I hate that I love him.
Hate that even now—betrayed and bleeding and terrified—part of me wants to go back. Wants to hear his explanations again, really hear them this time. Wants to believe we could find a way through this wreckage to something worth saving.
But I can't.
Some broken things stay broken no matter how much you want to fix them. Some trust, once shattered, can never be fully rebuilt. Some lies are too big to forgive, even when you understand why they were told.
Even when you love someone.
Especiallywhen you love someone.
Day five.
The bleeding is lighter still—barely a trace now, so faint I have to look twice to confirm it's there. Almost gone.
But not quite.
Still present, still threatening, still a reminder that my body hasn't made up its mind yet. That this pregnancy hangs in the balance, waiting for some internal verdict I have no power to influence.
I lie in Yaern's bed and wait.
Wait for the bleeding to stop completely, for the fear to ease, for certainty in either direction.
Wait for my body to decide if it's keeping this baby or letting it go.
Wait for something—anything—to tell me what comes next.
Outside the cottage walls, the village moves through its rhythms without me. Children's laughter drifting through the gaps in the thatch. Women calling to each other across vegetable gardens. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer shaping horseshoes or plow blades. Life continuing in all its ordinary persistence, indifferent to the fact that my world has narrowed to this bed, these walls, the space between one heartbeat and the next.
"You need to eat," Yaern says, appearing with a bowl of porridge sweetened with honey from her neighbor's hives.
I eat because she asks. Because the baby might need the nourishment. Because I don't know what else to do with my hands, my mouth, my desperate need todo somethingwhen there's nothing to be done.
The hours stretch like taffy, slow and endless. The bleeding doesn't stop. Doesn't get worse. Just hovers there at the edge of nothing, faint and uncertain, refusing to give me an answer either way.
Like everything else in my life right now.
That night, I lie in the dark and listen to Yaern's breathing slow into sleep, and I think about what it will feel like if the bleeding gets heavy. If the cramping starts. If I lose this child I didn't know I wanted until it was almost gone.
"Please," I whisper into the darkness, not knowing who I'm addressing—the gods I don't believe in, the curse that shaped my bloodline, the tiny life clinging to existence inside me. "Please let it be okay. Please let me keep it. Please?—"
The word fractures into silence.
I don't believe in mercy. Don't believe in prayers or divine intervention or any power that gives a damn about one omega bleeding in a village cottage while a dragon king grieves alone in his castle.
But I pray anyway.
Because what else is there?
The bleeding continues through the night. Light. Faint. But there, always there, a thread of uncertainty woven through every breath I take.
And I lie awake counting ceiling beams and wondering if it's already over. If my body knows something my heart refuses to accept. If I'm grieving a loss that happened days ago, my womb just too stubborn to admit defeat.
Dawn finds me still awake, still waiting, still caught between hope and despair with no way to know which one will prove justified.
Maybe it's already gone, I think as pale light creeps across the rafters.
Maybe I've already lost everything.
