All Chapters of The Omega's Crown: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

122 Chapters

Lirien Ashvale-Draeven lll

Selene's POVThe Keep knew by morning.Not because we told them — because the night had had a different quality to it, the specific alive quality of a building in which something significant had happened, and the pack felt it the way they felt most things: through the bond, through the air, through the particular way the Luna chambers had been lit all night and the way Helga had been seen going in and out of the east wing with the focused quiet of a woman whose two hundred and seventeenth catch had arrived.By the sixth hour, Mira was in the corridor.I could hear her through the door. I could also hear Kade's voice, lower, clearly suggesting that the door was closed for a reason and the reason was that the Luna had been awake for twenty-two hours and perhaps the visit could wait until —"I'm not asking to come in," Mira said. "I'm standing in the corridor. I'm allowed to stand in the corridor.""You're directly outside the door.""Corridors extend to directly outside doors. That is t

Not Missing Nights

Selene's POVOn the third night I woke up at the second hour to find Kael already awake.He was not in bed. He was in the nursing chair — the green one with the wide arms, the one I had asked for at thirty degrees from the east window — with the baby against his chest and the specific quality of a man who had been sitting there for a while and had no intention of being somewhere else."She woke up," he said quietly."I heard her.""I had her. Go back to sleep."I did not go back to sleep.I sat up. I watched him for a moment — the way he held her, the specific angle he had figured out on the second night that kept her settled, his hand over her back the way his hand went over things he was keeping. The lamp turned very low. The east window was dark."You've been awake since the first hour," I said."She was awake at the first hour.""You could have woken me.""I could have." He looked at her face. "I didn't want to."I got out of bed. I crossed to the chair. I sat on the arm of it — t

Mortified and Deeply Honored

Selene's POVMira's baby arrived three weeks after Lirien.On a Tuesday, which felt right — significant things in our lives had a tendency toward Tuesdays. Mira had been in labor for eight hours, which Helga described as efficient, which Helga meant as a compliment and which Mira received in the spirit it was intended.He was small. Dark hair. The specific round face of a newborn who had arrived and was reserving judgment.He was going to have Kade's jaw and Mira's eyes, which I could already see in the architecture of the face, and he was going to be either very calm or very loud and I did not yet know which.Mira was in bed with him on her chest when I came in.She looked at me.She looked at the baby.She looked back at me."Selene," she said."I know.""He's here.""I know, Mira.""He's actually here." She looked at the baby again. "Three weeks ago you had yours and I thought: this is happening. And now mine is here and it's still happening.""Yes," I said."I'm a mother.""Yes."

Less Than a Sword

Selene's POVThe sixth week was the week the Keep discovered what two babies at the same time actually meant.Not in theory. In practice. In the specific practice of two infants who had arrived three weeks apart and had discovered, apparently, that the most interesting thing to do at the third hour of the morning was to both be awake at the same time and let everyone in the building know about it.Baby Cedric was in the east cottage.Baby Lirien was in the nursery adjacent to the Luna chambers.The building was stone.Stone did not, as a rule, transmit sound between separate wings.The wolves did.Both wolves — mine and Mira's — were awake the moment either baby made a sound, which meant both mothers were awake, which meant all four adults in the two rooms were awake, which meant the sixth week was the week that Kael and Kade both appeared in the east wing kitchen at the fourth hour with the specific expression of men who had survived many things and were now being defeated by two cre

Would Have Loved You

Selene's POVMy mother had a system.She had developed it in the first two weeks and had been refining it since — a specific approach to the time with the baby that was distinct from Kael's approach and distinct from mine. Kael held Lirien and talked to her with the focused attention of a man preparing her for the world. I held her and let her look at things and told her the names of what she was looking at. My mother held her and told her stories.Not baby stories. Not performed narration for an infant who couldn't understand yet.Stories.The kind she had been telling me for months in the east wing kitchen — the small specific ones, the texture of a life, the daily fabric of a person who had existed and could no longer speak for himself.I came into the nursery at the fourth hour one afternoon to find my mother in the green chair with Lirien against her chest and her voice at the low specific frequency she used for the stories."His name was Cedric," she was saying. "Your grandfathe

