CHAPTER 11

Aria's POV

I felt like I was sinking, my legs shaking. The mornings had grown quieter. Even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath when I stepped out into the forest behind the cottage. My belly had begun to swell only slightly, but enough for me to notice. Enough to make me feel like every eye, even the trees, could see what I was hiding.

I didn’t go to the market anymore. It was too risky. I avoided the village paths, even when I was desperate for supplies. Elias started leaving things at the edge of the clearing herbs, dried meat, cloth, and I’d collect them at dusk like a thief in my own life.

At night, I would sit by the hearth, hands on my stomach, listening. Not for a heartbeat. But for something… more. Sometimes, I swore I heard humming in my blood. Not mine but hers. The child. She was growing stronger. Wiser. Too wise for someone not yet born.

One night, Elias came to my room. He didn’t knock, just stepped through the door like he belonged there. He was breathing hard, his eyes darker than usual.

“I can feel it,” he said. “He’s looking for you.”

“Who?” My voice shook, though I already knew.

“King Magnus.” He took a step closer, holding something wrapped in a piece of velvet. “He’s starting to sense her. Your child. She’s radiating power like fire under snow. It’s only a matter of time before he finds you.”

I backed away. “What do you mean ‘sense her’? How?”

“He’s bonded to the realm. To its roots. Every tremor in power, every shift in balance—he feels it. And your child… she’s not like others.” He pulled back the velvet to reveal a necklace—silver, old, strung with three bloodstones and a charm that looked like a broken moon.

“This will hide her aura,” Elias said. “And yours, too. For now.”

I took it with trembling fingers. “Why would you help me? You serve the Circle.”

“I serve balance,” he said. “And right now, your child *is* balanced."

I didn't trust him, not fully. But when I put on the necklace, something shifted. The air around me felt... muted. Like I was wrapped in shadows that only I could see.

For a while, it worked. The forest was still, quiet again. The crows stopped circling above the chimney. And the wind stopped whispering my name.

But the dreams didn’t stop.

Kael's dreams were always tangled, broken things. Visions of war. The scent of blood and pine. Sometimes he saw my face—frightened, glowing, turned away from him. Sometimes he saw fire. Sometimes my hands, burning.

He hadn’t spoken to me since that night—when everything fell apart. But I could feel him moving. Searching. Like a wolf chasing a scent he didn’t understand.

I still loved him. But love was no shield.

One afternoon, a woman arrived. I heard her before I saw her. Her steps are light, but not careful. Intentional. Confidence.

She looked like she belonged to the mountain. Her skin was like a warm stone, her hair long and white as ash, eyes like a storm that hadn’t broken yet.

“You’re hiding,” she said, stepping into the light of my porch. “Badly.”

I stood. “Who are you?”

“Yuna. I don’t belong to the packs anymore. I go where I’m needed.” She tilted her head. “Your child called to me.”

I still went.

She walked to me, slow, like I might bolt. “You think she’s just another pup. But she isn’t. She’s the one who will unite bloodlines that never should’ve met. She’s Luna-born. The Queen your kind forgot.”

“That’s a myth.”

Yuna smiled. “So was the Moon, once.”

I didn’t ask her to stay. But she did. That night, she lit candles in a circle and whispered words in a language I didn’t know. She touched my stomach and cried. Not out of fear—but awe.

“She’s more than you know,” Yuna said. “And she’s already being hunted.”

Elsewhere, Lilith screamed in her sleep.

She woke up and tangled in her own hair, her breath shallow, nails tearing at the sheets. The dream wouldn’t let go—fire, ice, and a cry that shattered glass. A child with silver eyes, and a crown of thorns.

Lilith didn’t tell the other priestesses.

She went to the catacombs beneath the Keep, where dust smelled like secrets. She unwrapped books bound in shadow. She began to read. And began to change.

Every page she turned darkened her hands. Every spell she practiced echoed with madness. She whispered to mirrors. And they whispered back.

“The child must die,” they said.

“She is not meant for this world,” they said.

“She will take everything from you.”

And Lilith, broken and burning began to believe them.

Back in the forest, I had started to feel something strange. A pull in my chest. Like a thread tugging me eastward. One night, I followed it.

Yuna tried to stop me. “It’s not safe—”

“She’s calling.”

Yuna didn’t ask who I meant. She knew.

I walked through the woods barefoot, the moon above half-covered by clouds. The necklace Elias gave me grew warm against my skin like it was resisting the direction, I moved.

I reached the river. Then the ruins. I hadn’t been here since I was a child.

That’s when I smelled him.

Pine. Steel. Smoke.

Kael.

He was watching me from the trees. Not stepping out. Not speaking. But I knew.

“Why are you here?” I asked the wind.

I couldn't get answer.

I turned back. But my heart didn’t stop racing for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I was dizzy.

Yuna looked worried. She pressed her hand to my forehead, then my belly.

“She’s waking,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“She’s beginning to feel the world. Taste it. She’s old magic. She’ll touch everything around her until she finds her place.”

I didn’t know how to carry that weight. I didn’t even know how to carry myself most days.

But I couldn’t turn back now.

That evening, I was alone, I say by the fire. The wind howled louder than usual like something had changed in the world. The necklace around my neck began to glow faintly.

I looked up.

There was a figure in the window.

Not Kael. Not Elias. Not Lilith.

But a woman in black robes. Her hair floated like it was underwater. Eyes that bled shadow.

Before I could scream, she vanished immediately.

And in my belly, my child kicked for the very first time.

Hard. Furious. Awake.

Then the fire went out.

Darkness flooded the room, very thick and suffocating. The necklace burned against my throat.

And outside, I heard a whisper—not from the trees, not from the wind—but from something far older.

“She is born of moon and ruin. She will bring either salvation... or destruction.”

Then came the knock with three slow taps. I didn’t move.

Then the door creaked open on its own.

And standing there, not quite human, not quite beast—

Was Lilith.

Her smile was wrong. Her eyes were glowing.

And she whispered, “You can’t keep her from me.”