Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Blood Moon Prophecy : Kabanata 161 - Kabanata 170

POV: Kaelen Nyx came forward when Kaelen was alone in the northwest corridor at the seventh hour of the morning, when the pack house was still quiet enough that the only sound was the faint wind against the high windows and the distant sound of the kitchen beginning its day. He came forward in the way he sometimes did, not the aggressive pressing at the edges of control that he had used in the dark years of the curse, but the deliberate and considered arrival of a wolf who had decided the moment was right and intended to use it. Kaelen stopped walking. He stood in the corridor and waited. "I was wrong," Nyx said. Kaelen stood very still. He had heard his wolf say many things over the course of fifteen years. He had heard Nyx be fierce and be furious and be cold in the specific terrifying way that the wolf was cold when something threatened what was theirs. He had never heard him say those three words. "Tell me," he said. "When we were searching for the mate," Nyx said, with the

POV: Anara The balance session with Zephyr had been going well, which she had learned over months of working with him was the precise moment to brace for something unexpected, because Zephyr's idea of a session going well and her idea of a session going well were not always the same thing. He had the ancient quality of someone who had been having conversations with the universe for long enough to understand that good news and difficult news were often the same information delivered from different angles, and he offered both with the same unruffled serenity that she found alternately deeply calming and extremely aggravating. Lyra was in the room with them, seated in the chair by the south window in the contained and upright way she sat everywhere, present but apart, watching the session the way she watched most things, with the careful evaluating attention of someone cataloguing what they could not yet interpret. Zephyr had suggested Lyra attend several weeks ago and neither of them h

POV: AnaraIt was a Tuesday morning in the kitchen, which was where Liora did most of her important talking, because Liora was a woman who trusted motion, who trusted the occupation of hands, who found that the things she needed to say came more easily when there was something practical happening around the saying of them. She was telling Anara about the herbs that helped in the final weeks, the specific ones that eased the lower back and the ones that helped with the specific kind of sleeplessness that came from a body too large and too full to find a comfortable position, and she was thorough and precise about it the way she was thorough and precise about everything."The blue herb from the northern garden is the most useful," she was saying, her hands moving over the bundles she had laid out on the long kitchen table. "Not the dried. Fresh, steeped for ten minutes. Your midwife Caran knows it. She has been using it correctly. You can trust her with it." She paused. "I know these th

POV: AnaraIt began at the third hour of the morning, which she later thought was entirely appropriate, because the third hour of the morning had been theirs since the beginning, since bathroom floors and warm baths and conversations they had not planned to have, and it was the correct hour for something this large to begin. She felt it the way she felt all large things now, through the bond first and then through her body, the bond alerting the body before the body had finished deciding to alert itself, and she lay in the dark for one breath and then she said, simply and clearly, "It is time."Kaelen was already up before the sentence was finished."I know," he said."You knew before I said it," she said, not a complaint, simply an observation, because even now, even in this, she was cataloguing the ways the bond worked between them."The bond," he said."The bond," she agreed, and then everything shifted, and the cataloguing stopped, because the body had fully committed now and it h

POV: AnaraOne week after the birth the pack house had reorganized itself around the new person in it with the specific completeness of a thing that had been waiting for a catalyst and had finally been given one. This was the nature of pack houses, she was learning, the way they were not merely buildings but living arrangements, structures that had their own preferences and instincts and that adjusted themselves to what mattered with the same organic responsiveness as a forest adjusting to a new source of light. The child mattered. The pack house had decided this. Everything in it rearranged accordingly.Liora was fierce and meticulous and present in the way that Liora was present when she had decided something was her responsibility, which was to say absolutely and without any negotiation about the terms. She arrived every morning at the seventh hour with whatever was required and she checked everything and she spoke directly and plainly to anyone who suggested anything she considere