Semua Bab The Alpha’s Rejected Luna and Her Five Daughters: Bab 81 - Bab 90

Torin slept for most of the following two days, waking only long enough to eat and reassure Mira, who’d insisted on sitting outside the healer’s door until she could see him for herself. “You came back,” she said, the first time she was finally allowed in. “Told you I would,” Torin said, voice still rough but steadier than the night of the rescue. “Seemed only fair, given you did the same for your sisters.” Mira studied him for a long moment, then did something Bonita hadn’t seen her do with anyone outside the family before — she hugged him, quick and fierce, before pulling back looking almost embarrassed by it. “Don’t get captured again,” she said. “I’ll do my best,” Torin said, something warm breaking through his exhaustion. With Torin recovering and Mira safely home, the settlement settled into a rare stretch of quiet. No council sessions. No urgent scouts riding in with fresh warnings. For the first time since the naming ceremony, Bonita found herself with actual empty hours

The next several days settled into something close to normal, or as close to normal as the household had managed since Bonita’s arrival months earlier. Torin recovered steadily under the healer’s care, strong enough by the fourth day to sit up and take visitors properly, and Mira spent an hour with him each afternoon, the two of them developing an easy, teasing friendship that surprised everyone who remembered how coldly Torin had once treated Bonita’s arrival. He taught her simple sparring stances from his bed, correcting her footwork with his hands since he couldn’t yet demonstrate them himself, and Mira absorbed every lesson with the same fierce focus she brought to everything else in her life. “You’re a natural,” Torin told her, after she’d repeated a stance correctly three times in a row. “Better than most recruits twice your age.” “I had a good reason to learn fast,” Mira said, and left it at that, though Bonita, watching from the doorway, understood exactly what reason she m

Mira found Bonita in the kitchen the next morning, still smiling faintly over her tea, and studied her with the particular sharpness that made Bonita feel, sometimes, like her daughter could read her thoughts directly. “You’re happy,” Mira said. “Properly happy. Not just relieved-happy, like after the trading post.” “I am,” Bonita admitted. “Kael’s been courting me properly, this past week. Flowers, poetry he definitely didn’t write himself, terrible dancing in the training yard.” Mira’s mouth twitched into something close to a smile. “He danced with you?” “Badly,” Bonita said. “Very badly. It was wonderful.” “I’m glad,” Mira said, settling into the chair across from her, her expression turning more thoughtful. “You deserve that. After everything with Father, I mean. You deserve someone who tries, even when he’s bad at it.” Bonita reached across the table, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “You deserve good things too, Mira. Not just me. You’ve earned rest, and safety, and time to

The sickness started three weeks later, subtle at first — a faint queasiness in the mornings that Bonita initially dismissed as simple tiredness, easily explained by the household’s still-recovering rhythms. By the fifth morning of it, though, Rhea’s absence made itself felt in an unexpected way. There was no one with quite her instincts to notice the pattern before Bonita herself fully registered it, and it was Ilsa, of all people, who first raised the question over breakfast, watching Bonita push her food around her plate with visible discomfort. “You’ve been like this all week,” Ilsa observed carefully. “Pale in the mornings, tired earlier than usual in the evenings. I don’t mean to overstep, Luna, but has it occurred to you what this might mean?” Bonita blinked, the obvious answer arriving with a small jolt of surprise that she hadn’t considered it sooner. “You think I’m pregnant.” “I think it would explain quite a lot,” Ilsa said gently. “Should I send for the healer?” Bonit

Kael’s hand found Bonita’s shoulder, protective and alert. “Who are you,” he demanded. “And how do you know what she carries.” “My name is Aldric,” the stranger said. “I’ve spent forty years tracing old bloodlines and older prophecies, following whispers most mages dismiss as superstition too dangerous to investigate closely. I felt something shift in the world months ago, Alpha — the same shift, I suspect, that brought your daughter Amira into being marked as she was.” “Explain yourself plainly,” Kael said, “or this conversation ends now.” Aldric nodded, accepting the demand without offense. “The child already born to you — Amira — carries more than a simple ward against the thing you call the Hollow. I’ve read fragments across three territories that most scholars consider unrelated pieces, and I believe, put together, they describe something far larger than any single mage has previously understood.” “What is she,” Bonita asked, old fear and fierce protectiveness rising together