All Chapters of Born of Moon and Magic: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Armida's POVI woke slowly, the way you rise from deep water, and for a long moment I didn't want to surface.Sunlight lay across the sheets in a warm gold bar. The window was still open, and the air smelled of morning dew and, underneath it all, everything we had done the night before, and him. His arm was draped heavy and warm across my waist, his chest pressed to my back, his breath stirring the hair at my nape. I lay perfectly still and let myself feel all of it.My body ached in the most pleasant way. A dull, languid soreness in my thighs, a tenderness low in my belly, a lingering hum under my skin. And at the curve of my neck, the mark. It throbbed gently with every heartbeat, warm and alive, like a second pulse that wasn't entirely mine.I touched it with two fingers. The skin was smooth and a little raised, and it was the strangest, most wonderful thing I had ever felt.Mine, something whispered through the bond. Not in words. In warmth."You're awake," Demetrius murmured aga

Armida's POVI couldn't keep it from him, not after the way he had knelt in front of me. While he pulled on a shirt and I stood fumbling with a bag I barely remembered packing, I said it."There was a letter."He went still. "What letter?""A few days ago, my mom called. Someone left an envelope under their mat, addressed to a name neither of us knew. “Aelina." The word felt strange in my mouth. "She thought it was a mistake, and so did I. Now there's a second one.""And you didn't tell me.""I didn't know what it meant. I still don't." That was true, as far as it went. There was more I could have said, and it stuck behind my teeth.His jaw tightened, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle. "Next time, tell me the first time. I'm not angry, Armida. I just want to be able to protect and keep you safe.""Okay," I whispered.He took the bag from my hands. "Then let's go.”We left within the hour. Florence pressed a basket of breakfast into my hands at the door, and I ate none of it, t

Armida's POVI didn't remember standing up. One moment I was at the table with the shawl under my fingers, and the next I was on the back porch with the screen door clicking shut behind me and the cool air stinging my wet face.The yard looked the same as it had my whole life. The clothesline sagged between two posts, and the old oak at the edge of the pasture was beginning to turn gold. I had climbed it a hundred times as a girl, and now all I could do was stare at it and wonder how far it stood from the place where two strangers had found a baby.Alone, Mom had said. As if I had been set down by the wind.But no one is set down by the wind. Someone carried me there. Someone walked into those woods with a newborn in their arms, and someone chose a spot, and someone let go.The door opened and closed again. I didn't turn around. I knew his steps by now, the unhurried weight of them, and I knew the moment he stopped a pace behind me and simply waited."I'm fine," I said."Your heart b

Armida’s POVNeither of them spoke."Mom and Dad. They found me. In the woods. A baby, all alone, wrapped in a shawl with a name stitched into it." My throat closed. " Twenty-two years, and they never told me.""Armida," Cleo breathed."Someone left me there. Someone just left me, and I don't know who, or why, or whether they even wanted me, and I..." The tears came then, fast and hot, and I pressed my hands to my mouth. "I don't have a wolf. I never did. What if they knew? What if that's why? What if they looked at me and decided I wasn't..."I couldn't finish.Cleo was already pulling me in, and then Leo's arms came around both of us, and the three of us were a tangle of elbows and knees and tears under that oak. I sobbed into Cleo's shoulder like a child. Cleo was crying, too, and Leo had his face turned away, but I felt his chest hitch against my back."You're not nothing," Leo said, rough. "You hear me? You were never nothing.""Whoever left you was an idiot," Cleo said fiercel

Armida's POVDemetrius came home just after sunset, and I knew the moment he walked through the door that something was wrong.He hid it well. He hung his jacket on the hook, asked if I had eaten, and smiled when I said Florence had sent over enough food to feed the whole house.But the bond doesn't care how well a man composes his face. Through it I felt a low, restless hum, like a wolf pacing behind a locked door.He was keeping something from me.I opened my mouth to ask. Then I remembered the small, folded secret sitting in my own drawer upstairs, the one I still hadn't mentioned either, and the question died in my throat. Who was I to demand honesty?"You're quiet," he said."So are you.""Long day." He crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back. "Pack business. Nothing that can't wait until morning."I could have pushed. Instead I looked at the tired line between his brows, at the dirt dried along his knuckles, and something in m