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139. A Father’s Pain.
publish date:
2026-03-15 17:24:00Sage.
He was very timid for a warrior. I had heard near mythological exploits about him and yet here he stood awkwardly before me like he was afraid if embarrassing himself before me.
“Let us go somewhere more private,” I offered.
“How ab
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The Mate They Threw Away 342. The Elder's Lie I.
Sage.The summit hall smelled like old wood polish and older grudges, and I hated every second I had to spend standing in it."You didn't have to come," Kieran murmured beside me, adjusting his cuff with the particular stiffness of a man bracing for a fight he hadn't fully planned for. "You're still recovering.""I recover faster than most people expect," I said. "And I wasn't going to let this happen without eyes in the room.""Whose eyes, exactly.""Mine. The regular kind and the other kind."He glanced sideways at me, something wary in it. "Try not to shatter any more windows.""No promises."The Elders filed in one by one, robes trailing, faces arranged into the careful neutrality of people who'd spent decades learning to hide behind procedure. I counted them as they took their seats, nine in total, the full quorum, which told me this wasn't meant to be a routine hearing. Nobody called nine Elders together for something routine.Elder Castemere took his seat at the head of the tab
The Mate They Threw Away 341. Small, Burning Bodies II.
Sage.I don't remember the moment I stopped being able to see straight.One second the room was there, Ilsa's face, the crib, Emma's weight against my chest and the next it had folded into something white and roaring, like standing too close to a furnace with my eyes forced open."Sage!"Someone was saying my name. I couldn't tell how many times."…her lips are going blue, get Dr. Kessler, NOW…"I wanted to tell them I was fine. I wanted to tell them not to interrupt the current, that if they pulled me away now the strain would just snap back into the children, into Emma's small chest pressed against mine, into Liam's tiny hands.I couldn't make my mouth form the words.The heat had stopped feeling like heat somewhere in the last few minutes. It felt like being scraped hollow, like every part of me was being drawn thin and stretched over something too large to fit inside my body. I understood, distantly, that this was what Aura-Fever meant when the textbooks described it in careful cl
The Mate They Threw Away 340. Small, Burning Bodies I.
Sage.Emma's fever broke a hundred and four that night, and I was in the nursery before the second call finished ringing through my phone."How long has she been like this," I demanded, already crouched beside the crib, my hands moving over her small, too-hot body."Twenty minutes," said Ilsa, the Sanctuary nurse assigned to the triplets' wing, her voice tight with the particular calm of someone holding panic at arm's length. "Noah and Liam spiked almost simultaneously. We've got cooling cloths on all three, but nothing's bringing it down.""All three at once?""Within minutes of each other."I looked across the room. Liam was thrashing weakly in his crib, small fists opening and closing against nothing. Noah lay eerily still, too still, his breathing shallow and fast."That's not a normal fever pattern," I said, mostly to myself. "Triplets can share illness, but not usually with this kind of synchronicity.""You think it's connected. To the plague. To what's happening at the clinic."
The Mate They Threw Away 339. Sovereign Will II.
Sage.He didn't leave. Not right away.He stood there in the wreckage of my office, one hand braced against the doorframe, staring at me like he was seeing something he'd been warned about his whole life and had never quite believed was real."Kieran," Nessa said again, gentler this time, edging into the room. "Do you need a medic?""No." His voice came out rough. "No, I'm…I'm fine.""You're not," I said. "You just went down like your legs forgot how to hold you.""I said I'm fine." He straightened fully now, some of the old posture creeping back into his shoulders, though his eyes hadn't lost that shaken, unmoored look. "Give us the room, Nessa."She glanced at me. I nodded, and she stepped out, though she left the door open a careful few inches, and I didn't blame her."You want to try that again?" I asked, once we were alone. "The Sovereign Will thing?""No," he said quietly. "I don't think I do.""Good instinct."He crossed to the broken window, looked out at the courtyard below,
The Mate They Threw Away 338. Sovereign Will I
SageKieran arrived without warning, the way he always did, like announcing himself first might rob him of some advantage."You didn't answer my calls," he said, standing in the doorway of my office like he owned the frame around it."I've been busy." I didn't look up from the file in front of me. "You might have heard. Plague mutation, Council inquisitors, a patient screaming through a spinal tap. Small things.""I heard you brought Dominic here.""He's coming tonight, yes.""Without consulting me."That made me look up. "I wasn't aware I needed your permission to invite people into my own clinic."He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a quiet click that felt louder than it should have. "You're the mother of my child, Sage. Everything happening to you happens to Silver Crest. That includes who you let stand beside you when the Council starts circling.""Noah is my son," I said evenly. "Not a policy consideration.""He's both." Kieran crossed the room, close enough now t
The Mate They Threw Away 337. What the Spine Remembers II
Sage.The lab was too quiet when I got there, which was its own kind of alarm. Nessa was hunched over the microscope, utterly still, one hand pressed flat against the counter like she needed it to stay upright."Nessa."She didn't look up. "You need to see this yourself."I took her place at the eyepiece, adjusted the focus, and felt my breath catch the way hers must have.The flecks weren't debris. Under magnification they resolved into something with structure,tiny, geometric, mo
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