* Cerberus *The forest did not welcome me back.It recoiled like a living thing, leaves trembling, roots curling away from where my feet sank into its soil. As I stumbled away from the witches' glade, my veins echoing with the memory of their chants, my skin still stained by ash and blood, I knew the cost of my bargain would never leave me. It clung to my breath, my bones, the deepest marrow of me where my wolf used to live.The bond that once tethered me to Zeina and the child like a chain of fire had gone still. The constant, aching pull on my chest, the raw, savage need to be near them, was now a whisper. Not gone, no. But dimmed. The mark on my chest still glowed faintly, but it no longer surged with power. It pulsed like a dying star, beautiful, distant, fading.I was still alive.But barely.Every breath I drew felt foreign, like my lungs were filled with water instead of air. My muscles trembled under the weight of nothing. My wolf, my other self—was silent. Still. As if he ha
* Cerberus *The wind here smelled of salt and rot and ancient things buried too long beneath the bones of the earth. Mount Hollow had never welcomed me, not truly. The soil rejected the weight of my paws. The trees leaned away from my breath. The fog itself curled around my limbs like a warning. The witches who lived beneath its roots whispered in languages older than wolves, their power pulsing like veins beneath the forest floor, too primal for human minds to grasp.Still, I came.I stumbled along the fog-choked trail, each step an effort, each breath a scraping thing inside my ribs. My wolf still lingered somewhere within me, but he no longer answered my call with growls or fury. He had grown quiet. Dull. Tired. Like an old warrior too wounded to rise again. I could feel him watching from the corners of my soul, but his strength, our strength, was slipping.The bond tethered to Zeina and the child beat like a second heart in my chest, pulling at the edges of me with merciless hung
* Zeina *The days bled into one another, a haze of stillness and swelling breath. My belly had grown, rounder, heavier, a moon full of weight and mystery pressing against my skin. The movement inside had grown more frequent too, no longer flutters or whispers, but real shifts of muscle and presence. He was growing. Strong. Unrelenting. Just like his father.But even as my strength returned in quiet increments, bone knitting, magic crawling back into my veins like timid light, I felt something else begin to falter.Cerberus.At first, I thought it was just the long nights catching up with him. He sat at my side through every hour, every ache, every cry I couldn't voice in front of the others. He held me like I was made of something that could fracture, even as he smiled that quiet, wolfish smile meant to keep me calm. I clung to him, not only out of need, but instinct, some primal part of me knew that I was tethered to him in ways that went beyond any ritual or bond.But I saw it in t
* Cerberus *The scent of iron had faded from her skin, replaced by something softer, something impossibly fragile, like crushed petals and smoke. But I still caught the undercurrent of strain. I could hear it in her breathing when she thought I wasn't listening, in the way she moved, just a little slower, just a little more carefully than she used to.She never complained. That wasn't Zeina's way. But her body spoke what her pride refused to say.The next morning, I stood just beyond the training grounds, watching the warriors run drills under Beta Kael's sharp commands. He was a storm when he trained them, relentless and precise. But even now, he glanced toward the Keep between orders, checking on her. He was worried. We all were.A blur of motion drew my eye to the eastern corridor. Donna emerged, breathless, her hands wringing the edge of her cloak. The moment she saw me, she veered from her path and made straight for where I stood."She hasn't eaten today," she said without pream
* Zeina *Four months later. The child in my stomach begins to develop and he moves every day.A flutter, soft as breath, just beneath the curve of my ribs. Not a kick, not yet, but something alive, something determined. Like he was stretching against the cage of bone and blood, already restless, already fierce. Like he was his father's son.I stood by the high windows of the South Tower, where the late sunlight painted the stone floors in gold and rust. The wind outside howled across the cliffs, wild and unyielding, but inside the keep, everything felt still. Held. Waiting.My hands went instinctively to my belly, cradling the swell that had grown firmer, more undeniable each week. Four months. Four moons since the healers whispered the word I never thought I'd hear spoken of me.Pregnant.I had prepared for war. I had been groomed to lead. To fight. To bleed. Never to carry life. Never to slow down. But the moment the truth had settled over me, it didn't feel like surrender.It felt
* Cerberus *Two Days Later, on the Western Pass. The wind was sharper here. Harsher. It dragged through the ravines of the western cliffs like a mourning song, cold and laced with the lingering tang of smoke and blood that refused to fade, even now. It clung to the stones. To the bones. To the breath. I could taste it in the back of my throat, ash and memory, grief and grit.The Hollow was far behind me now. My grandfather's grave lay beneath the roots of the Mourning Tree, his bones returned to the land that once birthed his fire. The witches had chanted until their voices grew raw, until their magic soaked into the ground like rain, until I could no longer feel where his legacy ended and my burden began. I'd bled into that earth. I'd given it my howl, my rage, my sorrow. I'd asked it to take the part of me I could no longer carry.But grief doesn't leave. Not truly. It settles in the marrow. It makes a home in silence. It echoes in footsteps and forgotten laughter.Now, only one th