Pregnant And Rejected Mate
"It's not a network marking at all, Sera. I don't recognize the pattern. It's not from any tradition Ines or Mireille described to us."
Kael's hand found my shoulder, gripping tight. "Then whose is it."
Ada hesitated, and I watched her weigh something before she spoke, the careful, deliberate pause of a healer about to say something that couldn't be unsaid once it left her mouth.
"It's old," she said. "Older than the compact system. Older, I think, than the founding pact Wren mentioned in passing when she first explained the regional council's history to us. I've only ever seen this pattern once before, Sera. In a book my own mentor kept locked away, one she told me never to open unless I ha