Own Side

Selene's POVRiven arrived on a Wednesday in the eighth week with a horse and a travel bag and the expression of a man who had been north for long enough to know what he had left and was glad to see it.He came through the south gate at the ninth hour.I was in the training yard — first session since the birth, Kade running me through the re-entry sequence Helga had cleared at the seventh week check. I heard the gate before I saw him. I knew the footstep.I stopped.He came in.He looked at me.I looked at him.He was different and the same. The Riven who had ridden north three months ago had been a man who was done — not depleted, done in the specific way of someone who had completed a long task and needed to set it down and rest. The Riven who had come back was still the same man but with a quality in him that I did not have a word for at first and then did: settled.Not the settled resignation.The settlement of a man who had found the right room and was in it."Luna," he said."Be

Smiled Today

Kael's POVShe left on a Monday morning in the tenth week.The Council session had been scheduled before Lirien arrived, and Selene had been preparing for it since the sixth week when she had confirmed she would attend. Three weeks in the eastern chamber. The border adjustment follow-ups, the spring session business, the three outstanding matters from the previous session.I had not said I didn't want her to go.She had not asked me to say it.We had not discussed it because there was nothing to discuss — this was her work, it was important work, she had built it from the ground up and it required her presence in the room. The baby had Helga and my mother and Kade and Mira and me. She had all five of us. She was not going to be short of presence.Selene said goodbye at the sixth hour in the nursery.She held the baby for twenty minutes.She talked to her the way she talked to the baby — directly, without performing the talking, telling her facts. "I'll be back in three weeks. Your gra

Father's Eyes

Selene's POVDiana came in the twelfth week.She had written three weeks before. Not asking — stating, the way she had been learning to state things since the letters had started: I'd like to come. Two days. I won't ask to hold her if you'd rather I didn't.The task was there, buried in the second sentence.If you'd rather I didn't.I had read it twice and then written back: Come in the third week of the month. You can hold her if you want to.She came on a Thursday.Single bag. Smaller than last time — she was learning the Keep's rhythm the way you learned a rhythm you were going to keep returning to. She knew where the east wing kitchen was. She knew the library schedule. She came in like a woman who had been here before and was beginning to develop a relationship with the building.We walked to the library first. She had questions about the pre-consolidation records — she had been working through the territorial law on her own and had found three more annotation errors and had been

Best Year

Selene's POVThe silver hall was the same hall.I had not been back in it since the coronation ceremony, when Father Aldric had used the same bowl to seal the formal vows. Before that, the binding. The night I had arrived in a cream silk dress that someone else had chosen for their cruelty, with a rejection mark burning at my collarbone, at four in the morning, pressing my palm to a stranger's.One year.Kael had said, at breakfast: "Do you want to go back?"I held my tea."Yes," I said."The same hall.""Yes.""The same bowl.""Yes." I looked at him. "I want to see what's different."We went at the seventh hour.Not the middle of the night. Not the ceremony hour. The morning hour, the gold light through the hall's high windows, the specific quality of the silver hall in daylight that I had never seen. On the night of the binding I had seen it by candlelight — three candles, the priest's robe, the stone walls that did not echo. In the morning it was a different room.Larger.The stone

Silver and Black

Selene's POVThe full moon came on a Tuesday in the fourteenth week.I had been shifting freely since the eighth week — not on every full moon, but when I wanted to, which was the distinction Helga had been watching for and had confirmed at the seventh week check: the suppression is resolved. The shift is voluntary. You're clear.Voluntary.Twenty-one years of being told the shift was impossible, the wolf was sleeping, the capacity was absent. And then the hex broke and the wall came down and the wolf walked through and the shift was not impossible and the wolf was not sleeping and the capacity had been there the entire time.The full moon in the fourteenth week was the first full moon since Lirien had arrived. I had not shifted in four months. I had been too occupied — not physically prevented, just occupied in the way of a new mother who had been working through a significant adjustment period and had not had the specific uninterrupted two hours that a shift required.The fourteenth

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