Lahat ng Kabanata ng Running Away with Alpha's Baby Bump: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

(Aria’s POV) The world no longer breathed the way it used to. Each inhale came sharp, too full and like the air itself was alive and trying to crawl down my throat. The scent of frost and iron clung to my tongue. Somewhere in the distance, the wolves were howling and not to mourn, not to summon, but to warn. Kael’s hand hovered above my shoulder, hesitant, as though touch alone might shatter me. “You need to rest,” he said softly. I looked up at him, and for the first time, his face reflected in my eyes and literally. Silver light shimmered in my pupils, faint but growing. Her light. “If I sleep,” I murmured, “she’ll wake.” Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then we’ll keep you awake.” I wanted to laugh, but the sound came out brittle. “You can’t fight what’s inside me, Kael.” He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The silence between us said enough. The Frostline had vanished. What stretched before us now was something else and something wrong. The plains had turned black beneath a

(Aria’s POV )The Devourer moved like a shadow that had learned to walk.Its edges flickered, unraveling only to stitch themselves back together with threads of starless night. Every step it took crushed the ash beneath it into nothing, true nothing and erasing sound and breath and light in its wake.My lungs seized.Lira gagged beside me, choking on air that suddenly had weight. The echo the wolf whimpered, hackles raised, its great body trembling in a way that made the fear inside me twist sharper.Kael lay limp in my arms, his gold light sputtering like a dying ember.The Devourer tilted its head, studying me and not my body, not my face, but the light inside my ribs. The goddess’s light.“Mother,” it crooned, its voice a hollow echo, like a cavern calling back your own scream. “You hid yourself in flesh. Clever.”Inside me, the goddess recoiled, her power coiling into a tight, trembling knot.Do not speak.Her whisper sliced through my skull, sharp as moon and forged glass.Do not

(Aria’s POV)The night did not breathe.It strained.Each step I took with Kael in my arms felt heavier than the last, as if the air had thickened into something viscous and unwilling to let us pass. The crack in the sky pulsed behind us, widening with a sound like bones splitting under pressure. Lira kept pace beside me, her charms flickering with erratic bursts of light. Fear sharpened her features, but she didn’t slow, not even when the ground trembled hard enough to rattle the runes stitched into her cloak.“We need shelter,” she panted. “Not just distance. If he anchors himself through that breach—”“I know.” My voice was a rasp.Kael stirred weakly in my arms. His head pressed against my shoulder, skin hotter than fire and trembling from the mixture of gold and silver coursing beneath it. His breath hitched, shallow and unsteady, his hand curling instinctively toward my shirt as if afraid I’d let him slip away again.I tightened my hold. “Stay with me.”He didn’t answer, but the

( Aria's POV ) The world lurched sideways as the goddess’s words settled into me like a blade pressed to a bone.He came for you.Not the altar.Not the seal.Not even the vessel inside the temple.Me.The clearing was still too quiet, too empty. The silence after the Devourer’s banishment felt wrong and like breath held too long. Power still crackled weakly over the scorched ground, fading to embers that pulsed beneath my boots.I forced my knees to lock and pushed myself upright, one unsteady breath at a time. Everything hurt, my ribs, my lungs, my mind, but the thought of Kael somewhere behind those temple walls shoved everything else aside.I stumbled forward.My vision tunneled, narrowing to the faint blue glow of the sealed entrance. The night around me felt stretched thin, trembling, as if the world itself wasn’t sure the danger was truly gone.“Kael…” I rasped.His aura flickered but weak, and thin, but alive.Relief hit so hard my knees almost buckled again.I shoved the tem

( Aria's POV ) The last spark faded from the floor. Silence fell, not peaceful or empty, but bracing. Expectant. Like the forest, the temple, the very air was holding its breath. Kael didn’t let go of me. His hands were locked around my arms, his aura flaring so bright it cast long, golden shadows across the temple walls. His chest rose and fell in sharp, furious breaths. Every line of his body was coiled and ready. Lira stood behind him, trembling, her fingertips glowing with blue sigils she didn’t dare release. We waited for something to move. Something to emerge from the dark corners. Something to tear itself into existence. But nothing did. The silence deepened, thick as tar. “He isn’t here,” Lira whispered. “No,” Kael growled. “No, he is. That wasn’t a dream, or a memory, or anything symbolic.” He gently pulled me closer, his voice dropping low and dangerous. “That was contact.” A cold tremor crawled up my spine, settling under the mark like a parasite w