She slept between us.
Mira had curled into Lucian’s uninjured side while Percival pressed against her back, his arm draped over her waist with his hand on her stomach. I sat against the nearest tree keeping watch because someone had to, and because the image of her tangled between them was the closest thing to peace I’d witnessed in months.
The babies’ heartbeats had evened out. Three rhythms, synchronized now. Even in sleep, her color had improved. The hollows under her cheekbones had softened.
In approximately four hours, she would leave this clearing and walk back into the compound and every improvement would begin to reverse.
Dawn crept through the canopy. Lucian stirred first, the wound pulling him from sleep with a grimace. He registered Mira against his side and went still, memorizing the weight of her before she woke.
Percival didn’t stir. His arm tightened around Mira’s waist and his face pressed into her hair, holding on to the only warmth his silence would let him reach for. No murmuring, no restless shifting. His energetic personality that defined him for centuries had gone dormant, and what remained was a man gripping his mate in sleep because his voice wouldn’t cooperate while awake.
I’d tried to reach him yesterday. After the meeting, after we felt our children kicking.
“Talk to me.”
“Can’t.” He’d turned the locket over in his fingers. “There’s too much in here right now.” He’d pressed his fist against his own temple. “If I open my mouth it’ll come out wrong, or it’ll come out as screaming. Neither one helps.”
So I’d left him. Because I understood sealed doors. I’d lived behind one for four hundred years.
Mira woke with a groan that was equal parts pregnancy nausea and general displeasure at being alive. She extracted herself from the pile with the graceless efficiency of someone who’d spent years waking up in unfamiliar places.
Her shirt had ridden up during the night. A strip of skin above her waistband, the faintest curve of her stomach visible before she tugged the fabric down. My wolf pressed inside my ribs so hard my teeth ached.
Fuck.She just looks hotter lately.
The pregnancy had changed her body in ways I was not prepared to process rationally.
Fuller through the chest and hips. A softness to her frame that hadn’t been there before, layered over the lean muscle training had built. She looked fertile and strong and entirely unaware of what the combination was doing to me from three feet away.
“Morning,” Lucian said.
“Don’t talk to me yet. I need to not be awake for at least five more minutes.”
“You’re standing.”
“My body betrayed me. It doesn’t count.”
She stumbled toward the stream and I intercepted her path with a canteen and dried fruit. She took both without looking at me, which I chose to interpret as progress.
The rotation needed structure. Random departures created pattern gaps that Thiago would notice. We settled on every third night, alternating exit points.
“Two days of separation is manageable,” my father said during the briefing. “Three crosses the threshold. The bond will compensate for short absences but not sustained ones.”
Mira accepted it without argument. The babies had made the decision for her.
By mid-morning, the plan was set and Mira was pulling on her jacket. The keycard, the tablet, the journal tucked into inner pockets. She looked at me.
“I’ll be fine.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it. Your jaw does this thing when you’re worried.”
“My jaw doesn’t do anything.”
“It tightens. Right here.” She touched her own jaw to demonstrate. “Every time. It’s your tell.”
The fact that she’d been studying me closely enough to identify a tell I didn’t know I had landed somewhere in my chest and refused to leave.
