadn't known. How could she not have known? She, a queen, so powerful and proud, had been blind to the suffering of her own son.
She had been so consumed by her own pain, her own grief over Kael's father abandoning her, that she had failed to see her child's struggles.
She had hated Kael for so long, resenting him for looking like the man who had left her.
She had avoided him,keeping him at a distance as if he were the source of her agony.
But now, the truth of her neglect came crashing down on her like an unrelenting storm.
Her child had been taken, tortured, broken—and she had done nothing to stop it. She was busy in useless things while her son endured unspeakable horrors.
Then Sephina shut herself away for six months, cutting herself off from the world, drowning in the tides of her guilt and regret.
She hated herself with a fiery intensity, more than she had ever hated anyone else.
Every memory of Kael—his timid voice, his longing eyes, the way he had looked at her with hope despite her coldness—stabbed her heart like a thousand knives.
She couldn't forgive herself. She didn't deserve forgiveness.
When she emerged from her self-imposed isolation.
Sephina was a different woman.
Her once-proud demeanor was gone, replaced by a quiet, fierce determination.
From that day on, Kael became her entire world. She vowed to never let anything harm him again.
Every cold barrier she had built around herself melted away.
She embraced Kael with a desperation that bordered on madness, as if trying to make up for years of neglect and the months of torture he had endured.
She held him close, kissed his forehead, whispered endless apologies and promises into his ears.
"You are my everything, Kael," she would say, her voice trembling. "I failed you once, but I will never fail you again. I swear it on my life."
Kael, though still scarred by his past, began to feel the warmth of a mother's love for the first time in his life.
And though Sephina would never truly forgive herself, she channeled her regret into an unwavering devotion to her son—a love so fierce it could move mountains.
Amelia wiped a stray tear from her cheek as she looked at Kael again.
"You've been through so much," Amelia whispered, her voice trembling.
Her mind raced with a thousand thoughts.
She wanted to tell him how strong he was, how much she admired him.
But at the same time, she wanted to cry for him, to grieve for the boy who had been robbed of the one thing every child deserved—love.
"Never again," Amelia vowed silently. "You've suffered enough. I don't care what it takes. I won't let the world hurt you anymore."
As the jet flew on, the woman known as the Black Shadow Leader wiped her tears away, steeling her resolve.
Kael shifted again, mumbling something in his sleep.
Amelia leaned back, letting him rest. But in her heart, she carried a promise—a promise to protect the boy who had already endured a lifetime of pain.