"It's barely spotting now," I tell Yaern, and my voice comes out strange—thin and high, afraid to claim too much. "Just barely anything."
She checks for herself, then looks up at me with eyes that have gone suspiciously bright. "It's stopping. I think it's actually stopping."
I don't let myself celebrate. Can't afford to. "Or this is the calm before everything gets worse."
"Gods, you're exhausting." But she says it with a watery smile—the exasperated fondness that comes from years of friendship. "Come on. Sit up. You smell like a week of fear sweat and I'm going to help you wash."
I haven't bathed properly since I arrived—too terrified that any movement would tip the balance toward loss. But the bleeding is lighter. And I can smell myself, sour and sharp with anxiety.
Yaern helps me to the washbasin, her hands steady at my elbow when my legs wobble. A week of bed rest has stolen my strength, left my muscles weak and trembling. The water she's heated is warm against my skin as she washes my face, my arms, the back of my neck where tension has knotted the muscles into stone.
"You've lost weight," she observes, running the cloth down my spine. "Need to eat more."
"Working on it."
She helps me into a clean shift—one of hers, too big in the shoulders, but soft and worn and blessedly free of the smell of blood.
Small victories.
I make it back to the bed without falling. Yaern props pillows behind me so I can sit upright and look out the rain-streaked window at the village beyond. The storm is gentle, almost warm, turning the dirt paths to mud and beading on the new leaves of the apple tree in her small yard.
"Do you ever wonder what it would be like?" I ask, watching rain trace patterns down the glass. "If I hadn't volunteered. If someone else had gone."
She's quiet for a long moment. The only sound is the soft patter of rain and the crackle of the fire.
"Every day," she says finally. "But not because I wish you hadn't. Because I can't imagine this world without you in it."
"Even contaminated? Even transforming into something that shouldn't exist?"
"Especially then." She settles beside me on the bed, our shoulders just touching. "You survived what killed forty-seven others. You're growing stronger instead of dying. You're pregnant with a cursed dragon's child and you're still here, still fighting, still too stubborn to give up." Her hand finds mine. "You're extraordinary, Kess. You always have been. The contamination just made the rest of the world see what I've always known."
"I don't feel extraordinary." The admission slips out before I can stop it. "I feel terrified. All the time. Like I'm standing on ice and waiting for it to crack."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." She squeezes my fingers. "You can be both."
On the eighth morning, the bleeding stops entirely.
I check three times before I believe it—once when I first wake, once after breakfast, once more in the afternoon light slanting through Yaern's window like honey.
Nothing. No pink trace. No rust-colored warning. Just clean cloth and the absence of fear.
"It stopped," I tell Yaern, and my voice cracks on the words. "It actually stopped."
She checks for herself, methodical and careful. When she looks up, her eyes are swimming with tears she's trying not to shed. "It stopped. You're okay. The baby—" She has to clear her throat. Try again. "You're both okay."
I don't cry. Can't cry. Afraid that if I start, something will break loose inside me that I won't be able to put back.
Instead I just sit there with my hands pressed flat against my stomach, trying to feel something I can't feel yet—a flutter, a presence, any evidence of the life that somehow held on through everything.
We survived. Both of us.
"Thank you," I whisper, not sure who I'm addressing. The gods I've never believed in. My stubborn warrior omega body that refuses to quit. The baby itself, clinging to existence with a determination it must have inherited from me.
Yaern hugs me carefully, like I'm made of something that might shatter. Maybe I am. Maybe survival is just learning which broken pieces are worth keeping.
"What now?" she asks when she pulls back.
"Now?" I press my palms harder against my stomach, willing the baby to feel my presence the way I'm trying to feel its. "NowI figure out how to keep this pregnancy. How to navigate the transformation while I'm carrying a child. How to?—"
