An Heir For The Comatose Alpha
"William. I need to tell you what it told me."
I told him everything on the walk back toward the column, the basin, the three failed Anchors, the Serpent Mother's admission that she didn't know where coercion ended and free choice began, that she didn't know what any of it meant for our daughter. He listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening with every new piece, until we'd reached the others and the words had finally run out.
"No," he said, flat, immediate. "Constance, no. You are not binding yourself to something for the rest of your life on the word of a woman who just admitted, by her own account, that she can't tell the difference between consent and coercion."