Aria’s POV
"Our little baby?"
The words didn’t make sense.
They were English words. They ford a coherent sentence. Kael was looking at with sothing warm and amused in his black-gold eyes, like he’d expected exactly this reaction, which ant—
Oh.
Oh no.
"You’re pregnant," Kael said. He said it the way you’d tell soone the sky was blue. Fact. Certainty. A thing that had already happened and was simply waiting for to catch up. "About four weeks along, from what the doctors said."
I stared at him.
My hand moved without my permission. I pressed my palm flat against my stomach.
There was nothing there. Just the soft curve of my belly—there had always been that soft curve, that was just my body, that was just what I looked like. But underneath that palm, if Kael was telling the truth, if the doctors had confird this, then there was—
A baby.
A small, impossible, miraculous baby.
Our baby.
A strange noise escaped my mouth. Sothing between a laugh and a sob. My eyes went wet.
"Hey." Kael shifted closer. His hand covered mine, pressed gently against my stomach. "Hey, don’t cry."
"I’m not—" I stopped. I was definitely crying. The tears were already running down my face. "I didn’t know. I didn’t feel—how did I not know?"
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Soft. Careful. Like I was made of sothing fragile.
"A baby," I whispered.
"Our baby," Kael corrected. There was sothing in his voice I’d never heard before. Sothing that made my chest tight. "The doctors said you were malnourished when you ca in. We need to change that. We need to keep you healthy. We need to—"
He stopped. Took a breath. Like he was trying to rein himself in.
"This is real, right?" I said. "You’re not—you’re not joking with ?"
His black-gold eyes t mine.
"I don’t joke about this," he said quietly. "Not about you. Not about our baby."
The certainty in his voice. The absolute conviction. It settled sothing in my chest that had been wild and uncertain for months. Maybe longer than that.
I nodded slowly.
Then I opened my mouth, and before I could think about whether this was the right ti or the right way, I found myself telling him everything. The white clearing. The flowers that slled like moonlight. The silver wolf who had silver fur and knew my na before I knew she was real. The woman in white with eyes that held centuries, who told things that couldn’t possibly be true but that had felt more real than breathing.
"She said—" I stopped, trying to find the words. "The moon goddess, or whoever she was. She said that I was coming into my own. That there was power in , old power, power that ca from being Oga, from being overlooked, from being the kind of woman nobody expects anything from."
Kael was listening. His hand had gone very still on my stomach.
"And the wolf. Artemis. She was so *real*, Kael. Not like before when I could barely hear her, barely feel her. In that place, she was solid. She was right there with . She said—" My voice cracked. "She said she’d always been with . That I just couldn’t hear her."
I took a shaky breath.
"Kael, she felt like she was coming ho."
He didn’t say anything for a long mont. His black-gold eyes were doing sothing complicated, flicking through a series of emotions I couldn’t quite track. Skepticism gave way to sothing else. Calculation. And beneath that, sothing that looked almost like concern.
"The doctors said it was fever dreams," I continued. "You said it was probably stress and exhaustion and my mind showing what I needed to see. And maybe you’re right, maybe I was just—"
"Aria." His voice cut through mine gently. "Tell the rest. All of it. Don’t skip anything."
So I did.
I told him about the flowers that blood under my feet even though there was no earth, just white mist. I told him about Artemis’s silver fur and how it looked like it was woven from moonlight and starlight both. I told him about the Moon Goddess asking what I was willing to give, what I was willing to risk, what I was willing to *beco* to save my babies—and how I’d said yes before she even finished the question.
"Babies," Kael said. "Plural."
"That’s what she said. She said I had two children depending on . Two."
And Kael’s entire body went still.
"Two," he repeated.
"But that doesn’t make sense because I only have—" I stopped. Thought about it.
"Oh," I said very softly.
Kael was watching work it out.
He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture was so tender it hurt.
“Maybe there are twins.”
I looked up at Kael.
"Do you think that’s true?"
He was quiet for a long mont.
"I heard," he said slowly, "that when you were at my apartnt. When Lucian was—" He stopped. Collected himself. "When Lucian was in bad shape. You raised your hand and sothing happened. He went quiet. Calm. More calm than he had any right to be given what was in his system."
I opened my mouth to say that I’d thought that was just coincidence, that Lucian’s high was probably just wearing off, that—
He squeezed my hand.
"I’m telling you that there’s sothing in you that’s different. That’s powerful. That maybe this goddess—maybe Artemis—maybe they were trying to show you sothing real."
I shook my head slowly.
He leaned back slightly. His black-gold eyes held mine.
"You’re safe now," he said. "You and the girls. And our baby. You’re all safe. And what you need to do right now—the only thing you need to do—is rest. Build your strength. Take care of that baby you’re carrying."
My chest tightened.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead again. Lingered there for a mont. His lips were warm against my skin. His hand was gentle in mine. And the whole ti he was doing this, he was thinking about "the girls"—Lilith and Lina, just so children I had saved, so responsibility I had taken on—but he didn’t know.
He didn’t know that Lina had sa eyes like his.
My heart rate picked up. The monitor beside the bed beeped a little faster.
*I have to tell him.*
The thought was suddenly, crystalline clear. Urgent. I couldn’t keep lying. Not now. Not after everything that had happened. Not now that I was pregnant with his child, now that he was looking at like I was sothing precious, now that he was talking about safety and family and letting him take care of .
"Kael, I need to tell you sothing," I started.
But even as the words were leaving my mouth, even as I was gathering the courage to say the thing I’d been planning to say since the mont I woke up and saw his face—
There was a sound from the hallway.
It wasn’t loud. It was small. Uncertain. The kind of sound a frightened child makes when they’re waking up in a strange place and the one person they need most in the entire world is nowhere to be found.
A voice. Small and clear and calling from just beyond the closed door.
"Mommy?!"
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