All Chapters of Alpha's Regret: The Forsaken Luna: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Rhiannon's POVHe was alone.The ancient vampire king who had spent two thousand years building toward this single purpose, who commanded a fortress full of Bloodletters, who had reached into a pack and taken my son—he stood alone on the mountainside in the dark and waited for us with his hands at his sides.He looked older than the Pale Lady. Older than Caelum. The age was not in his face, which was ageless in the way of all very old vampires—still, carved, indifferent to time. It was in the weight of him. The accumulated pressure of two thousand years of wanting something he couldn't have.He looked at Soren.Something moved in his eyes.Not hunger. Not possession. I had braced myself for hunger. This was different and worse—it was grief, the particular grief of recognising something precious and knowing it is out of reach."I would not have hurt him," he said. His voice was very quiet. "I want you to know that."Darius was at my shoulder. I could feel his fury—controlled, held in c

Rhiannon's POVDawn found us eight miles from the mountain.Not enough. Not nearly enough. But dawn came when it came, and all we could do was keep moving into it.I carried Soren. Had been carrying him for five of the eight miles, shifting him from hip to shoulder to front as the muscles required, refusing every time Darius reached for him. Not from stubbornness—or not only—but from some deep animal need to keep him in contact with me. To feel his weight and his warmth and his breath against my neck. To keep confirming what my hands had to confirm again and again: here. He's here.He'd woken twice. Both times briefly, checking his location, checking my face, going back to sleep. The third time he woke he asked me to tell him about the mission and I did—the tunnel, the storage chamber, the vampire in the dark—and he listened with the intense attention he brought to everything, and when I got to the part about him using his magic to shield us on the stair he got very quiet."I didn't k

Rhiannon's POVThe healer's wing smelled like fresh linen and herbs and the particular clean antiseptic smell that meant someone competent had prepared for our return.Elder Moira met us at the door. She took one comprehensive look at all five of us—Soren first, then Marcus, then me—and her face did the thing experienced healers' faces do, which is show nothing except efficiency while internally triaging everything at once."The boy first," she said.They took Soren into the examination room and I went with them and he submitted to the healer's assessment with the particular resigned dignity of a child who has learned that fighting adults over this particular category of thing is not worth the energy expenditure."Does this hurt?" Moira asked, pressing gently along his ribs."No.""This?" His shoulder."No.""This?" His hands.He considered. "My feelings hurt," he said.Moira stopped. Looked at him. Then looked at me over his head with an expression that said: this child will give me

Rhiannon's POVIt started on the third night.I was awake before he made a sound—that maternal instinct that had never fully slept since the day he was born, the part of me that monitored his breathing the way a sentry monitors a border. The change in rhythm was subtle. Not quite a sound. Just a shift in the quality of the silence coming through his door.I was in his room before the first cry.He was sitting upright in bed, both hands fisted in the blanket, eyes open and not seeing the room. They were seeing somewhere else. Something else. The particular horror of dreams that have more truth in them than most waking hours."Soren." I sat on the bed beside him, one hand on his shoulder. Not pulling him toward me—offering contact, letting him come when ready. "Hey. I'm here."He came back slowly. The eyes refocused. The blanket loosened fractionally."It was loud," he said. His voice was very small."What was loud?""The alarm. When you came. The whole building changed. All the light w

Rhiannon's POVNyx came to my room at dawn.Not the healer's wing, not the war table—my room. Which meant she'd thought about where to say this and decided it needed to be somewhere private.I was already awake. I'd been awake for an hour, which was itself new information, because I was sleeping again—properly, deeply—and waking an hour before dawn meant something was making itself known in a language I hadn't learned to read yet.She sat in the chair by the window. I sat on the bed. Between us, the early morning light came through the curtains in strips."Tell me," I said."You're pregnant."The words landed with the quality of something dropped from a height—not loud, just definitive. The kind of landing that rearranges the furniture.I sat with it.One breath. Two."How far?""Early. Very early. Perhaps three weeks." Nyx's voice was careful, monitoring my face. "The Primordial magic in your blood masked it—both from you and from the standard monitoring. I might have missed it entir