All Chapters of Forbidden Under the Blood Moon: Chapter 291 - Chapter 300

POV: WREN THORNE"Kade, put your hand here and tell me I am not imagining it. The baby is humming again, but the tune is wrong. It sounds like a warning, and I do not know who it is meant for."I lay on the bed with the quilt pushed down. Kade knelt beside me in the grey dawn, so pale that his eyes looked black. He laid his palm flat on my belly and held his breath."I feel it," he said. His voice cracked. "Low and slow. Like a heartbeat with a tune on top.""That is not a baby song.""No.""It is Isolde's waking song. The one that brought Cody back.""I know." He did not move his hand. "Wren, look at me. The baby is moving. The baby is alive.""The baby stopped, Kade. For a whole hour there was nothing, and I lay here counting."The door opened a crack. Selene looked in, her sword belt crooked, and behind her stood Dorrin, the healer with the cold hands and the kind eyes. Dorrin pressed her ear to my belly for a long time. The room smelled of wood smoke and old herbs."Strong heart,"

POV: WREN THORNE"You think I let him go? I carried that boy up the hill while his blood froze on my sleeves. If you doubt me now, Wren, say it to my face and not behind it."Selene stood in the infirmary with her fists at her sides, and her voice shook on every word. The empty cot lay between us. The blanket was kicked onto the floor, and the window banged softly in the wind. Frost had crept across the sill in white feathers."I asked one question," I said."You asked who last saw him, and then you looked at me.""I look at everyone.""No. You looked at me the way you looked at Pell." She swallowed. "I stood at your door all night. I did not sleep. I did not eat. I brought him broth at midnight, and he was snoring, and I left him there.""Then nobody was watching him.""The healer was. She went to fetch bandages." Selene's eyes were bright and furious. "I know what I was before, Wren. I know what you all think when you see me. But I chose this side. I chose it with my eyes open."Tha

POV: WREN THORNE"You want me to bake her cakes again? Mama is not even buried, and you want me to turn her little signal into a trap. Why should I help the woman she died for?"Maelis stood in the herb house with flour to her elbows and a rolling pin clenched in one fist. Her hair had come loose from its braid. The old oven roared behind her, and the whole room smelled of butter and scorched sugar. Her eyes were red and hard."Because Brannock and Maren are the only two people who can finish the verse," I said. "And the smoke is the only way to reach them.""You could send a rider.""A rider could be followed. A rider could be shot." I kept my voice low. "The smoke is the one message that nobody here knows how to read.""Except the one who killed her.""Maybe." I rubbed my aching back. "I do not know, Maelis. I know that last night a woman with a kind voice stood at the top of a stair and told Kade to leave a door alone. She smiled the whole way back to the kitchen, and not once did

POV: WREN THORNE"Her ladyship should be resting, not sitting in judgment. A woman near her time has no business making law. Let the Alpha rule alone, and let his wife stitch the cradle blanket."Lord Harlan Stroud said it kindly, which made it worse. He was an old Ashborn elder with a beard like frayed rope, and he spoke to the council as if I were not sitting three chairs away. A few heads nodded. One man coughed to hide a laugh. Heat flooded my face and crawled down my neck.The council hall was cold and bright, the long table scattered with scrolls. Morning sun fell through tall windows onto the red banners. I sat very straight with my hands folded over my belly, and I felt every eye in the room. Kade sat at the head of the table, his jaw tight. He started to rise.I touched his sleeve. Not yet."Lord Stroud," I said. "Do you have a wife?""I do, my lady. Fifty years.""Did she ever carry a child?"He blinked. "Six.""And did she stop thinking while she carried them?"A pause. Som

POV: WREN THORNE"I asked the baby, Kade. I held my belly and begged for a yes. The humming stopped. What kind of mother asks a child to risk everything for a promise the baby never made?"We stood at the foot of the Moon Stone hill while the others climbed ahead of us. The wind tasted of snow and iron. High above, a great round moon was lifting over the ridge, and it was the colour of an old wound. Kade held my arm so tightly I could feel his heartbeat in his fingers."You are not forcing her," he said."Maren said the stone breaks the last voice if the fourth does not answer.""Then we find another way.""There is no other way. Isolde is dead, and the verse is in my head." I pressed my free hand to my mouth. "If the baby will not answer, I must not let the stone take the child in my place. I will have to speak last.""Wren.""I know what it means.""No." His voice cracked. "No. We will not decide that tonight. We will decide what happens in front of the stone, with the stone in fron