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Chapter Eight - Whispers at the Edge

Author: Rayne Sharp
last update Last Updated: 2025-09-27 19:26:15
( Aria's POV )

The storm hadn’t broken in days. Rain slicked the streets, painted the world in shadows and silver, and left everything smelling of damp earth. I told myself the weather explained the tension crawling under my skin. But it wasn’t the rain. It was something else, something older, darker, inevitable.

I wiped down the diner counter for the third time though it was already spotless. My hands wouldn’t stop moving. My body wouldn’t stop listening. Every scrape of a fork, every squeak of a shoe against linoleum made me jump. My senses had sharpened again, unbearably so. I could hear the heartbeat of the cook in the kitchen, steady and strong. I could smell the coffee beans, sharp and bitter even from the storeroom.

And outside, beyond the glass door, something lingered. A trace of fur and soil. A scent I shouldn’t know, but did.

“You okay, hon?” Sarah asked, pausing as she balanced a tray of plates. “You’ve been jittery all week.”

“I’m fine,” I lied quickly, too quickl
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  • Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump   Epilogue - What Remains

    Years later, though time no longer moved cleanly enough for numbers to matter, the lattice still bore the scar.Not damage.Memory.It lived there in the pauses between signals, in the way decisions no longer resolved instantly but bent, breathed, waited for hands to steady them. Historians would later argue about the exact moment the system changed, whether it had been the mirror’s fracture, the refusal to optimize, or the first time a node chose wrongly and wasn’t corrected.They were all wrong.It began the first time someone asked a question and was answered by silence, and chose anyway.I stood at the edge of the upper terraces where metal gave way to stone, where the city softened into horizon. The sky was a familiar, beloved mess of color, clouds never fully aligned, wind never entirely predictable. The lattice hummed quietly behind my eyes, no longer fused to my bones, no longer leaning on me to translate its existence.It didn’t need a voice anymore.It had many.Children ran

  • Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump   Chapter One Hundred Thirty Eight - Fracture Lines and Firelight

    Night returned softly, not like an intrusion this time, but a permission.The lattice dimmed its active harmonics after curfew, never silent, never distant, but gentle enough that the ache behind my eyes finally eased. I stood at the wide windows of my quarters, watching reflected city-light braid itself with stars, the glass cool beneath my fingertips.I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding myself together until the tension finally loosened.Behind me, the door sealed.Kael was first. He didn’t speak, didn't need to. I felt him the way I always did, like gravity shifting subtly in the room. His presence wrapped in heat and control barely restrained, sword laid aside but not forgotten.Then Silas, quieter, footsteps almost soundless despite the weight he carried with him, care, precision, the kind of attentiveness that saw too much and never pretended otherwise.Ren followed, energy restless even at rest, a smile teasing at his mouth that didn’t quite mask the relief in his ey

  • Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump   Chapter One Hundred Thirty Seven - Residuals of Choice

    The dawn didn’t heal anything.It only revealed what the night had unhidden.From the observation balcony above Node Seven, the sky fractured itself across cloudbanks in bruised violets and pale fire, light spilling unevenly as if the world itself had woken mid-thought. The lattice hummed beneath my skin, not stabilized, not smoothed, alive in that uncomfortable way that came only after truth had been allowed to echo without correction.Kael stayed behind me, arms loosely braced on the railing at either side of my body. He wasn’t holding me now. He was anchoring. There was a difference, and we both knew it.“You bought them time,” he murmured. “That mirror could’ve hardened. Learned faster.”“So could we,” I said. My voice sounded like it had been scraped raw. “That was the point.”Below us, operators moved through resumed routines with the fragile confidence of people who had just watched something almost holy collapse under inspection. No one rushed. No one panicked. They spoke to o

  • Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump   Chapter One Hundred Thirty Six - Node Seven

    Curiosity metastasized faster than hostility ever had.The presence did not return with ultimatums or projections. It withdrew into observation layers so deep that even the lattice struggled to triangulate its full attentional weight. Not gone. Watching differently.And that was how I knew the next move wouldn’t be external.It would be personal.The alert came from Silas, quiet, coded, and deliberately mundane.You should come down to Node Seven. No alarms. But something’s wrong.Node Seven was a redundancy hub. Human-run, low priority, designed for independence drills and failure simulations. The sort of place nothing dramatic should ever happen.I was already moving before the bond flared in Kael’s chest.“Aria,” he said sharply as I passed him in the corridor. “Where are you going?”“Somewhere they didn’t optimize,” I replied. “Yet.”That got his attention. “I’m coming.”“No,” I said. Not gently.He stopped me anyway, hand locking around my forearm. “This isn’t presence politics.

  • Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump   Chapter One Hundred Thirty Five - Own Hesitations

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  • Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump   Chapter One Hundred Thirty Four - Overnight Offers Remains

    The hesitation did not last long.It never does, once something realizes doubt exists.Morning arrived thin and colorless, light diffusing through the estate as if even dawn were wary of committing fully. I had not slept. The lattice would not allow it, not from alarms or urgency, but from the constant soft friction of holding too many probabilities at once. Not futures. Probabilities. Futures require choice. Probabilities only require pressure.The council reconvened at first light, faces drawn, resolve sharpened into something brittle.“Reports are coming in faster than we can triage,” Maeve said, flicking projections across the table with quick, vicious gestures. “Not failures. Complications. Every time we stabilize one region manually, we lose efficiency somewhere else.”“That’s the point,” Ren replied. “They’re inflating the cost of independence.”Azrael’s gaze was fixed on me. “And waiting to see when we decide autonomy is too expensive.”I met his eyes calmly. “They’re also wai

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