The Rejected Luna’s Hidden Legacy
I stopped beneath the largest tree and pressed both hands over my stomach, the bark cool against my back, dawn light barely starting to touch the highest branches.
“I’m all you have now,” I whispered.
Four small pulses answered beneath my palms, unmistakable, real, each one distinct from the others like four separate hearts learning to beat at once.
I sank onto the grass and finally broke … not from grief, though grief was tangled somewhere in it, twisted up with fear and fury and something achingly tender all at once. I cried because I had just discovered I already loved them completely, four heartbeats I’d known about for less than an hour, already more mine than anything else in this enti