"He thought the bond would kill you," Yaern says carefully. Not defending him. Just laying out the pieces. "The transformation, the pregnancy, the strain of it all together. He was afraid."
"I didn't ask him to save me." The anger flickers, brief and hot, then fades back to ash. I'm too tired to sustain it. Too scared. "I asked him to trust me. To let me make my own choices about my own body. He couldn't do that."
"No." Her hand finds mine, her fingers rough with work calluses. "He couldn't."
We sit in silence while the fire crackles and pops, while the kettle sends fragrant steam curling toward the rafters. Outside, I can hear the village coming alive—footsteps on packed dirt paths, voices calling morning greetings, the bleat of goats being herded toward the high pastures. Normal life in a normal omega village, where no one has to worry about dragon shifters or cursed bloodlines or transforming into something that shouldn't exist.
Everything I left behind when I volunteered as tribute.
It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday.
"Do you love him?" Yaern asks, and the question lands in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.
"Yes." The admission hurts more than the bleeding. "I hate that I do. But yes."
"Does he love you?"
"He says he does." I press my free hand against my stomach, against the slight swell that might still hold life or might already be empty. "But love without trust is just—it's nothing. It's worse than nothing. It's a pretty lie wrapped around a knife."
"It's fear," Yaern says quietly. "He loves you so much he's terrified of losing you. So he tried to control everything, make allthe choices, keep you safe even if it meant destroying what you were building together."
"That's not love."
"It is." She squeezes my fingers. "It's just broken love. Damaged love. Love that doesn't know how to be healthy because he's been alone for three hundred years with nothing but guilt and corpses for company."
I close my eyes against the sting of tears I don't want to shed. "That doesn't make it okay."
"No. It doesn't." A pause, weighted with things unspoken. "But it means maybe it could be fixed. If you both wanted to fix it badly enough."
"I can't go back there." The thought makes my chest constrict, makes it hard to draw breath. "I can't look at him. Can't trust him. Can't—" My voice breaks and I have to stop, have to breathe, have to push down the sob trying to claw its way up my throat. "What if I lose the baby because of what we did? The fighting, the—the way we?—"
"Shh." Yaern's thumb strokes across my knuckles, slow and soothing. "The healer said stress can cause spotting. Light bleeding in early pregnancy isn't uncommon. It doesn't mean you're losing it."
"But it might."
"It might." She won't offer false comfort, and I love her for that even as I hate it. "But it might not. You're strong, Kess. Warrior omega. Your body was made to survive things that would kill anyone else."
"What if that's not enough?"
She doesn't answer.
Can't answer.
Because we both know the truth that neither of us wants to speak aloud: sometimes being strong isn't enough. Sometimesyou fight with everything you have and still lose. Sometimes the universe takes things from you just because it can.
The village healer comes that afternoon.
She's ancient in a way that speaks of survival rather than fragility—hands gnarled with age but steady as stone when she examines me, eyes sharp despite the cataracts filming them white at the edges. She smells like the herbs she grows in the small plot behind her cottage: feverfew and moonwort and blood-root, their scents mingling into something that reminds me of my grandmother's workroom.
The same herbs the mystic uses in the castle. But different somehow. Less refined, more raw. The mystic serves a dragon king with centuries of accumulated knowledge. This woman serves omegas who can't afford anything better, and she's kept them alive through sheer stubborn skill.
"Still spotting?" she asks, her voice creaking like old leather.
"Yes."
"Cramping?"
"No."
