Lahat ng Kabanata ng My Sister's Mate Is Obsessed With Me: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Seraphina's POVI sat there with my palms against the curve of my stomach and the fire warm on my face and looked at the woman across from me and thought about how many ways a person could break and still get up in the morning and make tea and pull weeds and mend shirts and open her door to a stranger bleeding on her doorstep without asking a single question she knew the answer would hurt.The baby got bigger and the kicks got stronger and some nights I couldn't sleep because every time I found a good spot the baby would roll or kick and I'd have to shift and find a new one.I'd lie on my side with a pillow between my knees the way Maren had showed me and press my hand against the spot where the foot was pushing and push back gently and the foot would push again like a game."You're running out of room in there," I whispered one night. "I know the feeling."The belly was big enough now that I couldn't see my feet when I stood up and bending over to pull weeds in the garden meant getti

Seraphina's POV I woke up to smoke leaking through the cracks around the window frame, thicker than yesterday, and the sharp bitter edge of it cut through the soap smell of the sheets and the bread smell of the kitchen and sat on top of everything else like a lid pressed down over the house.When I opened the curtains the sky was wrong. Not blue, not grey, but a dirty yellow-brown that made the sunlight look sick and turned the shadows in the garden a color I'd never seen before.Maren was already outside. I found her standing at the garden gate with her hand over her eyes and her face turned west and the wind was pulling at her hair and the hem of her dress and it was hot, hotter than yesterday, and completely dry."It's closer," she said without turning around.I stood next to her and looked where she was looking and the haze on the tree line was thicker now, not a thin layer sitting on top of the trees but a wall of brown-yellow smoke that rose above the ridgeline and spread acros

Seraphina's POVThe blue door. The bread oven. The chair under the apple tree. The apple tree itself, the one growing over her son's grave, the one where she'd put her arm around me when the baby kicked for the first time. All of it gone and all of it burning.And Maren in the garden with a beam across her back telling me to run the same way Pria had told me to run and the same way I'd been running my whole life, away from the places that hurt me, away from the people who held me up, always away, always alone, always leaving behind the ones who deserved better than what I gave them.The crowd on the road grew as more people joined from side roads and farms and small houses along the way. I saw Hilde at one point, walking with her goats tied to a rope, and she saw me and her face crumbled and she said "Maren?" and I shook my head and she closed her eyes and pressed her fist against her mouth and kept walking.By the time the smoke thinned and the fire was behind us and the road opened

Seraphina's POV "The borders are closed." Dax said it the same way he'd said it the first time, flat and cold and final, like he was reading words off a wall."We're not a threat to you. We're farmers and bakers and tradespeople. We've got nothing left. Look at us." The man waved his hand at the crowd behind him. "Look at the children. Look at the women. There's a girl back there who's eight months along and walking on burned hands. You'd turn her away?"My stomach dropped. He was talking about me. I pulled my hood lower and stepped behind a tall woman in front of me and pressed myself against her back and prayed that no one was pointing.Dax didn't look at the crowd. He looked at the man in front of him and his face didn't change, not a flicker of anything behind those dark eyes."The borders are closed. Turn east. There are settlements past the river that may take you in.""The river is two days' walk and half these people won't make it that far.""That is not my concern."The word

Seraphina's POV The tall one stepped forward and I could see him now in the moonlight, the same tall rogue who'd ridden in the cart with us months ago, the same one who'd said "bit Kessler's hand open" while I stood in the lineup with blood on my face. He looked at me for a long time and then he started laughing."The wild one," he said. "From the back pen. The one who curled up every time we tried to take her.""Look at the belly on her," Brask said. "She wasn't that big when she was with us. Looks like someone got to her before or after, doesn't matter which."I was pressing myself against the wall and my hands were flat on my belly and the baby was kicking hard against my palms, fast and panicked, matching my heartbeat the way it always did."Run," I said to Tessa without looking at her. "Take Orrin and run.""I'm not leaving you.""Tessa, take your son and go. Now."Brask glanced at Tessa and jerked his head toward the door. "Let the mother and the pup go. They're not worth anyth