Neither looked back.
Seriously. Aren’t they centuries old? You’d think maturity would come with age.
I stood there until their scents faded. Until the patrol whistle sounded again, closer now, and the distant murmur of returning voices reached the clearing.
Then my legs gave out. The quiet surrender of a body that had been running on adrenaline and stubbornness.
I made it to the stream. To the fallen log. Sat down, pressed both hands to my stomach, and waited for the kicks.
One. Two. Three.
All there. All moving.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Nobody’s touching you. Not them, not anyone.”
The kicks settled gradually. But the word abomination and the sight of claws aimed at my belly lived in a different category than political maneuvering.
Those were physical threats aimed at my children.
My knee ached where the dirt had ground into the broken skin. The cramp in my belly had eased but the ghost of it lingered as a reminder that my body was carrying more weight than muscle and bone.
I didn’t let it reflect through the bond.
They couldn’t fight this for me. The women who hated me for existing, the ones who smiled at my mates and cornered me when nobody watched, that was mine to handle.
Even if handling it meant sitting alone at a stream with dirt on my knees, pretending I was fine.
Suddenly, I missed my shop. The quiet hours between customers when the only drama was whether to shelve enemies-to-lovers next to second-chance romance.
A life where the worst threat was a late shipment and the biggest villain was rent.
But now, the danger had just changed shape. And I’d have to face it again.
63
— • —
Lucian
I found her at the stream.
The bond channel between us was still closed, sealed by my own making, but the tether connecting me to her operated beneath the channel itself.
It pulsed wrong. Her rhythm had shifted twenty minutes ago. Elevated heart rate, adrenaline. The signature of a body that had entered a defensive state.
The stream sat forty meters from the main clearing. She sat on the fallen log with both hands pressed to her stomach, talking to the babies. The words were too quiet to catch at this distance, but the cadence was soft, reassuring.
Her shoulders held a tension that hadn’t been there this morning.
The details registered before she noticed my presence. Dirt smudged on her left knee. Knuckles white where they gripped the log’s edge. Jaw clenched for longer than was comfortable.
I didn’t know what had happened. But the evidence of it was written across her body in a language I’d spent time learning to read.
“I can hear you standing there,” Mira said without turning. “You breathe louder than you think.”
“Hundred years of kingship and no one has had the courage to tell me.”
Her smile was forced and didn’t reach her eyes.
