Rejected for Being Barren, I Bore the Lycan Prince's Twins

Wren's POVNo one moved to stop me, so I went on."Nightbell is a small white flower," I said. "A pinch of the dried root in warm milk will settle a pup who's cutting teeth. Given every day, it slows a little heart until it stops. The lips turn blue at the end."Sera's hand had come down from her mouth. It lay in her lap, perfectly still."You wrote to our stillroom for it, Sera. Three winters running. For the nursery, you said, to settle a fretful pup. And when you came home for the harvest feasts, you went up and signed for it in the daybook yourself."I said it the way I would read a dose back to Brannoch, slowly, so there could be no mistake. "I still have every one of those letters. I have the pages too.""You keep the daybook?" Her voice came out thin. She stared at me as if the mortar had started talking back to the pestle. "Brannoch keeps the daybook.""Brannoch's eyes failed two winters ago. I've kept it since."The Luna set down her cup. She came down the two steps from her

Wren's POVI lifted her hand off my belly and gave it back to her."You're kind, Luna. But I'll see to the pup myself."Her face cooled. "Don't be a fool. Keep it, and you carry the stain for life. Do you think Adrian could look at you and not see it?""I'm not fit to be his Luna, and I won't shame him," I said. "I want the Rejection and a roof of my own somewhere far from here. I'll swear to the barrenness. It's the best reason he could have. It will even help his next binding."The last pretense of warmth left her. "Very well. You'll have your Rejection, on terms. You'll swear never to act against Duskmere.""I'll swear to whatever you like. The letters, the daybook pages and my father's field book come back to you once I'm safely past the walls of Silverkeep." I held her eyes. "But you'll keep your word too, Luna."She looked at me the way she looked at the household accounts when a sum came out wrong. Then she gave one short nod."I want Briar back," I said. "She comes with me. Ne

Adrian's POVI smelled the royal party before I saw it, horse and polished leather and, under it, the heavier scent of a Lycan, the kind that makes the wolf in an ordinary man go still and lower its head.Prince Evander Dravane was waiting at the bridge below the village with a dozen riders in black. He swung down from his gray as I came up and stood in the road with his hands loosely at his sides, a tall man in a plain dark coat who looked as if he had been out for a pleasant ride and happened to meet an army.I dismounted and went to one knee in the dust. "Your Highness. You do me too much honor.""Get up, Vale. My father heard you were home and sent me to bring you in." His voice was easy and pleasant. "Three years on the Ashlands line. You've earned a better welcome than a bridge."He offered his hand without quite touching my sleeve. His eyes went once over my face, then past me to the column, the supply wagons and the wounded in the carts, and came back. His heart beat slow and

Wren's POVMy hands went cold on the blanket. "Did he see you?""No, my lady, no." Briar shook her head hard. "I was across the square by the chandler's. He rode past with half the city running after him. He looked..." She hesitated. "He didn't look like a man the King had just honored. He looked like he had a stone in his boot."I made myself sit back. It was foolish, the way my body had answered his name, as if it still belonged to Duskmere."How he looks is nothing to do with me.""I only meant—""What did you mean, Briar? That he's sorry? That he's going to ride out to Little Fallow and find the barren wife he hardly knew, who lay with a stable boy and died at Corran's Gap?" My voice had gone colder than I meant it to. "He's the Luna's son. Whatever he looks like, he believes what she told him."Briar's eyes filled. She looked down at her lap.I let out a long breath and reached for her hand. "Don't talk about him again. That's all. What matters now is bread and a roof, and gettin

Wren's POVHester's neighbor at the east end, Joan, took in plain sewing for a shop in Silverkeep called the Gilded Thimble, and when the weather warmed she walked me there herself.I went as Hester's niece from the country, a soldier's widow, in Hester's old brown dress with a shawl over my hair and my belly. Mistress Rowe, who kept the shop, was a sharp-faced woman with a thimble on every finger of her left hand. She took the sample I had brought, a linen square with a spray of meadowsweet in the corner, and carried it to the window.She turned it over and looked at the back for a long time. The back is where poor work shows."Who taught you?""My mother, mistress.""Six handkerchiefs and a pair of pillowcases, initials and a border. Bring them in ten days and I'll pay you a mark for the lot." She looked at the meadowsweet again. "If they're as clean as this, there's more."A mark for ten days' work was less than the Luna had paid for one of her ribbons. I thanked her and meant it.