Chapter 5

I hadn't stepped foot in a hospital in years, and walking into one now, alone, without a hand to hold, felt strange in a way I didn't expect. It was here I'd finally get it confirmed properly — not just the two lines on a test I'd taken alone in a bathroom weeks ago, but the real thing, the doctor's word, the proof. I sat in the waiting room fidgeting with the hem of my sleeve, watching other people come and go, half of them with someone beside them, and I told myself firmly that I didn't need that.

"First time here?" The receptionist glanced up at me, kind but efficient.

"First time in years," I said.

"And is dad joining you today?"

The question landed harder than she meant it to. "No," I said, steadier than I felt. "It's just me."

She didn't push, just nodded and handed me a clipboard, and I sat there filling out forms with a pen that skipped every third letter, my knee bouncing under the table the whole time.

When the nurse finally called my name, I followed her back, heart doing something nervous and fluttery. I don't know what I was afraid of exactly. Maybe just bad news stacked on top of everything else. I felt like I'd used up my quota of bad news for the month already, and some small, superstitious part of me worried the universe wasn't finished with me yet.

The doctor was an older woman, kind-eyed, unhurried. She ran through the exam calmly, asked me questions I answered honestly except the one about the father.

"And is he involved in the pregnancy at all?"

"No." I said it flat, daring her to ask a follow-up.

She studied me a bit longer than necessary, then let it go, professional enough not to push where she wasn't wanted. "Alright. Let's take a look, then."

She did the scan, and the room went quiet except for that soft underwater whooshing sound, and something in my chest cracked open in the best possible way.

"Congratulations," she said, smiling at the screen before turning that smile on me. "You're pregnant, and everything looks good. Heart rate's strong. Growth's right on track."

"Really?" My voice cracked on the word. "Everything's actually okay?"

"Everything's more than okay." She must have caught something in my face, because her voice gentled further. "You've had a hard week, haven't you."

"You could say that."

"Well." She squeezed my hand once, brief and warm. "This part, at least, is going right. Keep eating well, keep resting when you can, and I'll see you in a few weeks."

I walked out of that hospital lighter than I'd walked into it. The sun was actually out, weak and watery but out, and I stood on the sidewalk letting it hit my face.

*Good progress.* I tuned those words over the whole walk home, savoring them.

By the time I reached the apartment — and it was starting to feel like home now, stubbornly, even with the water stains and the creaking floorboard — I was smiling. Not the brittle, holding-it-together smile I'd worn for days. A real one.

I put my hand on my stomach. "You're doing great," I told it, feeling a little silly and not caring at all. "We're doing great. I promise you, whatever it takes, I'm going to make sure of that."

I thought about my father then, the black card still sitting untouched in my drawer, how much I didn't want to spend years leaning on him for everything. He'd already given so much. *Tomorrow,* I decided, sitting down on the couch. *Tomorrow I start looking for work. For real this time.*

I didn't know yet who would hire a pregnant woman with no fixed address and a marriage that had just ended publicly, and honestly, the thought terrified me a little. But I'd figure it out. I always did.

I fell asleep that night without crying, and that felt like its own small victory.

---

Camille knelt in the sacred grove behind the pack house, moonlight falling in silver ribbons through the canopy, the air thick with the hush that came whenever the goddess deigned to listen.

She'd come here every night this week, same spot, same offering of wildflowers laid at the stone altar, and every night the goddess came to her in that shifting, luminous shape that never quite settled into one face.

"So, Moon Goddess." Camille tilted her chin up, voice steadier than she felt. "What is my fate."

*I have already told you this.* The goddess's voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, soft and ancient, unbothered by the urgency in Camille's tone. *You accepted it once. You accepted the fate that comes with what you asked for.*

"I know what I accepted." Camille's hands tightened in her lap. "But I need to hear it again. I need to know I made the right choice."

*Do you regret asking?*

"No." The answer came too fast, and even Camille heard it. She softened her voice, tried again. "No. I don't regret it. I just — I need this to work. I need him to look at me the way he used to look at her."

*That was never part of the bargain.*

The words landed like a slap. "What do you mean it wasn't part of the bargain? I asked for her life. Her position. Her mate."

*You asked for her place. Not her bond. Those were never the same thing, and you knew that when you knelt here and asked anyway.*

Camille's throat tightened. "Then what did I actually buy myself."

The goddess didn't answer that. The wind moved through the grove instead, stirring the flowers at the altar, and somewhere in the trees an owl called once and went silent.

"I want to ask you something else," Camille said finally, quieter now, some of her earlier certainty gone out of her voice. "Something important."

*Ask.*

"Is it possible," she said slowly, each word costing her more than she expected, "to change my child. To make sure it's a baby boy. Because if it isn't—" her voice caught "—I don't know what I actually have left to offer him."

The silence that followed felt longer than any that had come before it. Camille held her breath, watching the shifting light of the goddess's form ripple like water disturbed by a stone, and for the first time since she'd started coming to this grove, she found she couldn't read anything in it at all.